Well, it's a huge fiscal burden on the local governments to keep subsidizing for tests especially when revenue is already tanking, resulting in large deficits. Some local governments are already reporting deficits which are more than twice of their revenue.
Estimates put just the testing costs at around RMB1.7tril to USD370bil. For comparison, China's annual defense budget is only around RMB1.45tril.
China plans to raise its annual defense budget by 7.1 percent to 1.45 trillion yuan ($230 billion) for the 2022 fiscal year, its seventh-straight year of single-digit growth, according to a draft budget plan unveiled on Saturday.
www.chinadaily.com.cn
That's just testing. What about the cost of quarantine and the diversion of healthcare resources etc?
https://www.ft.com/content/2e3f9397-6745-45a1-ae7b-a1a6f7d7aed4
Obviously it's all unsustainable. People will get more fed up when they have to pay additionally to test and lock up themselves. I don't see this ending well if Xi continues being stubborn with his signature zero-Covid policy.