Shanghai’s COVID crisis does not only get international attention, but also attention from Dear Supreme leader. He recently sent his vice premier Sun Chunlan to Shanghai, who in the past two years have been visiting hot spots of COVID. She sternly demanded Shanghai government to reign in the pandemic. This does not bode well to the leader of Shanghai, Mr. Li Qiang, the party secretary.
For Dear Supreme Leader, ‘If the outbreak reaches other parts of the country, it could dash Xi’s hopes of touting his administration’s “great victory” against the coronavirus at the party’s national congress this autumn.’
Even I know this.
Mr. Li Qiang is an uprising politician who was possibly the next premier. But if he is unlucky, it might be the last time people outside China hear of his name. He had successfully navigated the COVID water in the last two years. But omicron seems to have tanked his political future. Shanghai people gossiped about this political battle for Mr. Li Qiang. You can read more from the Japanese media: Xi gives thumbs down to Shanghai distancing closest aide.
One day, there was some relaxing policy, people thought Mr. Li Qiang was winning, co-existing with COVID will be the new norm. Another day, a very hash turn of the policy, people think he is done. But all the political drama for him is at the expense of the lives of a city of 26 million people.
But both are claiming that they are carrying out the strict dynamic zero policy of our dear supreme leader with the utmost determination. You can see it in these tweets, this for Mr. Li Qiang and this for Mrs. Sun Chunlan.
The latest rumour is that after this weekend, the city will have a “Stand still” policy for a week. All deliveries will be banned. The only activity local residents are allowed to do is travelling for medical emergency. For one week. And then, the number of COVID incidents will go down dramatically. Then, the lockdown will be declared over at the end of month, with victory.
Sit tight and watch to see if this is the way to go.
Citizens were caught in this sudden lockdown without much time to prepare. The night when the lockdown was announced, Shanghai citizens rushed to the supermarket to hoard food. But majority did not buy too much, because the government told them the lockdown will last 4 days. They trusted the government. And Shanghai government explicitly issued announcement telling them not to hoard food.
And now the time to lift the lockdown seems to have no end in sight. Messages of people starving are spreading like wild fire on social media. Many people found it unbelievable this is happening in the 21st century in the richest city in China. Others found it illuminating — they say now they understand how tens of millions of people could have been starved to death in the three years famine (1958-1961).
Newcomers to Shanghai are particularly at risk, since they are not very well connected with local people who have connections with suppliers, they have no way to buy food. In some district, people complained that food was only delivered to local Shanghai people. There have been rumours that in some districts the newcomers to Shanghai (called “outsiders” in Chinese) were so fed up that they just storm the inventory and helped themselves with the supplies.
Old people are also at risk since many of them don’t know how to use social media or internet to get help. Some retired professors in their eighties from Fudan University were seeking help to get basic food. They got the ears of the social media because of their identity. In reality, people say there are millions of old people living on their own in Shanghai. No one knows how many of them are suffering because they do not know how to navigate the complex scheme of getting food delivered, which all involves the social media.
Young people complained that they had to spend most of their time clicking on internet shops for food and often failed to buy anything. Residential area started to form buying brigades, to bulk buy food directly from farmers/suppliers. You can read this article on how people struggle to get food and supplies: We’re locked down in Shanghai with 25 pounds of mangoes – and some very helpful neighbors. They are actually quite well taken care of, compared with ordinary Chinese.
For your entertainment, watch this short video of a resident in a high rise building catching a fish in the pond on the ground, supposedly he had a very good diet in the harshest time of lockdown.
Quarantine of the people who tested positive is stressing out many families, especially families with young children. The government has no problem separating a new born baby of 14 days old from her parents who were tested positive, according to Chinese social media.
An earlier story have a two years old girl died while away from her family and the distraught mother committed suicide after the tragedy.
Even the European countries expressed concern via the French consulate general in Shanghai, according to social media. Not separating children from their parents was their number one concern. But according to messages on social media from Shanghai, this open letter to Shanghai government has not changed the practice of separating families.
Videos of police in all white PPE gears forcing residents to leave their home because the government is using their apartments for quarantine were circulating yesterday. You see people being beaten up and rounded up. You hear women screaming, old ladies kneeling and begging for mercy, here and here
The system works relentlessly and it is scaring the residents of this city. They asked: how can Shanghai become like this?
And they realized that without any political power and legal protection, there is nothing they can do to stop this madness.
But even the Shanghai people are not sure what went wrong. They are not against dynamic zero policy or lockdown. They just want to have food.
In some cases, they are so scared of the virus that they will lock out their own neighbours when the neighbour went out to the hospital to treat injuries.
But according to the official number of Shanghai, this city of 26 millions people had 180,000 COVID cases a week ago, and only 9 serious cases as of today. Eight of the nine people are over 70 years old and all have some medical condition. Which means the virus is mostly very mild. People are asking why we are doing this?
Nine serious cases, and zero death of COVID. This is the success story of Shanghai COVID.
However, stories of people rejected medical treatment surfaced. One retired violinist who suffered abdominal pains tried to get treated in hospitals but was repeated rejected. Eventually he jumped from 5th floor to end his misery. His wife later wrote about the event. She said the hospital morgue was full so the body was cremated directly. Many people wonder how many unnecessary deaths have been due to the disruption of medical services because of COVID policy.
Who are the ones that are swimming in the COVID lockdown and growing fat? One screenshot of a chat posted on twitter gives some glimpse:
“I made 30 million yuan last month (net profit), and the first 9 days of April, I am making 9 million yuan. I rented some delivery van, found some connections and some people, found some suppliers, found people who are in charge of residential areas, get connected and orders, then I deliver the products to them. The price we buy is lower than usual because the suppliers could not sell easily. The price we sell is very high. I am not the only one, so many of us are making very good money. “
30 million yuan is more or less 4,7 million USD.
The connections, of course are not free, but it is worth it, since his net profit is indeed impressive.
Meanwhile, another twitter post tells the story of a local district leader. He was in charge of distributing government supplies to people in his district. He only delivered a small part of it. He sold the supplies at much higher prices to some supplier, for millions of yuan. How was this discovered? Because a widow of a retired government official was starved to death in her home (in his district).
Meanwhile, if you remember Lianhua Qingwen, the miracle Chinese herbal medicine that Swedish government banned from importing because its ingredients are harmful, it is handed to every corner of Shanghai. Even the people who have no food have no lack of this medicine. Some social media claimed that about one third of the logistic delivery is used for this miracle medicine. Many people found out that the research and development of this medicine took a very long time of 15 days. That is why it is so effective. Some are asking at what price is the government sourcing this medicine and who is making huge amount of money off this? A leading online medical social media dared to say that “we think this is wrong.” .
So, how many government officials are using their power to make easy money in Shanghai? We don’t know, because there is no independent press in China. But if you want to know the scale of government corruption in China, I recommend two readings.
First, a documentary made by CCP themselves praising their anti-corruption success, as described in this New York Times article: China’s Anti-Graft Show Is Educational, With Unintended Lessons.
So, Xi is not bad, he caught them all, right? Well, without independent press, how do you know he got them all?
Second, a book that got the CCP very nervous last summer, Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China. It is the story of how the family of Wen Jiabao, the previous prime minister of China, a position the party secretary of Shanghai is fighting to achieve, enriched themselves when Wen was in power.
So you know for sure that Xi has not got this one. In fact, he used all of the power of the Chinese government trying to silence the author, and the book was strictly banned on Chinese social media.