China’s zero-Covid lockdown
Shanghai’s 25 million residents have been fenced inside their homes for four weeks under draconian new measures to contain the virus. Ed Tucker reports from the city
AT 6am each day there is a changing of the guard. Alarm clocks go off and residents looking to feed their families madly tap at screens hoping to secure a delivery spot on a grocery app. Meanwhile, netizens battling government censors to tell the real story call it a night. In Shanghai, both resistance and survival are virtual.
What began as a two-stage, four-day lockdown in China’s biggest city is now into its fourth week. There are currently more than 21,000 Covid cases among Shanghai’s 25 million residents, and no clear timeline for the lockdown lifting, leaving rich and poor, locals and foreigners united in a quest for survival and information in a way I haven’t seen in my more than a decade as a journalist in the city.
Public criticism of government policies is unusual in China, and much of it is censored, but alarming stories are being shared widely. There are food and medication shortages. Workers at companies including Tesla are being forced to sleep in their factories overnight to reduce transmission, and elderly people have died inside the city’s cabin hospitals, described as Covid concentration camps for their cramming of thousands of positive cases into isolation wards with poor conditions. Officials say that Omicron has not caused any deaths in Shanghai, but unofficial tallies show that at least 172 residents have died under the brutal quarantine measures, including vulnerable people whose treatments were delayed.
In recent days, pictures have started emerging of workers in white hazmat suits installing two-metre green fences outside housing blocks designated as “sealed areas” where at least one person has tested positive for Covid, to stop people leaving.
The announcement of lockdown came suddenly. After battling a rising wave of Omicron cases in March the Shanghai government announced on the evening of March 27 that from 3am the following day the Pudong area would be in a fourday quarantine. Shanghai is bisected by the Huangpu riverinto Pudong and Puxi, which translate to the east and west of the Huangpu. Those in Pudong had around an hour to get food before shops closed. April fool’s day marked the start of Puxi’s turn at a four-day lockdown. The day before, I’d hunted down meagre supplies and returning with a bag full of cauliflowers, carrots and other vegetables having spent about £11 — more than double the usual price, and enough to last me over the four days. On April 1, we discovered the joke was on us — a few hours after Puxi went into lockdown, Pudong should have had its lockdown lifted, but it never happened.
For many, it started earlier. In March, most housing compounds had lockdowns. I was one of the lucky ones with my compound only having a two-day closure. A friend in Pudong, a retired civil servant, posted on WeChat (China’s WhatsApp that also has a social feed) that he was on Day 39 of his lockdown and, after 11 PCR tests, still negative.
City-wide lockdowns increased restrictions further. Suddenly we were confined to our apartments, no longer free to wander around our compounds. All transportation was suspended and although delivery riders were meant to stay operating, the confusion of the early days meant this didn’t really happen. More than ever, we became reliant on the delivery of meals and groceries, but the system broke under the restrictions.
It is very difficult to get a full picture of what is happening in Shanghai other than the snippets gained from posts shared on WeChat, Weibo (China’s Twitter) and, for those with access to a VPN, Twitter itself. What is apparent is that there’s a growing anger and discontent.
Shanghai has a population of more than 25 million, making it China’s most populous and richest city, but for residents the main preoccupation is finding food. From April 2 the government started delivering food to compounds, but the quality, quantity and frequency varied widely and no account is taken as to how many people are in a household.
In three weeks I have received three
government handouts. The last one included rice and cooking oil. Government rations are insubstantial and consist of vegetables such as mooli, potatoes, cucumbers and — if you’re lucky— meat.
During the first two weeks it was near impossible to secure a delivery slot on grocery-buying apps due to the shortage of delivery riders and sheer demand. Compounds have subsequently found more success by group ordering supplies. Over the past week my building has secured meat, vegetables, bananas, cakes, Coke, milk tea and Starbucks. Preparing a meal is like receiving a mystery bag on Ready Steady Cook — everyone is sharing tips on what to do with the supplies. Still, the food situation is markedly better than in the first two weeks, and companies such as Jingdong now have more riders and can do more personal orders. But the real fear is testing positive and being taken to a fangcang yiyuan: a square cabin hospital with no medical treatment — merely a place to concentrate Covid-positive cases and isolate them.
Even conditions in the higher quality camps are poor at best, with thousands crammed together. Elderly people have reportedly died inside, not counted as Covid deaths. Most of the more than 300,000 cases reported since March have ended up in such camps. A Corgi was beaten to death after following its owner to a bus taking them to a camp. Thankfully this seems to be an isolated case, but people worry what will happen to their pets if they are taken away.
Chinese president Xi Jinping has yet to visit, but CCTVnews, reporting on comments he made while visiting the military in Hainan, said: “Persistence is victory. Adhere to people above all else, life above all else, adhere to the prevention of imported cases, a rebound of domestic cases, adhere to scientific precision, dynamic zero-Covid.”
But people in Shanghai are reaching the conclusion that zero-Covid is equal to zero-plan. Dissenters engage in a continual game of cat and mouse with censors. Saturday saw a sea of content in WeChat feeds removed and the censoring of Voices of April, a moving video featuring snippets from conversations recorded in Shanghai. The video went viral on Friday and its deletion has created even more anger.
Many are beyond caring about government threats and are sharing posts such as a recording with Zhu Weiping, an epidemiologist working in Pudong, who said the Omicron response is politicised. Another widely shared post is an essay simply entitled “Help” by blogger Storm Zhang, despairing at the food situation.
WeChat feeds over the last few days have been filled with the Les Misérables’ song Do You Hear the People Sing?, which is becoming a Shanghai anthem. State propaganda has hit back with scenes of shoppers in a well-stocked supermarket, with netizens joking that it deserves an Oscar. Later it emerged it was filmed in Jinshan, a relatively unaffected district.
There are, though, some rays of hope. Since April 11 compounds have been placed into three categories: precautionary, controlled, and lockdown. Those in the precautionary category are allowed out within their district. My compound falls under “controlled”, so residents can wander within the compound.
There is still no timeline for when it will end. On Sunday, workers started putting up fences in parts of the city, barricading people into theirhomes.The internet has responded with the Chinese characters for Shanghai written with a fence. A recent survey shows 85 per cent of foreigners are rethinking their futures in the city, although it’s not just expats.
Last week a well-connected, UK-educated businessman told me of his plans to go to Singapore and a single mother, who has never left China, is talking of emigrating. If it ever reaches Covid-zero, Shanghai will be a changed city. We’ll never forget that the gates to our compounds — while keeping others out — can just as easily make us prisoners.
• *Ed Tucker is writing under a pseudonym for safety reasons
The real fear is testing positive and being taken to a square cabin hospital with no medical treatment