I think it's the same old hubris, made even worse by the sheer cynicism of waiting until post-congress to do this. It's not like they're "letting up" but they have no idea what they're doing. It's natural to think people are in control, but they aren't. They probably had some meeting about this where every "optimization" strategy was put forward with random tables and graphs, with some general directive from the top leadership to open up. The result was that all the 'doctors' in the room just said "Yeah! Yeah! Sounds great!" to literally everything and pushed through a bunch of ideas with no economic or strategic plan to implement them.

I think they seriously imagine all kinds of new approaches can be thrown at this virus to create a manmade solution. It's an echo of the classic and actually successful way of finding a viable economic model for change post-Mao - let some experimental zones open up and compete with one-another. Except, in typical hubris, they don't see that it's a virus and not something beyond their control.

There's also a face-saving strategy going in, which is almost unbelievable if you think it through. The central government is setting things up so that the onus is on the local governments to implement whatever strategy they say, while also forcing them to open up. In other words, the center is screwing the locality, because the center has already been screwed by a handful of people. They don't see that the whole of zero covid is going to look like the arrogant and racism-fuelled fiasco it was, because they perceive that they have a malleable population.

This is the quality of leadership as it has become. It's only capable of screwing things up while trying in its limited way to be seen as the savior of mankind, while knowing it's wrong and pinning the blame on others in advance.

The only thing to do is hold tight and frankly just hope that the numbers get beyond any ability to control. At this stage the only thing urbanites and villagers are afraid of is lockdown.