Last time we updated you on the COVID situation in China, in Newsletter 23, we saw the lockdown in Xi’an continued. Four days ago, on Jan 24th, Xi’an finally came out of the lockdown, after one month of a sudden and harsh lockdown. Despite lots of issues as reported on social media, the lockdown is considered a success and enhanced the support for the dynamic-0 policy all over the country.
Meanwhile, the virus visited many big and small cities and caused mass testing. Yesterday, Beijing citizens were braving the cold winter weather for testing. They are forced to come out because their green health code (the health code app is a mobile app that everyone must have, with color-coded code for travel in public transportation and use of any commercial facilities) does not work. Only an actual test can resolve the problem.
But the mass testing caused a health system crash when that many results were uploaded (to update each tested health code to green). Yesterday, people on Twitter were reporting that due to that system crash, Beijing residents could not get tested, since a read of their QR code identifier from the health code app is the first step for getting tested. The issue was reportedly resolved later in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, many people who bought medicines from hospitals in the last 14 days got a notice from their health code app that they need to go through PCR test, otherwise their health code will turn yellow. According to Twitter, one Beijing resident mail-ordered his medicine, and still got the notice. He called many people begging to let him skip the test, and eventually succeeded.
On January 20th, in Shenzhen, a lockdown in an industrial area caused an uprising:
Many of the workers in Shenzhen are migrant workers. Most of them just rented a room. They don’t even have refrigerator. And it is warm and damp right now, food can’t be stored for long. If the lockdown is prolonged, they will either starve to death in the rental room, or go out to protest. If you are arrested, they have to feed you. So, fight is the best option.
According to RFA, they clashed with the police and some were indeed arrested.
A very similar event happened in Tianjin: migrant workers protested against a local lockdown.
On Thursday, some journalist learned that Xiongan, a city 100 km south of Beijing has been in lockdown since Monday.
Xiongan is a city where the dear supreme leader planned to relocate government agencies, state enterprise and universities from Beijing. It was broadcasted as his “Great Thousand Year Plan” project in 2017. There are currently 1.3 million residents. The quietness of the lockdown is surprising. There are 160,000 construction workers in the city. Meanwhile many local residents are happy about the lockdown because they feel safe. Others might go hungry.
Overall, most Chinese people support the dynamic-0 policy. All they want is not to be forced to go through PCR tests. And if they are, they wish not to be caught in a lockdown. They also have stocked up supplies, so in cases of a lockdown, they will have food. The moment they are free to go out, they are thankful, because “just look at 800,000 death in the USA”. They are thankful that their leader is much more responsible and competent.
One businessman who landed in Shanghai Hongqiao airport was never controlled when he breezed through the airport and got into his hotel. He actually called the COVID command center to complain that they were doing a lousy job. The center called back and gave details of his personal information and travel itinerary showing he does not need to be checked at all because his health code was green: he was very satisfied.
One college student eagerly contacted the local authority to report of his quarantine at home, after he came back to his hometown for the winter holiday. Chinese winter holiday just started from Jan 9th. He was forced to be quarantined for 14 days in a public facility that costs 100 Yuan a day. The amount is beyond his family’s ability as they are quite poor. He vented about the amount on social media, but was very proud of himself for diligently obeying the rules.
A German-Chinese went to YouTube to report his experience of travelling back to China for the funeral of a loved one: the treatment for overseas returning Chines is rough and rigid and the strict policy was very much enforced everywhere. Many people, including yours truly, after hearing his description, don’t want to ever go back to China. What is most shocking to me is how well the system works. Everyone is extremely serious at enforcing the dynamic-0 policy. They will report you whenever you cross the line.
So, people are not against the dynamic-0 policy: they might be fed up when they are in lockdown. But otherwise they are very proud of what they have achieved.
In Beijing, when 40 people were found COVID positive, the government reported a detailed report of their activities. One of them is a 44 years old man from Shangdong province. The record showed that in the last 18 days till he was found positive with COVID on Jan 19th, he worked 33 jobs and often worked till midnight.
