It is the great economic guessing game about China: When will the Chinese government ditch its zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19?
Companies and manufacturers are worrying about their profits, while uncertainty is rippling through financial markets. Global leaders and policymakers are sizing up Beijing’s moves as part of their own growth calculations, given China’s central role in the global economy.
The answer comes down to one man — the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping. His word is all the more sacrosanct since securing a precedent-defying third term at the Communist Party’s congress late last month, where he stacked his leadership with loyalists and set out an agenda that shook global assumptions about the trajectory of the world’s second-largest economy.
The lack of visibility into his thinking has left the world trying to divine whether even the smallest signals could indicate the government is fine-tuning its…
