“When the ability to rule declines, even if there is no certain policy from the top, the incompetence, brutality and ignorance of lower-ranking officials will brew disasters for the commoners they rule,” said Mr Wu, who is a senior researcher at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions.
Many businessmen have lost a lot of money under ‘zero Covid’, which has closed cities and locked millions of people in their homes for weeks as the government tries to eradicate the coronavirus.
“Under the leadership of this dictator, our great country is falling into an abyss,” said a hardware tech executive in Shenzhen. “But you can’t help it. It hurts and makes me depressed.”
Despite many conversations over the years, we never talked about politics. I was surprised when he called after the party conference to talk about his ‘political depression’. He said he used to be very nationalistic and believed that the Chinese were some of the smartest and hardest-working people in the world. Now he and many of his friends spend most of their time hiking, golfing and drinking. “We’re too depressed to work,” he said.
Until a year ago, his start-up was doing so well that he planned to take it public. Then he lost much of his earnings and his new employees were left out of work with nothing to do when cities were shut down under “zero Covid” rules. He said he now has no choice but to lay off more than 100 people, sell his business and move his family to North America.
“Since the dark night has descended,” he said, “I will deal with it on the dark night.”
The tech entrepreneur from Beijing who texted me after the party conference told of a chilling experience. In May, when there were rumors that Beijing could be shut down, he felt he couldn’t tell his employees to leave work early and stock up on groceries. He feared that he would be reported for spreading rumors – something that led to people being detained by the police. He only told them that they should feel free to leave earlier if they had something to arrange.
This successful businessman now asks to emigrate to a European country and the United States.
