Having been largely sealed off from the world for two years, Beijing is bracing itself for the arrival of thousands of foreign Olympians, officials, journalists and support staff -- including from countries where the highly transmissible Omicron variant is raging.
Whether Chinese authorities can keep the Games Covid-safe and prevent any flare-ups from spilling into Beijing is the ultimate test of China's zero-Covid strategy. The stringent prevention and control measures are held up by the ruling Communist Party as proof of the self-proclaimed superiority of its authoritarian political system. The strategy has kept infections and deaths low -- but it has also inflicted painful lockdowns on millions of people and isolated China from the world.
