China’s Covid crisis blacking out the economy

If Chinese leader Xi Jinping has a clear plan to end a major Covid crisis without precedent, now would be a great moment to share it with the global investors exiting Asia’s biggest economy.

Xi may indeed have one. Reports are that the government’s Covid-19 task force is telling local officials not to overdo lockdown measures fueling China’s worst protests since Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Video footage of social unrest in cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan, and scattered calls for Xi to step down, are spooking global markets.