The Party’s Congress concluded on October 22 in Beijing.

Most unexpected was Hu Jintao’s peculiar exit from the meeting, right before the Party voted to amend its Party Constitution. Hu Jintao, the predecessor of Xi Jinping, was viewed by many in the West as a pro-reform, Liberalist leader.

At the beginning of the footage released by AFP shortly after the incident, a junior staff tried to persuade Hu to leave. But Mr. Hu seemed reluctant. Xi Jinping, sitting on Hu’s right-hand side, leaned over to check up on Hu. Li Zhanshu (unrelated to Li Keqiang the PM; I will call him Li - not PM), another senior party leader sitting on Hu’s left side, collected Hu’s meeting documents and tried to get him away, but was stopped by Wang Huning, the Party’s ideology mastermind sitting further down to the left. During this time, Hu tried to grab Xi’s document, but Xi stopped him.

Below, I labeled each of the figures’ seat arrangements and their functions.

In the end, two junior staff had to get Hu out of his chair and escort him out. On his way out, Hu said something to both Xi and Li Keqiang (I will call him Li-PM, to distinguish him from the other Li — Li Zhanzhu), the current Prime Minister, while the latter two smiled and nodded awkwardly.

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Media and China watchers are alerted

Because of the symbolism and sensitivity around this incident, it immediately drew wide attention from mainstream media and China watchers.

CNN related this incident to the unexpected exclusion of Li Keqiang (Li the PM) from the Party’s new Central Committee, a body of 205 party representatives that will elect the Politburo, a twentyish-member committee which will then elect the Standing Committee members, the supreme decision-making body within the CCP.

Reuters’ note regarding this incident was rather brief, although taking notes of the swift censorship around Hu on Chinese social media followed the incident.

A Wal Street Journal article subtitled that Hu’s “unceremonious departure illustrates a generational shift in power.”

BBC, on the other hand, interpreted it primarily as a “part of China’s power politics on full display,” the symbolic removal of a former leader that was deemed as more Liberal than Xi, although did not exclude the possibility that it was Hu’s deteriorating health triggered his peculiar leave.

VOA News, a publication hawkish on China, drew connections to Xi’s “crushed opposition to his rule,” although touched on the possibility of this being an “unfortunately timed senior moment” quoting Eurasia Group, a political consultancy.

My take? It’s unfortunate for Hu, but fortunate for China…

For an organization notoriously lacking transparency, Hu’s leave is certain to stir up speculations. But looking closely at the footage, it is highly likely that he is suffering from a form of senior dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s Disease.

Let’s revisit the footage to see if this theory sticks to the wall:

1.     Hu, who looked frail before the Congress sessions, was experiencing an episode of dementia. Xi and Li Zhanshu (Li - not PM), sitting right next to him, immediately spotted Hu’s abnormality. They summoned a junior staff to help, whose hurry drew the attention of camera crews. I presume not many camera crews were ready because the meeting was not scheduled to start for some additional time. The AFP crew was probably among the only few teams that caught this scene.

2.     Under the dementia attack, Hu Jintao was perplexed about the seat arrangement and his surroundings. For patients with dementia, their most recent memories are the first to go. He might have recognized Li Keqiang, a long-time underling and protégé of his, but was confused about Xi Jinping. Xi, on the other hand, looked concerned about Hu.

3.     Disoriented, Hu tried to grab a document nearby, which was probably Xi’s speech script for the following session. Xi had to stop him.

4.     Li (not PM) tried to help Hu, but Wang Huning stopped him — probably on concerns about the potential over-interpretations, or causing potential delays in the closing ceremony. As a current No.3 guy in the Party’s power structure, Li (not-PM) cannot be absent from the Congress’s closing ceremony.

5.     The junior staff had to coax Hu like a child into leaving, while Hu murmured to Xi and Li (PM) on his way out. The latter two smiled and nodded politely and awkwardly.

While this is unfortunate for Hu as an individual, it is fortunate for China. A public display of defiance from a prominent former leader like Hu Jintao would have signaled the power apparatus was severely impaired. For the stability of the regime, fortunately, this was not the case.

If Hu has dementia, how come he still serves on the Congress’s Presidium?

If Hu indeed has dementia, that would have been inconvenient and unfortunate, yet totally reasonable.

Hu is old. He is 79 years old this year, the same as Joe Biden. It is likely that Biden suffers from mild episodes of cognitive degradation, too, as often mocked by the Conservatives. Unlike Hu, Biden’s conditions are so far (arguably) mild and do not prevent him from fulfilling his functions.

