In China’s far west region of Xinjiang, officials imposed a near-total lockdown and made a rare admission of failure in their handling of a Covid outbreak. In Inner Mongolia in the north, the authorities vowed “all-out” efforts to cut the spread of the virus. And in a popular travel destination in Yunnan, in China’s south, the government canceled flights, trapping crowds of angry tourists at an airport.

China is facing its largest flare-up of Covid cases in a month, complicating its preparations for an all-important Communist Party meeting where Xi Jinping is expected to expand his authority and claim another term in power. Provincial and local officials have vowed to stop the spread of the coronavirus from “spilling over” to Beijing, the capital, where the meeting will be held.

Daily Covid counts have more than doubled in the past week, to around 1,400 cases on Friday, in the country of 1.4 billion people — a tally that remains tiny by global standards. But Chinese authorities are under immense pressure to ensure that nothing disrupts the party congress, which starts Oct. 16. They have responded by ramping up restrictions that many already deem excessive. They are locking down regions and cities and mandating mass testing and quarantines, disrupting life for millions of people and drawing public complaints.

The authorities are sticking closely to their “zero Covid” policy of eliminating infections, despite the enormous economic and social cost of the strategy. Mr. Xi has made “zero Covid” a political imperative, linking support for the policy to support for the Communist Party, as he looks to hail China’s success in curbing infections as a sign of the superiority of Beijing’s authoritarian system. 

China’s pandemic strategy is “almost a political campaign to show loyalty to Xi Jinping himself,” said Willy Lam, an adjunct professor of politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “This makes the local officials even more anxious because they all want to stay in the good graces of Xi Jinping.”