On Thursday, April 14, 2022 at 7:04:30 AM UTC, David P. wrote:
> China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Mess Proves Autocracy Hurts Everyone
> By Li Yuan, April 13, 2022, NY Times
>
> Long before the “zero Covid” policy, China had a “zero sparrow” policy.
> In the spring of 1958, the Chinese government mobilized the entire
> nation to exterminate sparrows, which Mao declared pests that
> destroyed crops. All over China, people banged on pots and pans,
> lit firecrackers and waved flags to prevent the birds from landing
> so they would fall and die from exhaustion. By one estimation,
> nearly two billion sparrows were killed nationwide within months.
>
> The near extinction of sparrows led to insect infestations, which
> ruined crops and contributed to the Great Famine, which starved
> tens of millions of Chinese to death in the next three years.
>
> The fear in China now is that the “zero Covid” policy has become
> another Mao-style political campaign that is based on the will
> of one person, the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping — and that
> it could end up hurting everyone.
>
> Just as Mao and his lieutenants ignored the opposition to
> their anti-sparrow policy from scientists and technocrats,
> Beijing has ignored experts’ advice that China abandon its
> costly strategy and learn to coexist with the coronavirus,
> especially a milder, if more infectious, variant.
>
> Instead, Beijing insists on following the same playbook from
> 2020 that relies on mass testing, quarantine and lockdowns.
> The approach has put hundreds of millions of lives on pause,
> sent tens of thousands to makeshift quarantine camps and
> deprived many non-Covid patients of medical treatments.
>
> “They’re not countering the pandemic. They’re creating
> disasters,” Ye Qing, a law scholar who is known by his pen name,
> Xiao Han, wrote in an online article that was swiftly deleted.
>
> Mr. Xi is keen to stick to the strategy because he is seeking
> a third term at an important Communist Party congress later
> this year. He wants to use China’s success in containing the
> virus to prove that its top-down governance model is superior
> to that of liberal democracies.
>
> “This disease has been politicized,” Zhu Weiping, an official
> in Shanghai’s disease control apparatus, told a person who
> complained about the city’s response to the outbreak. In a
> recorded phone conversation, the official said she had advised
> the government to let people with no or mild symptoms quarantine
> at home and focus on vaccination drives. But no one listened,
> she said.
>
> “You’re driven crazy by this?” she asked the caller.
> “Professional institutions like us are going crazy, too.”
> The recording was shared widely before it was censored.
>
> As the Omicron variant spreads, about 373 million people in
> 45 Chinese cities were under either full or partial lockdowns
> as of Monday, according to estimates by economists at the
> investment bank Nomura. These cities account for 26% of
> China’s population and 40 percent of its economic output,
> they wrote; they warned that the risk of recession was rising
> as local governments competed to ratchet up virus-containment
> measures.
>
> Beijing is now urging local governments to strike a balance
> between pandemic control and economic production. But everyone
> in the bureaucratic system knows where the priority lies.
>
> In the city of Jixi in China’s northernmost province,
> Heilongjiang, 18 officials, including township leaders, law
> enforcement chiefs as well as directors of a hospital and a
> funeral home, were disciplined or reprimanded recently for
> neglecting their duties and responsibilities in pandemic
> control. Some cadres “weren’t stressed out enough,” the
> announcement said.
>
> In Shanghai, China’s largest and most affluent city, at least
> 8 midlevel officials were removed or suspended from their
> positions after the city’s poorly executed lockdowns caused
> chaos, tragedies and severe food shortages.
>
> After the city locked down its 25 million residents and
> grounded most delivery services in early April, many people
> encountered problems sourcing food, regardless of their
> socioeconomic status. Some set alarms for the different
> restocking times of grocery delivery apps that start as
> early as 6 a.m.
>
> In the past few days, a hot topic in WeChat groups has been
> whether sprouted potatoes were safe to eat, a few Shanghai
> residents told me. Neighbors resorted to a barter system to
> exchange, say, a cabbage for a bottle of soy sauce. Coca-Cola
> is hard currency.
