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With the animal husbandry production transformed from subsistent to commercial, the marketization in China pastoral areas has been increasingly developed. It is characterized by increasing dependency on fodder purchase, pasture lease, microcredit, and strategic livestock sale in response to market fluctuations. Marketization is a double-edged sword, offering both opportunities and challenges. However, the mechanisms leading to negative outcomes, especially in pastoral areas, have been understudied. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns provide a natural experiment to understand the impacts of sudden shocks on marketized pastoralism. Here we examine the lockdowns' impacts on herders' daily life and livestock production in two counties with different marketization degree on Tibetan Plateau, using data from semi-structured interviews and field surveys conducted from December 2022 to August 2023. We find that the lockdowns' effects on herders' daily life and livestock production, revealing a direct link between market engagement and vulnerability of facing lockdown. This vulnerability stems from lacking local risk-management institutions through the nascent marketization in Tibetan pastoral areas. The replacement of traditional uncertainty management by market mechanisms has also amplified market risks. Therefore, we recommend enhancing herders' involvement in designing markets to reduce risks and integrating traditional pasture knowledge with market mechanisms to build a more resilient and sustainable pastoral economy.