chinas leader xi jinping waved at crowds of giddily cheering students he held meetings with olympic games officials economic policymakers and european leaders he toured a tropical islandbut there was a revealing gap in xis busy april itinerary exposing the predicament that covid is creating in a politically crucial year when he hopes to extend his hold on power he stayed behind the scenes when it came to chinas biggest most contentious lockdown since the pandemic beganthroughout april xi gave no public speeches focused on outbreaks in china as its biggest city shanghai shut down to try to stifle infections and then beijing went on alert after a burst of cases nor did xi directly address the 25 million residents of shanghai who have been ordered to stay at home for weeks despite their complaints of scarce food overwhelmed hospitals and confusing zigzags in mass quarantine ruleshe wants to deliberately keep a certain distance from shanghai said deng yuwen a former editor of a communist party newspaper who lives in the united states no doubt hes doing a lot about fighting the pandemic behind the scenes but of course he does not want to be directly drawn into the mess in shanghaixis orders have instead been passed through subordinates or meeting summaries they have cited his demand to stick to a dynamic zerocovid goal essentially ensuring no cases in a population of 14 billion by strict mass testing and isolation of infections or close contacts on friday the communist party politburo a council of 25 leaders including xi renewed its commitment to that goal noting the rising economic risks from covid and the war in ukrainethe outbreaks in shanghai beijing and other cities are testing xis acumen and authority before an important communist party congress late this year while he is nearly certain to win a groundbreaking third term as party general secretary xi also wants to ensure the leadership is dominated by officials who will defend him and enforce his agendato secure that outcome xi wants to demonstrate serene political mastery and until lately the zerocovid strategy has been a signature achievement an effective if expensive and generally popular vow that china would avoid mass sickness and deathsafter communist party officials initially downplayed the virus in early 2020 xi built china into an epidemiological fortress stifling infections and protecting the economy while the united states suffered nearly 1 million covid deathsnow there is no easy way out of that fortress xis leadership has been so invested in showing that china could handle its own pandemic needs that the government held off from introducing mrna vaccines developed abroad which are generally more effective than chinas homegrown vaccines chinas vaccination of the aged has also laggedwithout the necessary defenses the country could face surging cases that even with omicrons lower virulence officials warn could overwhelm hospitals but chinas goal of eliminating virtually all cases risks turning into a costly contentious task with no end in sight if outbreaks of