>
> After nearly two weeks under lockdown, Dai Xin, a restaurant
> owner, is running out of food to provide for her household of 4.
> Now she slices ginger paper thin, pickles vegetables so they
> won’t spoil and eats 2 meals a day instead of 3.
>
> Even the moneyed class is facing food supply shortages. The
> head of a big retailer told me last week that she got many
> requests from Shanghai-based chief executives. But there was
> little she could do under lockdown rules, the executive said,
> who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the political
> sensitivities.
>
> Wang Lixiong, the author of the apocalyptic novel “China Tidal
> Wave,” which ended with a great famine in the aftermath of a
> nuclear winter, believes that a man-made crisis like the one in
> Shanghai is inevitable under China’s authoritarian system. In
> recent years, he said in an interview, the risk increased after
> Beijing clamped down on nearly every aspect of civil society.
>
> After moving into a friend’s vacant apartment in Shanghai
> last winter, he stocked up on rice, noodles, canned food and
> whiskey to sustain him for a few months in case of a crisis.
>
> But many residents in the luxury apartment complex, with units
> valued at more than $3 million, weren’t as prepared when the
> lockdown started. He saw his neighbors, who dashed around in
> designer suits a month ago, venture into the complex’s lush
> garden to dig up bamboo shoots for a meal.
>
> The worst nightmare for many Shanghai residents is testing
> positive and being sent to centralized quarantine facilities.
> The conditions of some facilities are so appalling that they’re
> called “refugee camps” and “concentration camps” on social media.
>
> Many people shared packing lists and tips for quarantine.
> Take earplugs and eye masks because it’s usually a giant place
> like the convention center and the lights are on day and night;
> pack lots of disposable underwear because there’s no shower
> facility; and carry large amounts of toilet paper. Some quarantine
> camps were so poorly prepared that people had to fight for food,
> water and bedding.
>
> The many despairing posts about Shanghai sent residents in
> other parts of China into a hoarding craze last weekend. In
> Beijing, supermarkets were packed, and some grocery apps ran
> out stock.
>
> A growing number of people are questioning whether the draconian
> and costly strategy is necessary. On Tuesday, the Shanghai health
> authority reported more than 200,000 infection cases since March 1,
> with nine in serious condition and no deaths. Officials haven’t
> addressed reports of mass infections and deaths at elder-care hospitals.
>
> Even some supporters of the “zero Covid” policy have voiced their
> doubts. When Shanghai carried out citywide Covid tests on April 4,
> Lang Xianping, an economist, said on his verified Weibo account that
> it demonstrated “the power of China.” On Monday, he said his mother
> had passed away after Covid restrictions delayed treatment for her
> kidney condition. “I hope tragedies like this won’t happen again,”
> he wrote.
>
> The policy still enjoys strong public support. Many people on
> social media said Shanghai wasn’t strict enough in its lockdowns
> and quarantines. A venture capitalist posted on WeChat that he
> would not invest in start-up founders who didn’t back the policy.
>
> This is not surprising. With limited access to information and
> no tools to hold the authority accountable, the vast majority of
> Chinese generally support whatever the government decides.
>
> In the past two years, they followed Beijing’s cue and attacked
> critics of its pandemic policy. They rallied around Beijing,
> which increasingly applied the social suppression mechanism in
> Xinjiang to the rest of the country in the name of pandemic
> control. Now, many of them are suffering from the consequences,
> but, in contrast to Wuhan, there are no more citizen journalists
> or large volunteer groups to help them.
>
> “When repressions didn’t touch them, most Chinese ignored them,”
> Lawrence Li, a business consultant in Shanghai, said in an
> interview. “We believe that it’s just to sacrifice minority
> interests in favor of the collective.”
>
> Like many people, he said what was happening in Shanghai echoed
> the anti-sparrow campaign. “History repeats itself again and
> again,” he said.
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/business/china-covid-zero-shanghai.html