In Spring 2022, during the Two Sessions, another wave of COVID-19 entered China. The Omicron variant is highly transmissible and tends to cause less severe illness. More than 90% of the confirmed cases show no symptoms, making it difficult to block the pandemic.[1] On March 14, Shenzhen became China’s first first-tier city to go into lockdown. [2] After Shenzhen reopened, the pandemic in Shanghai started to worsen. As Shanghai has an irreplaceable status in the Chinese economy, its pandemic trend and prevention strategies have attracted the world's attention. Later in this article, we will explore the implication of the oscillation between the two prevention strategies, “Catching the Mouse in the Urn” and the “clear-cut Covid strategy”.

Two years since the pandemic began, Shanghai adopted the Precise Prevention and Control mode or “Catching the Mouse in the Urn” strategy with its abundant public health resource: controlling the pandemic by managing confirmed cases based on COVID-19 prevention checklists, rather than the “clear-cut” strategy featuring a complete lockdown and rounds of large-scale COVID-19 nucleic acid tests. To maintain its normal economic and social functions, Shanghai has tried hard not to break the urn and to lower the impact of the pandemic on the economy and society.

In fact, Shanghai’s Precise Prevention and Control mode has not deviated from the central government's policy of Dynamic Clearing. The Dynamic Clearing policy aims to identify and isolate the patients as soon as possible to avoid the spread of the pandemic. It implies the central government urges the local government to implement all possible isolation of patients within a short time. This is called Social Clearing. Over the past two years and before the Omicron wave, Shanghai has been able to control the pandemic with the Precise Prevention and Control strategy, without a lockdown or large-scale COVID-19 nucleic acid tests. On the other hand, other local governments, which have poor public health resources, are not able to discover and control the cases in the early stages. Therefore, they can’t adopt the Precise Prevention and Control strategy like Shanghai. To achieve the goal of Social Dynamic Clearing, most local governments adopt the clear-cut policy unanimously: They would rather “kill a hundred than miss one”. The checklist is maximized and people’s daily routines are put on pause to achieve the goal of zero-COVID in a short time.

Despite having handled COVID-19 well since its start, Shanghai has fallen short in the new wave of the pandemic since March 2022. Precise Prevention and Control mode has faced a challenge. The case-control and checklists are no longer effective as people infected with the highly transmissible Omicron variant usually show mild or no symptoms, and the number of confirmed cases has rocketed (as shown in Picture 1). This shows, that under the premise of Social Dynamic Clearing, Shanghai is no longer able to balance the prevention strategy and the normal functioning of the economy and life.

Seen as China’s financial capital, Shanghai has a well-developed financial service industry, manufacturing industry, and high-tech industry. It also controls the raw materials, exports, and imports in the Yangtze River Delta region. Therefore, the prevention strategy in Shanghai has to be well calculated and carefully deployed. Fairly speaking, compared with other cities, Shanghai cares more about striking a balance between the pandemic prevention and economic activities due to the role it plays in China’s economy. Even in late March, when the number of cases was on the rise, Shanghai refused to go into lockdown or adopt large-scale COVID-19 nucleic acid tests. Instead, Shanghai's goal was still to reduce the range of city control and lower the impact on daily operations. However, the Shanghai municipal government suddenly announced on March 27 that the city was to go into a phased lockdown the next day, with Huangpu River being the border. [3] Shanghai didn't exit lockdown as planned and instead entered a “citywide static management‌‌” for the first time, starting a citywide nucleic acid testing. [4]

This article believes that the policy shift reflects the involvement of the Xi Jinping administration in the pandemic while temporarily closing the dispute of the zero-COVID policy versus coexistence. From the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) meeting on March 17, we can see the stance of the CCP and the senior officials on pandemic prevention: 1. Dynamic Clearing is more advanced than coexistence; 2. Dynamic Clearing is a political issue; thus, we need to firmly oppose the ideas of coexistence the virus or treat COVID like a flu; 3. the central government can't ignore the fact that Shanghai hasn’t gone into lockdown and has lost patience with their enhanced version of Precise Control. [5]

Due to the prevalence of the Omicron variant, many countries have chosen to coexist with COVID, which is to increase vaccination coverage, classify severe and mild cases to preserve medical resources, and store medical supplies to cope with the pandemic, which has already entered the community, and to alleviate the impact on economic development. In early March this year, the media reported that the Chinese public health experts and officials will explore new opportunities in adjusting the pandemic prevention strategy and relaxing the policy of Dynamic Clearing.[6] Since local governments have been imposing lockdowns and large-scale tests to meet the goal of Dynamic Clearing, the country is suffering from a lack of resource provision, a broken supply chain, insufficient protection for citizens, and excessive workloads for local administrations. This harms the goal of achieving economic stability.[7]

