The timing could not be worse.
Omicron has seeped into China on the eve of the Winter Olympics, forcing the government to lock down millions of citizens in a desperate bid to control the highly infectious Covid variant.
The games, which open in Beijing early next month, are supposed to be another spectacular showcase for the rise of a global superpower despite diplomatic boycotts of the event over the Communist regime’s human rights atrocities.
Their success is seen as essential by a Chinese leadership determined to ride out the controversy.
But such hopes could now be in jeopardy. Covid cases were recently detected in Tianjin — a city of 14 million just 70 miles from Beijing — leading to mass testing, sealing off residential areas, road closures, and the suspension of many trains and flights in the hope of protecting the capital.
Then, on Saturday, an Omicron case cropped up in Beijing itself involving a woman who had not left the capital over the previous two weeks — leading to fears for the ‘green, safe and simple’ Games their dictatorial leader has demanded.
It is just a fortnight before Chinese New Year, when hundreds of millions of people move around to meet their families — but Beijing residents are being urged to stay at home to protect the prestigious event.
For President Xi Jinping is not just trying to preserve his Games. He is also trying to safeguard his ruthless ‘Zero-Covid’ strategy which he regards as proof that China’s authoritarian style of government is superior to democracy.
A paramilitary police officer gestures at the photographer in front of the mascot of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics
Winter Olympics-themed installation is set up along Chang'an Avenue in Beijing on Friday
The Communist regime argues that its strict policy has ensured the country of 1.4 billion citizens has had fewer cases than Cumbria during the pandemic, thus saving huge numbers of lives.
It has also given away substantial quantities of vaccines to curry favour from less wealthy countries.
But this strategy is under threat from Omicron and other mutations, while China’s old-style vaccines offer less protection than Western versions and there are continuing concerns over the validity of their pandemic data.
So just as the rest of the world is starting to live with an endemic disease, the country that had the first outbreak in Wuhan is trapped in a strategy some experts believe to be unsustainable.
‘Xi Jinping says it’s the right policy, so who dares tell him he is wrong?’ said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS, University of London.
‘Yet there is enormous cost, not just in terms of economic cost but also in human suffering.’
China pioneered lockdown two years ago with its 76-day shutdown of Wuhan after officials disastrously covered-up the outbreak, punished whistleblower doctors and delayed imposing controls until after the New Year festivities.
Its lockdowns are far more stringent than in the West. In Wuhan, there were reports of people having doors to homes welded shut and of a teenage boy with disabilities dying after relatives were carted off into quarantine.
Since then, the longest lockdown has been in Xi’an, famous for its terracotta warriors and home to 13 million people, where more than 2,000 cases — including 142 Omicron infections — have been detected.
A medical worker wearing a full protective outfit swabs the throat of a man during a COVID-19 test in Beijing
A medical worker wearing a full protective outfit walks while people wearing face masks line up for Covid tests
It was shut down three days before Christmas, with 45,000 people sent to quarantine camps, although some restrictions were lifted at the weekend.
Social media showed rows of cramped metal boxes, brought into the city for people suspected of having Covid-19.
The policy is so strict that one heavily pregnant woman was seen sitting on a stool outside a hospital in a pool of blood after being turned away by doctors since her negative test fell marginally outside their 48-hour rule.
She later miscarried. The hospital was shut down to ‘rectify’ mistakes after an outcry.
Another woman said her father died after failing to get treatment following heart problems. There are claims of food shortages, with despairing people trading electronic goods for tiny quantities of rice, noodles or vegetables.
‘Xi’an residents are worried about death from sickness and hunger rather than Covid-19,’ blogged one party functionary, who was promptly dismissed.
At the start of January, a million people in Yuzhou were locked down after three asymptomatic infections. In another city, curbs were imposed so fast that a woman on a blind date dinner with a man at his home was
