The Chinese dream, denied

The world's toughest Covid restrictions illustrate how Xi Jinping's authoritarian excesses have rewritten Beijing's longstanding social contract with its people.

The narrow lanes of Haizhu District have long attracted Chinese activists, people like Xie Pan, a textile worker from a mountainous tea-growing region in central China .

Home to one of the largest fabric markets in the country, Haizhu houses workers' dormitories and textile factories in brightly colored buildings stacked so close that neighbors can shake hands through the window. Once a handful of rural villages, the area became a manufacturing hub when China opened up its economy decades ago. The government promised to step back and let people unleash their ambitions, and millions flocked to Haizhu to do just that.

Mr. Xie made the hopeful trip last year, joining others from Hubei province who had also settled in this dense pocket of the southern metropolis of Guangzhou. They worked in cacophonous factories, hawked cloth or sold sesame noodles, a hometown favorite. But when I met him a few months ago, his hope had faded. Due to a downturn in the economy, he had been homeless for two weeks before scraping together the money to rent a 100 square foot room for $120 a month.

"There isn't enough work for everyone," said Mr. Xie, 31, a soft-spoken, hunched-shouldered man who has hunched over sewing machines for years. "You can't go to bed every night looking for work in the morning. It's too tiring."

It would get worse, after a strict lockdown of Covid silenced factories and closed noodle shops. In October, Mr. Xie was quarantined for almost a month.

Several weeks more Haizhu exploded with displeasure late in the day.After a weekend of protests against 'zero Covid' restrictions across the country, hundreds of workers defied lockdown rules and on t took to the streets of Haizhu on Tuesday, demanding freedom. They demolished the street barricades and threw glass bottles. "End of containment!" they shouted as police in hazmat suits marched through the alleys, banging clubs against their shields.

ImageStill images from social media videos showing residents clashing with police in Guangzhou on Tuesday during protests against a shutdown. Credit...Video obtained by Reuters

The eruption was a stark illustration of how the world's toughest pandemic restrictions have upended life in China. Xi Jinping, the country's strongman, extends the Chinese Communist Party's grip on its people beyond what even Mao Zedong achieved. Mr. Xi has tied the success of “zero Covid” to his own legitimacy as a leader, and enforcing it has taken precedence over nurturing the freewheeling spirit that has made Haizhu and China so vibrant. /p>

Change strikes at the party's longstanding social contract with its people. After violently crushing pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, Beijing made an implicit bargain: in exchange for curbs on political freedoms, the people would get stability and comfort.

But now the stability and comfort have decreased, even as the limits have increased. Nearly 530 million people - nearly 40% of the population - were in some form of lockdown at the end of November, according to one estimate. People have died from delayed medical care or are starving.

China's security apparatus is already taking action to quell 'zero Covid' protests , the most widespread protests China has seen since Tiananmen. Police arrested and threatened participants across the country. The government, which...