Very few people in the west know how the people in Shanghai experienced the corona lockdown. This is mainly due to the language barrier and the extensive Chinese censorship. However, the lockdown life can be reconstructed through the news and postings that have now been published. The increasingly dwindling trust of the people in the Chinese power apparatus stands out in particular.
50 days lockdown in Shanghai. The world was able to follow how, from March 19, a total of 26 million people were quarantined in the important trading and port metropolis. The shocking news didn’t stop during the lockdown: people didn’t have enough to eat, medication wasn’t given out. Old people died alone and without care in their homes. But that’s not all: Babies and toddlers were separated from their families and isolated if someone got infected. The little ones were left to themselves, often three or four of them sat close together in a bed.
The government has killed pets that their owners released to fend for themselves by hunting. Those who ventured into the streets to look for food or medicine were severely beaten by squads sent out by the government. In the end, the Communist Party had entire apartment complexes sealed off with fences and sealed front doors to apartments in which the infected lived before they were transported to the horrible collection points for isolation.
Despite this, the government required the tormented people to open their windows in the evening and sing praises to leader Xi Jinping and the Communist Party. Although people opened their windows, they screamed frustration and curses at the evening sky. The whole world also took part via social media.
However, what happened to people on a daily basis, how they learned to cope in the pandemic, was reported little in the Western media. The language barrier is high and the internet is not free in China. The American magazine SupChina, which specializes in monitoring the People’s Republic, has now, a month after the 50-day lockdown ended, compiled and published news and postings from the people of Shanghai.
From them we learn that for the first time on March 19, people were notified via the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp, WeChat, that their apartment block would be quarantined. At first it was said that this lockdown would last 48 hours. Reading the lockdown log, I remembered only too well when the lockdown was declared in New York in mid-March 2020.
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At that time we lived in the city and, like many of our friends, thought that such a measure would not take too long, could not take too long. But our lockdown didn’t end until June 8th, 10 weeks later. However, it was at most different from what was happening in China. In New York we were allowed to go out on the street at any time, we could go shopping, delivery services took out food.
In Shanghai, the first two days pass, after which small lockdowns lead to longer ones without an end being announced for the measure. After five days, people become restless and start ordering groceries online. It is also dawning on the first that the medicines kept at home could become scarce if the lockdown drags on. Then on the 9th day comes the news that the entire eastern part of the city will be put under lockdown.
Before this “big lockdown” starts, quite a few people have already spent ten days in a “small lockdown”. On the night between the two, they are allowed, one last time, to go out into the street and shop. Then, on Day 14, just four days after Shanghainesers had their last big grocery shopping trip, news spread that food was in short supply.
The government’s zero-Covid policy is having an effect, but not the desired one: the supply of food is interrupted because businesses have to close if a person suffering from Covid has stayed in them. China’s ruler Xi Jinping has imposed a “zero Covid” strategy on the People’s Republic that will virtually shut down the country completely indefinitely. Since the Chinese vaccines do not work against the omicron variant, the Communist Party has no choice but to wait until all Chinese women are sick and herd immunity is established.
On day 21, the residents of Shanghai begin to suspect that the official death toll reported by the government cannot be correct. Many know people who have died or have heard about fatal cases from friends, so they cannot take the statement that exactly zero people died at face value.
On days 24 and 25, the people living in the same block of flats as the author of the Shanghai Log have nothing to eat. Only on day 26 does a truck stop in front of the facility and bring groceries. In light of this report, looking back, the scarcity we experienced in New York, fresh vegetables and fruit were almost sold out for a few days, seems trivial. And that for incomprehensible reasons there was not enough toilet paper either.
Now open criticism and curses on the social platforms are increasing. The servants of the government are in constant use to erase this criticism. Then on day 31 a new wave of terror: the green fences are coming. They are used to seal off the author’s block of flats, as well as many others, so that no one can get in or out. It’s the day the government says there was the first Covid death in the city.
From day 35, the Shanghainese are fighting back. Videos are circulating on social media showing angry residents throwing eggs at the officials and white-clad people doing government work. It was men like that in white hazmat suits who had previously roamed the streets beating up quarantine breakers. Now the tables are turning, which documents the desperation of the Shanghainese like nothing else.
From day 39, the author sees more and more videos showing people jumping out of their homes and killing themselves. Shanghainese, whose feed has turned into one horror show, call it “doom scrolling” when they check their social media.
On day 44, the protest takes over. In the evenings, people bang on pots on their balconies and windows, rioting and making noise, drawing attention to their terrible fate. The government announced over loudspeakers that the protests were the work of foreign powers.
The lockdown should finally end on May 20th. Today, a month later and at the moment when SupChina publishes the logbook, life in Shanghai has returned to normal. At the same time, there is still a lockdown in other parts of the country. The Communist Party cannot admit to the population that its policies are wrong, because in the fall it is convening for its 50th summit. The ruler Xi Jinping should be given the opportunity to remain in power as Chinese leader for life.
Meanwhile, youth unemployment has risen to 18.4 percent and economic growth has been slashed to 4.3 percent from 5.5 percent by the World Bank. However, depending on how the pandemic progresses, this can still be worse. The logbook shows how courageous individual Shanghainese are to oppose the brutal power of order. At the same time, the powerlessness with which people have to accept that they can be cooped up, isolated and excluded from food deliveries for days if the leadership of the one-party dictatorship wants it becomes clear.
Our lockdown in New York and the one that followed in Berlin were both far from what I saw from China. Mask requirements and distance rules are not even a mild breeze compared to the hurricane of freedom restrictions that people in Shanghai had to endure. Certainly, and this also became clear when reading and watching, many people in the People’s Republic are no longer convinced that Xi Jinping is a wise ruler and that the Communist Party is a gift from heaven for China.
Find more information about lockdown life in Shanghai HERE.
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