Xinjiang is the latest Chinese region to be hit with sweeping COVID-19 travel restrictions, as Beijing further ratchets up control measures ahead of a key Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress later this month.
Trains and buses in and out of the region of 22 million people have been suspended, and passenger numbers on flights have been reduced to 75 percent of capacity, reports said yesterday.
A notice from the regional government said the measures were enacted to “strictly prevent the risk of spillover” of the virus, but gave no other details.
Photo AFP
As is often the case with China’s draconian “zero COVID-19” policy, the measures seemed out of proportion to the number of cases detected.
The Chinese National Health Commission announced just 93 cases in Xinjiang on Wednesday and 97 yesterday, all of them asymptomatic.
Xinjiang leaders on Tuesday conceded problems with detection and control measures, but offered no word on when they planned to lift the restrictions.
Officials are desperate not to be called out for new outbreaks in their regions, and Xinjiang has been under special scrutiny over the Chinese government’s establishment of a series of prison-like re-education centers in which Muslim minorities have been “taught” to renounce their religion and allegedly subjected to a range of human rights abuses.
Xinjiang’s vast surveillance system, relying on ubiquitous checkpoints, facial and even voice recognition software, and universal cell phone monitoring has made controlling travel among the population especially easy.
An earlier 40-day lockdown in Xinjiang left many residents complaining about inadequate food supplies.
“Zero COVID-19” policies have been closely identified with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who is expected to receive a third five-year term in office at the congress beginning on Oct. 16.
That is despite criticisms from the WHO, as well as disruptions to the economy, education and normal life in China.
Last month, a nighttime bus crash that killed 27 people who were being forcefully moved to a mass quarantine location in southwestern China set off a storm of anger online over the severity of the policy.
Survivors said they had been asked to leave their apartments even when not a single case had been discovered.
“Zero COVID-19” has been celebrated by the country’s leaders as evidence of the superiority of their system over the US, which has had more than 1 million COVID-19 deaths.
Xi has cited China’s approach as a “major strategic success” and evidence of the “significant advantages” of its political system over Western liberal democracies.
Yet even as other countries open up, the humanitarian cost of China’s pandemic approach have grown.
With national and some provincial borders closed, tourism has largely dried up and the economy is forecast by the World Bank to grow by an anemic 2.8 percent this year.
Xinjiang has been hit especially hard because of sanctions brought against some of its officials and products over human rights concerns.
Even without nationally identified criteria, testing and lockdowns have become the norm for tens of millions of people in China from the North Korean border to the South China Sea, as local officials desperately seek to avoid punishment and criticism.
Earlier this year in Shanghai, desperate residents complained of being unable to get medicines or even groceries during a two-month lockdown, while some died in hospitals from lack of medical care as the city restricted movement.
All 26 million residents in China’s largest city have been ordered to undergo two additional days of testing this week, despite the announcement of just 11 new cases yesterday, none of whom had symptoms.
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