However, from the Politburo Standing Committee meeting on March 17 to[8] articles in the People’s Daily and Xinhuanet (the mouthpiece of the CCP) on March 29, we can see Xi Jinping's latest stance on the pandemic in 2022 based on the article published, “‘Always insist on putting people first and life first’ - Review of General Secretary Xi Jinping's command to fight the battle of pandemic prevention and control and the economic and social development.”[9] There are four main points: (1) Xi Jinping has always been hands-on during the pandemic, “personally directing and deploying” the fight against the pandemic; (2) Xi believes that in dealing with the Omicron variant, while always “insisting on putting the people and life first”, we should still insist on “dynamic clearing”; (3) he stressed the need for “rapid” local control of the pandemic and the implementation of the requirements of “early detection, early reporting, early isolation, and early treatment”; and (4) China's pandemic prevention policy has a “systemic advantage” over that of the West in terms of the number of infections and deaths. The four main points share one thing in common: Xi Jinping believes that the quickest way to detect the virus should be implemented as a priority in disease prevention, meaning that even in Shanghai, the economic center of China, lockdown is not impracticable.

On April 2, Sun Chunlan, a member of the Politburo and Vice Premier of the State Council in charge of medical and health affairs, was transferred from Jilin to Shanghai to ensure that the Shanghai authorities would indeed implement the pandemic prevention policy in accordance with the deployment of the Party Central Committee and the State Council.[10] Secretary of the Party Group and Director of the National Health Commission Ma Xiaowei reiterated the political stance of the Party Central Committee in dealing with the pandemic through Study Times on April 18, after Shanghai had been under lockdown for several days, that the Shanghai authorities must continue to adhere to the current measures to control the pandemic and must not make a mistake in their political stance. [11] Shanghai’s subsequent pandemic prevention strategy took a major turn for the worse around the Qingming Festival when a series of political orders led to the fallout from the lockdown.

Long before the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the CCP (October 2013) proposed “grid-based” governance in the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Reform, some local governments (e.g., Beijing and Xiamen) were exploring community “grid-based” management as part of local governance innovation. However, it is worth noting that the “grid”[13] is also a conduit for party organizations to infiltrate the local community. To put it simply, the “grid-based” community management means extending China’s local administrative organizations from the community (village) down to each household-based “grid” In other words, community “grid-based” management means that the Chinese government wants to extend the core of local social governance down to the household. which is the basic unit in the society, so that party organizations and the government can grasp the “conflicts and problems” that occur in each “grid” and quickly eliminate them.

Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, China overall had already become well-versed in developing “grid-based” communities.[14] At the beginning of the COVID outbreak in 2020, Xi Jinping pointed out the importance of community “grid-based” management in preventing the spread of the pandemic. [15] However, China's well-developed community “grid” focused only on the control aspects of the pandemic, such as strengthening the country’s collection of personal and social intelligence and data, but neglected the social welfare or livelihood protection, such as the deployment and distribution of goods, the classification of patients and how to deliver them to hospitals, the preparation of children for quarantine, and the rights of non-local household registration holders. In short, the administrative capacity of local governments in China has not been enhanced by the “grid-based” approach.

Since Jiang Zemin (except Chen Liangyu), the next step in the career path of those who have held the post of Shanghai Party Secretary is to become a Politburo Standing Committee member. Therefore, in 2017, when Li Qiang (born in July 1959, aged 63), a member of the “Zhijiang New Army” (Xi Jinping’s old ministry), was transferred from the post of Party Secretary of Jiangsu Province to replace Han Zheng as Shanghai Party Secretary, attention was drawn to his career development. The fall of Shanghai from the altar as a role model in pandemic prevention has raised concerns about whether this will hurt Li Qiang’s future career. It may not be a concern as explained below:

First of all, we cannot ignore the fact that since 2020, except for Jiang Chaoliang, the provincial party secretary of Hubei Province, where the pandemic broke out, no major party secretary has stepped down due to the severity of the pandemic. Second, Li Qiang did not disappear from the public eye when Shanghai’s pandemic prevention policy was being adjusted or when the pandemic was at its worst, and continued to carry out his usual schedule as Shanghai Party Secretary, such as attending the Standing Committee meetings of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee or inspecting the pandemic preparation status of each district in Shanghai. [16] Third, Shanghai’s Precise Prevention and Control mode shares the same goal as the Dynamic Clearing insisted by the central government. The discrepancy between Shanghai and the central government is at most the prevention and control strategies, instead of its political stance. Finally, Li Qiang’s career started in Zhejiang Province, where he served for a long time, assuming the role of Secretary-General of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee in late 2004, and would have had many business contacts with Xi Jinping, then-Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee. Regardless of the actual relationship between Xi Jinping and Li Qiang, it is clear from public information that Li Qiang’s career did rise with Xi Jinping’s succession in 2012.[17] In the beginning of succession, the top leader of the CCP tends to face a cabinet arranged by and promoted by the previous leader, and “their own people” have often yet to occupy key positions. Even Xi Jinping was not immune to this problem. Therefore, in his third term in office, expected later this year, it will be essential for Xi Jinping to have his own people in the Politburo Standing Committee. As Shanghai Party Secretary, Li Qiang is expected to secure a seat in the Politburo Standing Committee and will be a strong arm for Xi in his third term.