Cover Story

How we chose this week’s image

The worldwide cover of our latest issue looks at the protests that broke out across China at the weekend. We set out to put them in the context of the country’s seemingly endless struggle against covid-19. The pandemic has become the biggest threat to Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012.

Sporadic local pickets are common in China. But demonstrations erupted across the country after at least ten people died in a fire in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where residents were allegedly sealed in a building because of covid. In Beijing protesters called for “freedom”; in Shanghai they demanded that Mr Xi step down.

This image brings the two sides of the story together. The protesters are holding blank sheets of paper, a symbol for what they wish to say but cannot. One Chinese stationery company had to issue a denial after a spoof statement appeared in its name announcing that it had withdrawn supplies of A4 paper “to safeguard national security and stability”.

The metaphor of protesters balancing on top the virus didn’t seem apposite. This contrast of locked and unlocked padlocks, with a clenched fist and a coffin, is more to the point. A combination of protests and rising cases means that Mr Xi will have to navigate between mass lockdowns and mass infection—and possibly end up with both.

Here is an alternative symbol of hopelessness. It features a “Big White”, the nickname for covid workers enclosed in protective overalls, trudging around a series of never-ending stairs that could have been designed by the Dutch artist M.C. Escher.

Both of those designs were strong. But we wanted a cover that calls to mind the punch of the virus itself—a spiked evocation of the fear and misery that most of the world left behind a year ago.

Central to our argument is that China has yet to confront the virus. To inform our coverage, we built a model based on predictions of the rate at which people become infected and recover or die. This suggests that, if the virus spread unencumbered, infections in China would peak at 45m a day. Around 680,000 people would perish, even if all of them received care and vaccines remained potent. That last number is certainly an underestimate. In reality, the potency of vaccines wanes and many people would go untreated. In our model, the need for intensive-care beds would peak at 410,000, almost seven times China’s capacity.

These sketches illustrate China’s vulnerability in two contrasting ways. In one every door leads to a giant, looming particle of SARS-CoV-2. In the other the virus is a ball and chain, holding China back.

In between the sketch and the draft, the doors have lost some of their drama. Awkwardly, some of them open onto a covid-free space. That is contrary to what we are arguing: Mr Xi has no way to avoid the virus.

Worse, readers may struggle to work out exactly what is going on. Sometimes you want the full implications of a cover to take a second to sink in—like the punchline of a good joke. Beyond a certain threshold, however, mystification takes over.

Instead we went for a less subtle image. You might think it odd that we chose to depict dejection, given that this week’s coverage is focused on protesters. But this cover gets at a deeper truth.

In recent days, the police have quietly gone around contacting those who took to the streets. Online space has been purged of news about the demonstrations. State media have begun talking down the threat, while some cities are loosening restrictions. Meanwhile China remains chained to the stubborn reality of covid.