Media called him “the hardest working man in China”. It turned out that he worked construction jobs, carrying bags of sand or concrete or construction debris. Some days, he worked on 5 different construction sites.
He told the reporter that he came to Beijing to look for his lost son, who was lost 2 years ago in Weihai, in province of Shangdong. He reported to the local police but they would not look for his son. Because his son used to work in Beijing as an assistant in various restaurants’ kitchen, he came to Beijing. But he have been looking for his son in many other cities before.
Many Chinese people read his story, found his younger son’s Weibo account and started sending money. The family responded: we don’t need money, please help us finding our son.
The man said that he can work and support his family so he does not need sympathy: he just wants to find his son.
Chinese netizens commented: you have the big data to track everyone and you can find the father with COVID, but you can’t find his lost son?
Even the leading national media on law and enforcement criticised the handling of Weihai police. Weihai felt the heat, and they started forcing people to delete Weibo….. no! This time, they decided to force the family to accept that a dead body they found two years ago was their lost son. They issued an official notice blaming the family for rejecting the news their son is dead and making trouble.
The family explained to the media: two years ago when that body was found, they contacted the police. The police told them no, this is not your son. How come now that the media is paying attention, the body is their son? Of course they refuse to believe.
Outside China, in developed countries, with Omicron and vaccines, more and more epidemiologists are concluding that Omicron will end the COVID pandemic this year, or at least, Flu-ization of it. But China is still aggressively enforcing a dynamic-0 case policy.
So what is the end game?
On Jan 25th, an opinion article on New York Times, pointed out one dangerous scenario down the road. Not only the current vaccines available in China are not effective, but China also lacks key capacity to deal with rising number of patients in need of ICU.
What puzzles people is that China has got a BioNtech vaccine production permit last summer. There was no production because the government has not approved the vaccine yet.
You could wonder why? What the dear supreme leader is thinking?
Meanwhile, the state media is reporting that the dear supreme leader is visiting Shanxi (a province where Xi’an is). He always knows where he is needed. Does he think that everything is in control? Is he admiring his great leadership? Does he just love watching corn?
Two days ago, a Chinese mRNA vaccine trial just released their phase I data It is not considered stellar: it has high proportion of adverse side-effects including fever.
It looks like China is using COVID as an opportunity to build dominance in the mRNA vaccine market. If everything goes well, the Chinese mRNA vaccine might be available in 2024. The ultimate goal is not to end the pandemic as soon as possible, but to show the superiority of the CCP system. The CCP can create its own mRNA vaccine, and end the pandemic with minimum casualty. What more do you want? Don’t you want to give up your freedom for this wonderful daddy (Xi’s nick name in earlier days of his terms).
Previously many Chinese, including yours truly, were guessing that the country will abandon dynamic-0 policy after this fall when a big party meeting that will re-elect the dear supreme leader for his third term. But this might be wrong: they are not in a hurry to return life back to normal for ordinary people. People might have to wait till 2024.
Meanwhile, the experiment on social control is conducted on bigger and bigger scale. Software and system debugging is done with each round of failures on real people. When people protest or accept the lockdowns, the authority is fine-tuning their method and messages.
So what will the end of dynamic-0 policy looks like?
I am afraid it will be a society that everyone with a cell phone is willingly to be tracked and tightly controlled in real time by the government. Of course, poor people who can’t even afford cell phones are non-existent as far as public services are concerned. Already, there have been many stories of people walking on feet to travel to cities for jobs or going home to see their families, because without a cell phone they have no health code and hence they can’t get onto any buses or trains. In the future, what their life will be, I wonder.
Before we reach the post-COVID future, the lockdowns caused many people losing their jobs. Almost everyone in China is telling me business is bad. But GDP grew better than expected, foreign investors are upbeat of the Chinese stock market. Today there is report that new delivery worker registration on Meituan (an online food ordering platform) crashed the system. That is because this is the only jobs that people can find after they were laid off.
Mass surveillance plus flexible employment will be the future.