By Allen Cao ’24, Staff Writer
Starting with the spread of the Omicron variant, many countries used the milder and more contagious variant as an opportunity to reopen their borders to international tourists and business. Singapore, for example, left its quarantine mandates for international travelers in early April, abandoning its existing and fairly strict COVID policy. However, the story is a bit different in China, where the “zero-COVID” policy is still the nation’s leading principle for not only border control but also daily measurement.
China has had very strict measurements since the very beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak with both local and imported infections. However, Omicron has become a serious challenge to the “zero-COVID” policy in China. Seeing the reopening of neighboring Asian countries like Singapore and South Korea, many Chinese wonder if China would do the same. Among many of them are students or businesspeople who are strained from being away from their homes for years. To their disappointment, there has not been any signs of reopening. If anything, the rules are only getting stricter with the increasing COVID cases in China, but even with the strict quarantine and sanitation measurements, megacities like Shanghai are no safe havens from the spreading virus.
What is going on in Shanghai? In short, the megacity of 26 million people is going through a massive spike in COVID numbers. Since the end of March, the city has entered a lockdown phase: business stops operating, roads are closed and gates of residential buildings are shut. People have to stay home except for their daily COVID tests. Grocery stores, pharmacies and hospitals are all shut down, making it really hard for people to buy their daily needs and medications.
Lockdowns can cause many economic problems, especially in a city such as Shanghai, one of the world’s major finance and business capitals. However, this series of lockdowns in Shanghai is uniquely painful because the problems have hit the residents on a very personal, fundamental level. It sounds quite like magical realism, but for many in Shanghai, putting food on the table has become a challenge. Because stores are closed and no one can leave their homes anyways, many residents in Shanghai have faced a simple yet complicated question: where do we find food? Similarly, for many patients with long-term diseases, getting their prescribed medicine has become very challenging. There have even been a few cases where the patients in emergency were rejected by the hospital because they could not provide a fast enough negative COVID result.
What is behind all this?
Many critics of the “zero-COVID” policy in China believe that the COVID management has gone beyond an issue of science, and I agree. At this point, the scenario in Shanghai is more political than rational. The government prided itself for its lockdown strategy when COVID cases skyrocketed globally. It has used the way that the U.S. and many Western countries handled COVID as a foil to the “Chinese model,” and applied virology findings to the question of which system is better. It has built up a rhetoric around the message that ‘only they truly care about the life and death of their citizens.’ The lockdowns and citizens’ obedience became a political symbol of the Chinese government, building the notion that we have the power and determination to do anything we want. It decorated China with an image of a ‘nation machine.’ When we need to build hospitals, we build hospitals; when we need to lock down a city, we lock down a city.
To me, the rhetoric has been a red flag. There have been admirable things to be found, undeniably, in the fight against COVID in China. There were the construction workers who worked, day and night, to build additional quarantine sites. There were the doctors and nurses who worked overtime to help out the patients. Above all, there were the cooperative citizens who were willing to follow social distancing and stay-at-home policies with few complaints. However, the government used them as a way to boost its authority: thanks to the leadership of the government, it states, we are winning the fight against COVID. Embedded within such an idea is the message that if the people do not listen, they would be as miserable as the millions who have died in other countries. Now the government is bound by the misinformation it created for itself — most of the world is now operating under the ‘new normal’ while Chinese cities struggle.
The government has built up such a solid image of itself as ‘the savior of the people’ that it is hard for them to make a change–imagine how difficult it is for a giant boat to turn its course around. I suppose it is logical from the government’s standpoint, because you do not want to contradict yourself on the “zero-COVID” policy that you have bragged about for years. Changing the fundamental strategy, in the government’s eyes, is like admitting a mistake. This is when politics overpowers science. Science keeps developing and correcting itself. We have seen this developing process with COVID. With each new variant of COVID, scientists make new models on how fast it spreads and how lethal it is. If the public health department does follow science, its policy should change with time as well.
As I mentioned earlier, the COVID management in China has also been seen as a way of demonstrating the “superiority of the Chinese system.” Nationalism in China has been growing at a fast rate, and the government takes pride in being different from others. That is why the government and state media in China emphasize over and over how the West has handled COVID terribly. If China eventually embraces the ‘new normal’ like Europe or the U.S., it sets back this prideful image of superiority.
There is also a powerful force that pushes for the “zero-COVID” policy in China. This force includes those whose incomes are not affected so much by the lockdown. Namely, these are the government officials who live on tax money, pharmaceutical companies that profit from all the unnecessary tests and ‘special medicines,’ and basic civil servants who do not want to let go of their temporary, COVID-control-related power. They would never experience the plight of small business owners or the working class under the lockdown. In fact, they would probably hope the lockdown would last forever. What is there for them to lose, anyways?
The saddest part of this month-long, ongoing magical realist story is the insecurity and hypocrisy of the government. On one hand, it presents its citizens with grand, glorious images of strong and competent leadership. On the other hand, it censors articles, news and even posts asking for help on the Internet. On one hand, the government claims to take care of China’s elders and the vulnerable; on the other hand, the lockdown has made their lives much more difficult. On one hand, it hypes up the effectiveness of the local vaccine and medicine; on the other hand, it feels shaky to actually test out the effectiveness by opening up the borders. They know the anger and dissatisfaction of the people so well that they do not even want to face it; they would rather exaggerate the effect of the virus or even blame the West for “neglecting human life.” Stability and order are their primary goals, not their phony objective of “saving more lives.” If they really want to save lives, admit the patients who are dying of non-COVID diseases, remove the lockdown ‘fences’ so firetrucks can address crises, and get people the basic living essentials they need.
Last month, my grandpa had a medical emergency where he was sent to the hospital. His town is 200 miles away from Shanghai and the lockdowns. Fortunately, because of that, he did not experience too much trouble being admitted into the hospital. He stayed in the hospital for about a week, and a few relatives were able to take care of him. Several days after he returned home, however, the lockdown came. It was perhaps not the same scale as the one in Shanghai, but what a relief it was for the family. Who knows what would happen if the lockdown came a week earlier? Would my grandpa still have been able to get to the hospital? Would his relatives have been able to take care of him?
When will this lockdown end? When will the next one come? There are too many questions. The government, apparently, does not like questions.
