China’s leaders are in a dangerous dilemma. Their obsession with eliminating the coronavirus has spared the country the pandemic death rates suffered by other major countries, but at a steep cost: severe social and economic pain that led last weekend to China’s biggest anti-government protests in decades.

The harsh zero-tolerance Covid-19 policy championed by President Xi Jinping is no longer sustainable, and he faces a difficult choice between easing up on Covid-19 restrictions, which could cause mass deaths, or clinging to an unpopular approach that is pushing Chinese society to a breaking point.