If you remember, in newsletter 3, we translated a social media conversation in which a girl dumped her boyfriend because he turned out to be a fake shanghainese.
Unlike Xi’an, Shanghai had no ancient history. Until 1843, it was just a small village. Because of the Treaty of Nanking, it became a major port, with concessions governed and occupied by foreign powers.
By the time CCP took over China, Shanghai was a city of 4 million people, renowned for its commerce and quality products, and a culture that was more akin to the west than to China. Shanghai watch was a well known wedding gift young people gave to their spouse. It is natural that Shanghai people are proud of their culture.
Since the 80’s, Shanghai has rebuilt entirely a new skyline. Its high school students consistently ranked number 1 in OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Its population is now at 28 millions. It is a true cosmopolitan city, regarded as the most developed and sophisticated city in China. So mcuh so that many Shanghainese consider themselves a different country from China.
When COVID got to Shanghai, Shanghai handled it gracefully. They didn’t do brutal whole city lockdown like the backward city Xi’an. They had precision targeting. For example, they tested everyone at DisneyLand because one person who was a close contact went there.
COVID came and Shanghai beat it, several times.
This time, they are facing COVID again. But the way they are doing it got social media attention.
How did it start? According to an online rumour:
(rough translation) The reason Shanghai got COVID this time
Hong Kong people wanted to enter China via Shenzhen, but because there were so many positive people, Shenzhen could not accept them. Each day, they only allowed 300 people to enter.
At that moment, Shanghai stood out, saying “We can increase the flights so that Hong Kong people can come here for quarantine”.
Then Jinjiang group offered one of their hotels, saying “We were planning a renovation of Huating hotel, now we can pause that and use the hotel for quarantine.”
Who would know that the people in charge did not know the reality of Huating hotel. The hotel was built long ago and the ventilation inside all share one tunnel and there was no filtering.
So, Hong Kong people came, and those who were positive without symptom did spread the virus through the ventilation. The hotel staff thought that they were safe, and took the virus to the subway… and the virus spread.
When they did a complete PCR testing, they realized that Huating had too many positives. So they sent the team to check the environment and they realized that it was positive everywhere in the hotel.
Before they decided to move everyone from Huating, the district and city leaders had a meeting with Huating, about a hundred people attended. So those positive asymptomatic people from Huating were in the meeting as well. After the meeting, they went their own ways.
Later the government acknowledged that indeed the COVID cases got in from overseas and management negligence led to the virus spreading into the city.
Normal Chinese city reacted with city wide full lockdown, like this:
All residential area in the city of Changchun are in lockdown, all traffics are stopped, all companies stop running.
Shanghai is much better than this. There is no city wide lockdown, yet.
But a Wechat post shocked many people:
(rough translation) My home is being taken. I was at work in the afternoon. The local government taking over policy just started so I lost my home. At one o’clock I was informed that I need to move out by three o’clock. There was no official document, no resettlement, no compensation. I am utterly disappointed at Shanghai.
Comment: This is so bad.
Comment: The apartment you rented was taken over by the government?
Comment: yes.
Comment: how can this happen? What shall you do?
This screenshot was quickly spread on social media. People sighed: Shanghai is part of China, after all.
Observers of Chinese media and social media reported that No.1 topic trending on Weibo right now is “Russia reveals materials of US executing military biological plans in Ukraine.” No.7 is “US has directly paid for biological weapon study in Ukraine.”
Others commented: “With the 3 major central media (CCTV, Xinhua and People’s Daily) leading the news on this topic, anti-American sentiment was stirred to the extreme. This topic had 270 million reads that day, and a single Weibo post from People’s Daily received 380,000 likes in 12 hours, with almost all Weibo patriotic red accounts participating in the discussion. Hate stirring on this scale is extremely dangerous.”
CNN took notice in its report: China’s promotion of Russian disinformation indicates where its loyalties lie.