Xi Jinping Is Betting It All on Zero Covid (which could fail like central planning has in the past)

To fight the pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party leader mobilizes forces he will likely find difficult to control

By Eyck Freymann. Mr. Freymann is director of Indo-Pacific at Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm, and author of “One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World.” Excerpts:

"The history of the Great Leap Forward illustrates the worst-case scenario of what can happen when a Chinese leader insists that a pest be eliminated at any price. In 1958, Mao launched the “eliminate sparrows campaign,” arguing that birds were stealing grain from farmers’ fields. For every million sparrows killed, Mao promised, there would be food for an additional 60,000 people. More than three million people were mobilized in Peking alone. School children banged pots and pans day and night to keep the birds from sleeping. Middle-school girls were organized in rifle regiments and given shooting lessons. Ordinary people climbed trees and strangled chicks in their nests.

Within a year, China’s sparrow population had collapsed. The result was a swarm of locusts that attacked crops. The annual harvest had already been badly damaged by collectivization. Massive statistical errors from the over reporting of harvest data convinced central planners that China actually enjoyed a “super-abundance” of grain, when in fact production was contracting. Tens of millions of Chinese died in the resulting famine."