The catastrophic success of China’s zero-COVID policy

Political scientist Jeremy L. Wallace, author of "Cities and Stability: Urbanization, Redistribution, and Regime Survival in China," explains in this Los Angeles Times op-ed why China's zero-COVID policy is proving so difficult to change, despite rising case numbers and widespread human and economic damage.

"One key lesson is that complex authoritarian systems such as China are less nimble than they seem at first sight," writes Wallace, associate professor of government in the College of Arts & Sciences. "Numeric targets allow the central leadership to influence their underlings — but at the expense of giving them tunnel vision and the incentive to fudge the figures when they can."

Read the entire op-ed in the Los Angeles Times (which has a paywall).