Several nights of Halloween celebration in Shanghai provided a vivid, if indirect, commentary this week on the malaise gripping the world’s second-largest economy.

Nearly a year after protests roiled major Chinese cities in opposition to leader Xi Jinping’s stringent zero-Covid policies, ghostly figures in white hazmat suits haunted sidewalks, threatening passersby with a new round of nasal Covid swabs. A walking stock-market chart floated through the throng, its downward slope a harbinger of terrifying losses to come. A long dead writer rose from the grave to warn of a nation losing its way.