But why did not CCP announce Hu’s condition; or perhaps most appropriately, discretely remove him from the Congress Presidium?

The Presidium is quite an important body within the Congress. It sets the agenda for the Congress, oversees the nomination of the candidates for various positions within the Party, enacts the election rules for these positions. It is a CCP norm to keep former top state leaders on the Congress Presidium as a token of appreciation absent of severe mistakes. Therefore both Hu Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, attended the Congress.

Appointments of Hu and Jiang is not just of gesture value. In some ways, the appointment symbolizes the presence of the former leaders’ political fractions. Such a mechanism is instrumental to keep the power relatively checked and stable within the Party’s upper echelon. This is precisely why Hu’s departure stirred up much uneasiness among the China-watching community.

Removing Hu from the Presidium would set up a dangerous precedent. For instance, it would be utterly difficult to decide what health conditions quality be “unfit” for continued political relevance. Future application of this potential president could potentially create more frictions and discontent within the Party.

Keeping Hu in the central committee despite his condition is practical because he is just one of the 40-strong members of the Presidium. Whatever his health condition, he is unlikely to inflict any material damage to the Party apparatus. It might be inconvenient — or in Saturday’s episode, humiliating — but keeping him on is well worth the risk.

Therefore, the Chinese State Media only vaguely alluded to Hu’s health condition after he was escorted out due to the sensitivity around the Party Congress. But for outsiders, including many China watchers, this inevitably created lots of confusion and therefore invited a lot of speculation.

Conclusion

Hu Jintao’s unexpected departure from the Congress was not, as some speculated, open defiance to Xi’s power. Instead, it was most likely an unfortunate episode of Hu’s health conditions.

The profound question from this incident is, why a supposedly-innocent but surely-unfortunate episode of Hu triggered so much anxiety and inaccurate speculation? The regime can of course attribute it to some external parties with malign intent. But the truth is, the Party itself is much to blame. It never made a serious effort to properly communicate its message to the outside world. A bad PR might not be a big deal back then when China was much smaller and weaker. But given where China is standing today, the country needs to address this problem, NOW.

What it does reveal is the need for the CCP to modernize its mindset and approach to public relations. The stakeholders of China not only include an increasingly sophisticated domestic audience, but also individuals and organization from abroad that just will not subscribe to the CCP’s old-fashioned way of propaganda. The Chinese government needs to come up with better ways of sending across its message to the world to provide more assurance. Providing more transparency is an important first step to improving its national image on the international stage.

I am in no position to change your political stance on China, but I do want to offer a refreshing perspective to better understand China. Like always, I hope this article shed a beam of light on a rather opaque situation.

Over the coming weeks, I plan to do more deep dives into the Party’s 20th Congress. If you want to learn more, please subscribe!

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Countries with similar constraints to China have also opened up. Why China cannot?

That is true. China is the single country that opts for such an extreme policy to contain COVID. (North Korea is arguably another, but that country is more like “Zero-everything” than just “Zero-COVID”.)

One can blame this on China’s governance system, that it is not a liberal democracy. But this argument is irrelevant because most other countries, including many undemocratic ones, have opened up or significantly relaxed their COVID restrictions.

China’s stern stance on COVID revealed something unique about China’s political arrangement. In short, this is because China has an “infinite liability social contract,” in contrast to Western democracies’ “limited liability social contract.”

A typical democratic government is analogous to a fixed term, “best effort” contract, where the two ends are the governed and the elected politicians. The contract gets renewed periodically through popular elections. Politicians make their “best effort” to deliver their contract, but if they fail, the worst case is usually losing their offices. Free press and free speech are critical to such societies because they assure the legitimacy of power through the free exchange of ideas.

In an “infinite liability government,” the governed give up a portion of their personal freedom; in return, the government takes on a “parental” role, assuming both more power AND more liabilities than what a democratic government. In China’s case, the contract has no finite term, and the governed have much higher expectations of their government than what they would in a democratic system. In this system, the governing group has much more to lose if they fail. Indeed, when the social contract falters, the regime will be toppled by unrest, which entails grave consequences for politicians.

Under this type of social contract, a government can be (although not always) more efficient than a democratic one. Albeit lacking political competition, the grave consequences of failure make the governing group paranoid and spur them on to be efficient and responsive. This aspect inspired me to create the meme below:

China’s unique social contract: the most misunderstood aspect of Chinese politics.

The threshold of unrest is high, and the politicians enjoy a great level of discretion before they cross the threshold. Nonetheless, such an arrangement makes politicians wary of potential unrest. Naturally, to quest the possibility of unrest, politicians have every incentive to cater to the interests of the vast majority, sometimes at the expense of the small minority.

