Shanghai yesterday ordered COVID-19 testing on all 1.3 million residents of its downtown Yangpu District and confining them to their homes at least until results are known.
The demand is an echo of measures ordered in the spring that led to a two-month lockdown of the entire city of 25 million and devastated the local economy, prompting food shortages and confrontations between residents and the authorities.
At the start of the lockdown, authorities said they would last just days, but then kept extending the deadline.
Photo: AFP
China has shown no sign of backing away from its “zero COVID-19” policy since a major congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that concluded this week and awarded Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the country’s most powerful leader in decades, a third five-year term in power and packed top bodies with his loyalists.
Strict measures have been imposed across the country, from Shanghai in the east to Tibet far to the west, where anti-lockdown protests have also been reported.
Cell phone footage smuggled out of the region showed crowds of native Tibetans and Han Chinese migrants milling in the streets of Lhasa to protest a lockdown that has lasted as long as 74 days.
Photo: AFP
The footage was reportedly shot on Wednesday night, but there was no sign of violence.
Despite public anger, former Shanghai CCP secretary Li Qiang (李強), who was ultimately responsible for the lockdown measures, was given the No. 2 spot in the CCP Politburo Standing Committee — an indication of Xi’s elevation of political loyalty above those capable of gaining public support through competent administration.
Li had been Xi’s virtual chief-of-staff while he headed the eastern province of Zhejiang.
Many Chinese had hoped for a relaxation of the strict COVID-19 curbs, which remain in place while the rest of the world has opened up. China’s borders remain largely closed, and arrivals must undergo a 10-day quarantine.
China yesterday reported 1,337 new COVID-19 cases — most of them asymptomatic — and no new deaths.
Shanghai reported 11 cases, all of whom were asymptomatic.
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