In footage shared on social media last week, a crowd of people in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang bang against the windows of a clothing market as they shout in frustration at the announcement of yet another round of COVID-19 tests.
Although the local government quickly urged people not to “spread rumors” about the incident, the response from netizens was immediate.
“Refuse quarantine!” one said.
Photo: AP
“Many people have awoken to the truth,” another said.
“It’s actually over,” said a netizen posting on WeChat under the username “Jasmine Tea.” “The common cold is more serious than this... The testing agencies want this to go on. The vaccine companies want to inoculate forever.”
The comments reflect the growing frustrations throughout China, as authorities use all the tactics in their “zero COVID” playbook to grapple with the more infectious Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.
As case numbers surge, the public is wondering whether the government’s increasingly complex “dynamic clearance” methods — including the continuous testing of residents — still work.
At a briefing last week, Chinese National Health Commission Vice Minister Wang Hesheng (王賀胜) said China’s increasingly refined tactics had reduced inconvenience.
“It shows that at the cost of the normal activities of very small numbers of people and the control of movement in very small areas, what comes in exchange is normal production and normal life for the widest range of regions and people,” he said.
However, there have been signs that a lack of clarity and consistency is exasperating the public, and China’s social media censors have been working overtime to try to clear the tide of complaints.
In Yanjiao in Hebei Province, a dormitory town for workers in Beijing, residents have been struggling to get home amid stringent lockdowns.
Images shared online, many of which have already been deleted, showed residents lining up in heavy snow for test results to get out of the capital. The posts drew hundreds of comments.
“It’s been three years since the outbreak and the government is still so ineffective in handling it — lazy one-size-fits-all government in complete disregard for the life and death of the people,” one user named Aobei posted on Sina Weibo.
Economic hardships have also been mounting. A courier surnamed Mao in the badly hit city of Changchun in northeastern Jilin Province said that 90 percent of the neighborhoods have been shut down, and he could not earn a living.
“I don’t have any choice, I can only wait for them to unseal the city — it’s hopeless,” he said.
Residents have also complained about the arbitrary nature of the rules, as well as the unchecked power of the neighborhood residential committees responsible for enforcing them.
In Beijing, one family said their residential committee was about to install a monitoring device on their apartment door to ensure they complied with an order to stay home for two weeks. The order came after a family member entered a supermarket that had been visited two days before by a confirmed COVID-19 case.
In Shanghai, residents were also bewildered by the uneven testing standards and lockdown thresholds imposed by apartment blocks and compounds across the city.
However, China’s policies have caused more than mere inconvenience, with netizens increasingly willing to discuss how lockdowns led to tragedy.
A widely shared post on Sina Weibo last week reported that a patient undergoing chemotherapy at the Shanghai Cancer Hospital died while locked down in her lodgings next to the hospital.
In posts since deleted, bereaved citizens also shared stories about the death of loved ones caused by COVID-related disruptions.
“My dad died of a stroke at the end of last year,” said one, posting under the name MaDDNa. “There was some hope of treatment. Unfortunately, we had to wait for a nucleic acid test report and missed the best treatment time.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese