Hong Kong’s COVID-19 outbreak is embarrassing Beijing in the middle of the Olympics

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With the number of COVID-19 infections continuing to rise in Hong Kong, Chinese President Xi Jinping has called on the local government to “prioritize its task to control” the outbreak and “mobilize all resources to do so.”

Officials blamed for mishandling outbreaks in other parts of the country have lost their jobs, and Mr. Xi’s comments were seen by many as a rebuke of Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam and her administration, whose failure to get cases under control is frustrating Beijing and distracting from the success of the Winter Olympics.

“It’s embarrassing for China,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, an expert on Chinese politics at Hong Kong Baptist University. “This puts a lot of pressure on Carrie Lam.”

On Wednesday, Hong Kong reported 4,285 confirmed cases, a new daily record, along with 7,000 preliminary positives. Officials have said these figures are likely an undercount because of a backlog of tests, with medical experts predicting there could be upward of 20,000 cases a day by March if current trends continue.

Responding to Mr. Xi’s comments, Ms. Lam said her government “will, in accordance with the important instruction of President Xi Jinping, assume the main responsibility to stabilize the epidemic situation early as the overriding mission at present.”

Hong Kong has been largely cut off from the world for years now, with international visitors forced to go through onerous quarantines in hotels or a government-run camp. This has kept both overall cases and deaths extremely low, a point of pride for the local government.

But when cases began spreading in December, the authorities were shown to be woefully unprepared, forced to scramble for tests and to expand hospital capacity. Medical experts had long warned of such a situation, with little success.

“Our public hospitals are always stressed. We buckle every time there’s a flu surge,” Siddharth Sridhar, a doctor and one of the city’s leading public-health experts, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “Now, with a disease that is more transmissible/severe than flu, and requires exposed staff to quarantine, Hong Kong’s hospitals are sand castles in a tsunami.”

The situation is proving increasingly embarrassing for Beijing, which has prided itself on the effectiveness at which the pandemic has been controlled across China since the first outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020.

The contrast between the mainland and Hong Kong is particularly pointed because of the Beijing Winter Games.

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When China was preparing to play host to the second pandemic Olympics, there was some skepticism whether it could open its doors to thousands of foreign athletes, team support staff and journalists while avoiding outbreaks domestically. But the “closed loop system” has proven a great success, as Huang Chun, pandemic-control spokesman for the Beijing Games organizing committee, underlined at a news conference Wednesday.

“There have been very few numbers of confirmed positive cases,” Mr. Huang told reporters gathered in the Olympic media centre. “The success of the countermeasures means the success of the Games. These are the results of the joint efforts of everyone involved.”

Then someone stood up and asked about Hong Kong.

“We are following the situation very closely every day,” Mr. Huang said. “I believe the central government and all other local governments are paying a lot of attention to the development of the pandemic in Hong Kong.”

Willy Lam, a Hong Kong-based China expert at the Jamestown Foundation, said the “senior leadership wants the world to look at China in a favourable light, particularly during the Olympic time.”

“They will be worried that the unexpected spike in cases in Hong Kong will detract attention from the Games,” he told The Globe and Mail.

The central government has begun mobilizing significant resources to try and help Hong Kong tackle its growing crisis, but Mr. Lam said this was predicated on the city “not adopting what Beijing considers to be the erroneous methods pursued in the West, that is co-existence with the virus.”

Chinese cities have managed to stamp out infections by responding to even small outbreaks with lockdowns and mass testing, a solution officials may wish to see applied to Hong Kong. No outbreak of this scale has been brought under control without a full lockdown to break the chains of infection, but so far Hong Kong has only closed off individual housing estates or buildings.

The authorities may be wary that being too draconian in their approach could lead to public unrest, after a national security law imposed on the city by Beijing in 2020 succeeded in largely stopping pro-democracy protests.

Speaking to public broadcaster RTHK on Wednesday, Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of Beijing’s top think tank on Hong Kong, said that “if the COVID situation gets out of hand and people’s dissatisfaction accumulates, leading to all sorts of anti-government behaviour … that would not be what the central government wants to see.”

“The prosperity and stability Hong Kong enjoys now are hard-earned, and shouldn’t be ruined by the uncontrollable COVID situation,” he added.

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Ms. Lam’s government had previously faced criticism from the business community about the toll existing restrictions were already taking, particularly on the restaurant and leisure industry, with numerous bankruptcies and warnings the sector may never recover. Foreign companies have also begun relocating staff and even whole offices because of Hong Kong’s rigid quarantine policy.

Some had hoped the current outbreak could see a gradual shift toward living with the virus, but Prof. Cabestan at Hong Kong Baptist University said “with this pressure from Beijing, it’s going to be very hard to move away from this so-called dynamic-zero policy.”

He said Mr. Xi’s intervention made it clear Beijing wants Hong Kong to follow the Chinese approach, adding that Ms. Lam “will need to deliver now, and if she doesn’t deliver, she may be sacked.”

The next Hong Kong chief executive is due to be chosen at the end of March, and while there is no obvious contender to replace Ms. Lam, analysts felt the current crisis could potentially cost her a second term.

“Beijing is not too happy with her performance in handling the pandemic,” said Mr. Lam, the Jamestown expert. “This might lower her chances.”

Similar warnings have come from commentators close to the Chinese government, with predictions Ms. Lam may not be the only one out of a job.

Speaking to the South China Morning Post, Tian Feilong, an influential academic based in Beijing, said that Mr. Xi’s comments this week raised the possibility of “holding the Hong Kong government accountable in future.”

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