A typical fallacy of China pundits is equating what voices they hear to the aggregate public opinion of China. The country’s demographic structure means that certain groups, typically the middle-class urban residents in affluent areas, enjoy a disproportionate voice in the public space, while the less well-off make up the “tacit majority”—farmers, low-skill workers, and residents in the lower-tier cities. Once opened up, this “tacit majority” will be hit the hardest, despite owning the lowest voice.

Imagine a situation where China opens up without adequate preparation. Many people, especially among the “tacit majority,” will lose their loved ones. The dissatisfaction with the regime will grow, potentially crossing the bar of unrest.

This time, it is the residents of the big cities that shouldered the most incremental impact from recent “Zero-COVID” lockdowns. They are often healthy enough, wealthy enough, and live in areas with abundant medical resources. For them, the new COVID variant is no more dangerous than the flu, and not worth the hassles of lockdowns. It is extraordinary because the small minority group that is forced to “take the bullet” this time, unlike prior times, happens to be the group with the most resources and the loudest voice.

Before open-up: 5 things must happen

In the long run, the country will just have to open, although it will take a while. Thus, it is more helpful to talk about what are the conditions or precursurs of China’s open up.

1. Small-scale experiments. Hong Kong has been chosen as a test field to refine China’s responses before a nationwide open-up. Hong Kong is not a perfect micro replica of China, of course, but the semi-autonomous city provides the best compromise for now. It is conveniently isolated from the mainland, with the same ethnicity and some inhabitants are inoculated with the same vaccines as Mainland China.

2. The research and development of more effective vaccines and drugs to the new variants. This preparation is underway – in the minutes of late July’s Politburo meeting, this agenda was explicitly made a priority. Given the concise nature of the minutes, this signals that development are accelerating for the updated version of updated COVID vaccines and drugs.

3. A sufficiently high vaccination rate among the most vulnerable groups. From March to July, the vaccination rate of 80-yo-plus seniors completing the three-dose regime has grown from just under 20% to almost 40%, a roughly 20% increase over a four-month span. At this rate, reaching an 80% level roughly takes another 8 months, pointing to the March or April 2023 timeframe.

4. The government needs to build more hospitals to accommodate the expected influx of COVID patients. Although not picked up by the news, this wave of new hospital constructions has already taken place. Indeed, the pandemic gave hospitals convenient excuses to expand. These new hospitals are often designed to be multi-purpose, many of them consisting of modules that can be readily converted into infectious-disease hospitals.

5. Increased frequency of PCR tests with a more robust network of PRC labs. This sounds counter-intuitive, but only the combination of massive PCR tests and regional lockdowns can throttle the spread the COVID to an acceptable level.

So you see, China will not open up soon

China cannot open up not only because of the obvious constraints. Most fundamentally, opening up now actually defies the law of physics that dominates Chinese politics. China’s unique social contract makes it follow a completely different trajectory compared to Western politics, and this is the most misunderstood aspect of Chinese politics.

When China starts the open-up, it will be a prolonged process, potentially longer beyond our reasonable imagination. After reading my articles, don’t feel obligated to agree with the Chinese government’s policy. But hopefully, I have shared some overlooked perspectives for you to form a more wholesome picture, and that will help you make better plans accordingly.

I found Churchill to be untimely suitable to describe China’s COVID journey, for he said: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Back in 2021, China emerged as a champion in its fight against COVID. The world was struggling, but for a long period of time, China successfully contained the virus, with its export sectors booming fulfilling the world’s demand for goods.

But in 2022, the country’s Zero-COVID policy backfired. The highly contagious Omicron variant forced the country into massive lockdowns, occasionally lasting months, which drew criticism for their disruption of economy and life and incidence of citizen rights violations. Yet as the world gradual returns to its pre-COVID self, the Chinese government has been stubborn to let go of its zero-COVID policy despite mounting pressures from home and abroad.

Some people hope that CCP’s upcoming 20th Congress on October 16th – a twice-a-decade big conference that formally work out the country’s top leadership for the next five years – might finally mark the onset of the country’s opening-up post-COVID. They reason that the confirmation of Xi’s third term will ease his power anxiety, so that China can finally open up a little.

Unfortunately, this is not true.

Lockdowns have been annoying to citizens and detrimental to the economy. Most importantly, poor execution during lockdowns created many tragedies that could have been avoided.

In today’s article, I will explain why China will not open up soon. In my projection, China is likely to start to open up next April.

Reluctance to open up because it hurts Xi’s legacy?

