As I see it, their current COVID policy has already changed somewhat compared to earlier this year, and has softened a little bit but it is unaffordable to remove.
I've posted a variation of this below elsewhere, but ultimately I think having covid policy be driven by politics (which in turn is an extension of societal expectations) is a prudent move.
The big picture was and is always what an uncontained covid outbreak would do for sociopolitical stability, in the absence of sufficient nationwide large scale healthcare planning and public relations messaging.
If people acknowledge and agree that the central government and CPC authority is the final upstream determinant of China's ability to carry out public governance and provide public services, to enable strategic planning in all sectors of China's interests (economics, industry, politics, military, sovereignty), then I'm surprised that people would be so dismissive about the importance of approaching a covid outbreak with more conservative and more cautious measures that allow for greater control and prevent uncontrolled transmissions and outbreaks that could challenge the sociopolitical fabric of the nation in a manner and result in an unforced errors that the central government and CPC would rather do without.
Because at the end of the day, the consequences of uncontrolled COVID outbreak at a regional or nationwide level and the sickness and the deaths it would cause (both directly and indirectly), and the subsequent sociopolitical instability it could cause and the potential to undermine govt authority and CPC rule, is still a far larger threat and presents a far wider array of unknowns than their current chosen option.
This isn't even considering the longer term healthcare consequences of long covid and the economic effects of suffering from a uncontained covid sweeping across the nation.
There are no good choices here, but the better choice is still one where CPC authority and CPC rule is able to be more credibly maintained and where the option to downregulate and tweak restrictions from more severe to more lax still exists.
Because once you reach uncontained covid outbreaks at a regional or national level, it becomes far, far more difficult to impose more severe restrictions to reverse an outbreak, and to in turn contain sociopolitical consequences.
Ultimately, a slightly healthier GDP or financial system won't mean much if you are flirting with sociopolitical instability and the risk of opening the CPC to significant risk or having its legitimacy attacked and exploited by other actors or elements.
