The ongoing wave of protests in China against the gratuitous zero-covid policies of the government led by Xi Jinping has naturally attracted international attention. The long sequence of lockdowns in almost three years of the pandemic has also disrupted economic activity in many important production hubs in the country. The International Monetary Fund expects the Chinese economy to grow by a modest 3.2% this year, or 1.2 percentage points slower than its emerging markets peers in Asia. This underperformance is in stark contrast to its story in recent decades, when China went through a spectacular economic transformation that pulled hundreds…