Over what has been a stunning week, China has erupted in mass protests calling for an end to the country's restrictive COVID lockdowns. The boldest of the disruptors have even demanded an end to political repression in China — a startling and unprecedented challenge to the authoritarian rule of President Xi Jinping. 

"This is Xi's first real test," Minxin Pei, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College and a leading expert on governance in China, told me. "The choices are very hard, and he's not been faced with such a tough challenge in the last decade."

Unfortunately, Xi does not have the tools he needs to pass the test. Easing the COVID lockdowns could spur a potentially devastating public health crisis. China still lacks effective vaccines, and a large swath of the population, especially the elderly, have not kept up with booster shots of the vaccines that the country does have. Forcing people to remain indoors is the only public health response that China has the ability to enforce.

At the moment, Xi also has no way to convince the Chinese people to continue buying into his rule. As prospects for growth have dimmed in recent years, he has little to offer in the way of economic growth or entrepreneurial opportunity to distract people from the growing political unrest. As analysts at Societe Generale wrote in a note to clients last month, China's economy is "in the gutter."

That leaves Xi with the one thing authoritarians typically rely on when faced with domestic pressure — more repression to enforce order, as Xi did in Hong Kong. "If they see another round of protests," Pei said, "they'll say: Let's just go back to the good old ways of using overwhelming force to show resolve." The choice for Xi is lockdowns or batons. And either way, the Chinese people lose.

Xi won't change

Beijing tried to subtly relax zero COVID restrictions last month, reducing quarantine time for those who had come into contact with the virus. They were minor tweaks, but the number of COVID cases immediately jumped, prompting tighter lockdowns across the country. Last month, 53% of the businesses surveyed by China Beige Book, a data collection firm, reported COVID cases among their employees, up from 24% in October. 

During the last wave of nationwide protests — the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989 — authorities met peaceful demonstrators with violence, killing thousands. This time around, Xi is clearly keen to avoid a repeat of the bloodshed, but there is little room for him to maneuver. Accepting Western vaccines or rolling back zero COVID would be a tacit admission that he is fallible. Allowing for more political expression would only trigger more anti-government expression and discontent. So for now, China's security forces are trying to put down opposition as quietly as possible, relying on its sweeping surveillance state to identify protestors and threaten their families.