It’s confusing to see how much the residents ’cry for distress doesn’t seem to be echoed by Chinese policymakers committed to zero tolerance, writes Asian correspondent Kirsi Crowley.
BEIJING China’s major cities have been ultra-modern and relatively comfortable places to live for both foreigners and the Chinese middle class. But China’s harsh zero tolerance for the coronavirus has shown how hard an authoritarian country is ready when it demands the people to obey orders.
– In the past, China did not feel like living in a communist country. I defended the good sides of the country for my friends. This is hard to defend anymore, a foreigner living in Beijing wondered as we discussed the severe coronary virus quarantine in Shanghai.
He, too, had acquired home property if even the capital was shut down due to coronavirus infections.
In Shanghai, China’s most important city, 26 million people have been locked up in their homes. They have had to fear running out of food and getting a positive infection result in long corona test queues. A positive result leads to a quarantine center.
Hundreds of thousands have crawled on camp beds in huge quarantine centers built into exhibition centers and even office buildings. Those diagnosed with an asymptomatic infection will have to sleep close together in open, dirty spaces that draw thousands of people, and the virus will spread even further.
Shanghai Coronavir Virus Quarantine has also taken Chinese censorship to extremes. Even the first verse of the Volunteer March, the Chinese national anthem, was removed from the social media hashtag. It reads, “Get up! You who do not want to be slaves. ”
Many Shanghaiers have known themselves as slaves. Or at least imprisoned. The city was due to close half of the city at a time for nine days at the beginning of April. However, the closure has continued and the number of omicron infections has remained high.
Censors remove videos from Chinese social media in which coroner guards kill a dog with a shovel or spray a disinfectant on a resident’s face, punch those who have left their homes in the street, or force people out of their homes into a car.
However, the rage of many Shanghai people is boiling so hard that no censorship can remove it from the net. It spreads like an omicron.
The story of the nineties elderly (moving to another service) which was forcibly retrieved to the corona center in the morning makes residents comment outraged and share the story further. Similar experiences are enough.
Recorded conversations with block committees and other suburban authorities will also be available online. They, too, are talking about their pressures. But no one knows when the fierce human experiment will end.
It’s confusing to see how much the residents ’cry for distress doesn’t seem to resonate with China’s zero-tolerance decision-makers.
Hard grips have hit hard not only to the general morale of Shanghai, but also to the economy of the country.
The Chinese Communist Party is expected to seal the country’s leader at the meeting Xi Jinpingin a sequel to the power handle for a third term as first leader then Mao Zedongin. No wonder the online news account of the Chinese news media that closed Man’s comments closed the comments section.
According to official data, 25 people have now died from the coronavirus. Authorities immediately recall that the dead were elderly and already had a history of chronic illness. But even more are probably dead unnecessarily for other reasons (you switch to another service)who have not been admitted to hospital due to coronavirus occlusion.
Most infections have been asymptomatic, but everyone infected still goes to a quarantine center from their home.
The impact of the corona measures is already visible in the first quarter of the year in economic growth figures (you switch to another service). According to Statistics China, economic growth was 4.8 percent. That’s less than the country’s management’s modest 5.5 percent forecast for the country’s economic growth.
Shanghai car factories were closed. Import and export goods are stuck in ports. And it doesn’t move within China either. Consumers do not buy stuff. Retail sales fell in March 3.4 percent (switch to another service) year ago, according to Statistics China. This was a half-bigger decline than expected.
Investment bank Nomura says a quarter of the nation’s population and 40 percent of the country’s economy will be affected by the crisis.
Authorities are defending the interest rate cut saying that China cares about its weakest. According to authorities, only 57 percent of those over sixty have received three vaccines. Only about half of people over the age of 80 have received two vaccines.
This call has not yet been answered in China. Instead, the world’s factory is trying to clean up the country from the virus by closing millions of cities behind locks because the same means worked at the beginning of the pandemic before the omikron variant.
So far, social peace has been maintained when only a small number of cities or suburbs are locked at a time and the rest of the country has lived a reasonably free day.
However, Shanghai is in many ways the nerve center of China, and the barrier there is a unique human experiment of its kind. It will be interesting to see whether the feelings of those detained in their homes in any way affect the party convention, which is partly protected by these actions.