Xi’an, home to more than 13 million people, has gone into lockdown again amid a spike in the highly transmissible Covid-19 Omicron variant.

China is forcing businesses, restaurants, factories, and shops to close their doors and instructing residents not to leave their homes. This is in line with China’s ‘zero-covid’ strategy, but is causing some to ask what the real reason is behind the lockdowns – it is clear that the ‘zero-covid’ strategy has not worked in the past two years. While the rest of the world has opened up and many nations have tossed many of their Covid-19 restrictions, China is still enforcing lockdowns. In fact, China is the last major economy doggedly married to a zero-Covid strategy.

There is no doubt that China has found a new power under the guise of “health and safety” measures and it seems they have no intention of letting it go. In fact, last week, one official was quoted as saying that the Covid-19 restrictions might last for another five years.

Although there is much speculation over why China has maintained their draconian policies, one thing is for certain with the ‘zero-covid’ strategy and that is that the underground church has been attacked more in the last two years than in the last two decades. China has been using their newly found powers for the purposes of “health and safety” to shut down churches across the nation.