China pundits frequently quote political motives behind this reluctance, presuming opening up signals Xi’s deviation from his own policies, therefore potentially hurting Xi Jinping’s authority. Even if there are traces of truth in this argument, this factor is likely overplayed.

It is true that China’s prior successful campaigns against COVID had become a political trophy for President Xi. But because the COVID-19 virus is extremely mutable, the Omicron variant becoming China’s latest headache is arguably an entirely different virus from the older ones: it is much more contagious and way less deadly. For a much different virus, Xi and his team should have ample reasons to justify a potential change in policies.

But what’s holding CCP back?

The reality is, the central government is bound by significant, pragmatic constraints that are often overlooked.

The primary constraint: medical resources.

When talking about China, I oftentimes need to remind my audience that China is still a relatively underdeveloped country.

China’s medical resources are insufficient relative to developed countries. According to data compiled by Forbes, Americans have ten times more intensive care beds on a per capita basis than Chinese (34.7 beds for every 100,000 Americans, vs 3.6 for Chinese). In severe COVID cases, an ICU bed determines a patient lives or dies.

Not only that, the distribution of China’s medical resources is vastly uneven. If opens up, only a handful of the largest cities can possibly withstand the COVID-induced bank run on medical resources. Once open up, the virus will quickly overwhelm the small towns and rural areas’ healthcare systems.

Another major limitation: the population’s low immunity level.

Unlike other parts of the world, only a negligible portion of the Chinese population contracted this virus and consequentially acquired natural immunity. The country’s vaccines, based on an older version of technology, were functional but not as potent as the Western versions based on mRNA.

Worse yet, the immunocompromised groups’ vaccination rate is especially low, the most vulnerable being the seniors. As of July 2022, the last available data, only 61% of seniors over 80-year-old received two doses of COVID vaccines; just over 38% completed the entire three-dose regime.

There is no going back from opening up.

Once opened up, it’s impossible to go back because of the prohibitive cost, both socially and economically. Since the virus spreads exponentially, the effort needed to curtail the virus also grows exponentially.

Although CCP is sometimes viewed as a radical party due to its Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution days, the Party’s success in the last several decades is mostly because it has returned to its conservative nature. That is, the Party has a natural inclination to small refinement over big changes, and usually prefers experiments first before scaling out.

Combining these two factors, it is easy to understand CCP’s reluctance to open up now from zero-COVID.

The pattern of mutation implies the world has not fully de-risked from COVID

For a government governing more than 1.4 billion people, it makes sense to be conservative, given how highly mutable the virus is. A common fallacy of the virus is that it becomes less deadly as it becomes more transmissible.

This view is simply wrong.

In reality, a virus can simultaneously evolve along two dimensions: it can become more transmissible or less, and at any time it can become more deadly or less. To help illustrate all the four possibilities, I display them by four quadrants in the chart below.

 The less transmissible variants (two on the bottom) are unlikely to win out against their more infectious siblings because the latter will outpace and supersede them.

For the more transmissible variants (two on the top), however, their paths of mutation are trickier to think through.

In not-so-exact words, the more deadly and more transmissible mutations (top right quadrant) often died out sooner than less deadly ones with comparable transmissibility, because the former tended to be starved to death—either by themselves as they kill out their host before jumping on to other victims; or by humans, who will quarantine the infected and cut off the transmission path. In other words, higher transmissibility does not naturally cause lower fatality. Past examples where viral mutations beacme both more contagious and less deadly is the result of both natural selection and human intervention.

COVID may escape this pair of quenching factors, however. Omicron is likely the fastest-spreading disease ever. The virus is so contagious that it makes containment almost infeasible. And its death rate is just low enough, which makes human intervention too costly to implement. With no This gives the virus a longer mutation runway to mutate, which suggests that it is still too early to rule out that Omicron (or any of its cousins) might evolve into a more deadly variant. So no matter what Biden or Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of WHO, tells you, it’s not entirely true.

This likelihood gives a strong reason for the CCP to hold out longer, especially as winter is looming in much of the world.

Infectious respiratory diseases thrive in cold weather. When the temperature drops, people spend more time indoors, making pathogens easier to transmit. With probably winter COVID surges coming, it is unwise to let guards down in the fall. After getting through this winter, the CCP might have a higher conviction to open up after seeing more data from other parts of the world.

(This is the end of the first half of this series; the second half is now available by clicking here!)

This is the end of the first half on China’s bizarre stuborness around zero-COVID. In the second half (spicier than the first half, guaranteed), I will answer the key question: China is not the only country facing these constraints, but all other countries are opening up! Why cannot China? Hint: it is rooted in China’s distinctive but misunderstood political arrangement.