HOT AIR BALLOON FLIGHT

View In Browser

Nectar Gan and Steve George

 

Unending cycle of lockdowns tests limits of China's zero-Covid policy

 

For residents in China's northwestern city of Xi'an, the start of 2022 is looking a lot like 2020 — only worse.

 

Since December, the ancient city known as the home of the Terracotta Warriors has been grappling with China's largest community coronavirus outbreak since Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic.

 

To date, more than 1,600 cases have been reported in the city. While the number pales in comparison to those in many other countries, the outbreak pushed China's caseload in the final week of 2021 to the highest level since March 2020.

 

For 12 days and counting, Xi'an's 13 million residents have been confined to their homes. The city, formerly a tourist hotspot, welcomed the new year with deserted streets, shuttered stores, sealed-off residential compounds and an empty airport.

 

The lockdown is the strictest and largest since Wuhan, which sealed off 11 million people in early 2020.

 

But it is also among the most chaotic, leaving residents short of food and other essential supplies and affecting access to medical services.

 

A groundswell of anger and frustration at the local government has ensued, underscoring the growing challenge facing China's zero-Covid policy, which relies on a playbook of mass testing, extensive quarantines and snap lockdowns to stamp out any resurgence of the virus.

 

For almost two years, these stringent measures have shielded the majority of the country from the worst aspects of the pandemic, winning overwhelming public support. But as local outbreaks continue to flare up, the outcry in Xi'an raises the question of just how long zero-Covid can be sustained before public support begins to taper off, with millions of residents trapped in an seemingly endless cycle of lockdowns.

 

Over the past week, Chinese social media was inundated with cries for help and criticism over perceived incompetence of the local Xi'an government. Residents flooded a livestream of a government Covid news conference with demands for groceries — prompting embarrassed officials to disable all comments.

 

Despite some censorship, the issue has continued to gain traction. On Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, the hashtag "Grocery shopping in Xi'an is difficult" has been viewed 380 million times as of Monday.

 

Many expressed frustration they hadn't hoarded food in advance because local authorities had repeatedly reassured them food supplies were abundant and there was no need for panic buying.

 

In the first few days of the lockdown, each household was allowed to send one designated person out to buy groceries every two days. But as cases continued to rise, Xi'an further tightened lockdown measures, requiring all residents to stay at home unless permitted to go outside for mass testing.

 

"Previously I thought those panic buying folks were stupid. Now I've realized I am the stupid one," said a comment on Weibo.

 

Faced with the public outcry, local officials pledged steady deliveries of groceries to residents, with state media carrying footage of food arriving at residential compounds. While the supply shortage was eased in some neighborhoods, other residents complained on social media — including in comments below state media posts — that they had not received such deliveries in their communities.

 

Meanwhile, the heavy-handed approach adopted in some areas to enforce the lockdown has fueled further outrage.

 

On Friday, footage emerged on Weibo of a man being beaten by Covid prevention workers at the gates of a residential compound when he tried to enter with a bag of steamed buns. The video, which immediately went viral, showed the buns scattered on the ground as the man tumbled. The ensuing outcry prompted a statement from police, which said the two attackers were punished with a seven-day detention and a fine of 200 yuan (about $30).

 

For some, the cost of the lockdown was just too high. Last week, state media reported on two incidents of individuals going to extreme lengths to escape from Xi'an before restrictions kicked in.

 

A man trekked for 100 kilometers (62 miles) across the Qinling mountain range from the Xi'an airport, avoiding multiple village checkpoints on the way before he was finally spotted and taken into quarantine on December 24, eight days into his journey, according to a statement from the Ningshan county police.

 

In the other incident, a man cycled for 10 hours overnight in close to freezing temperatures in an attempt to return to his hometown, after he learned Xi'an would be locked down the next day. He was taken into quarantine and fined 200 yuan, according to a statement from the Chunhua county police.

 

Despite the difficulties, Xi'an officials have repeatedly pledged their resolve to contain the outbreak in public.

 

At a news conference Sunday, Liu Guozhong, the Communist Party boss of Shaanxi province, of which Xi'an is the capital, vowed to "further lift our spirits, entrench the awareness of achieving 100% prevention, control and isolation, prioritize epidemic prevention and control in urban villages, and achieve the goal of bringing cases back to zero in society as soon as possible."

 

In a show of resolve, the party secretary of Yanta district, one of the worst-hit areas in the outbreak, was dismissed, joining a long list of local officials who were fired for failing to contain Covid flare-ups.

 

The harsh lockdown measures appear to be working. On Sunday, Xi'an's daily case count dropped for the first time in more than a week to 122, followed by Monday's 90 cases.

 

If the trend continues, it will likely be only a matter of weeks before Xi'an successfully contains its outbreak as other cities have in the past. But it won't be the last time the coronavirus — and the stringent response to eradicate it — causes significant disruption to daily life and the local economy.

 

For now, it's a zero-Covid goal that China seems determined to achieve — even if it pushes public patience to the limit.

A colorful start to the year

Tourists watch ice structures illuminated by colorful lights on New Year's Day at a tourist spot in Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture, Gansu province. Compared with 2021, New Year's celebrations in China were a much more muted affair this year, as multiple local governments canceled events to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the lead up to the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.   

Map drawn from memory reunites a family

A man who was abducted as a child in China has found his parents again decades later — with the help of social media, online sleuths and a crude map drawn from memory.

Li Jingwei was only 4 years old when he was kidnapped from his village in Yunnan province, in southwestern China, in 1988. He was sold to another family in Henan province, where he grew up, according to state-run news outlet The Paper.

Even as a young child, he realized he had been taken from home — but he had no way of returning, he told The Paper. He didn't remember his birth name, his parents' names or the name of his village.

What he did remember, however, was what his hometown looked like: where trees grew, roads turned and rivers flowed. He remembered the rice paddies and ponds near his house, and where bamboo shoots grew in the nearby mountain. As a child, whenever he was homesick or sad, he would use a stick to draw a picture of his hometown — eventually creating the habit of drawing it at least once a day, he told The Paper.

Last year, he read the news about a father who was reunited with his abducted son after a 24-year search that inspired a well-known movie. This and other recent success stories inspired Li to give another shot at finding his parents, so he drew a map from memory of his hometown and shared it online. 

His childhood practice of drawing it daily paid off: the sketch shows a remarkable level of detail, showing a number of winding paths, houses and highways — even a label showing where the water buffalo lived.

The photo was shared widely on social media, and authorities got involved with the investigation. Soon, his suspected birth mother was located in Yunnan — and DNA comparison confirmed their relation on December 28.

On the morning of January 1, they were finally reunited at a police station in Henan. Video of the reunion, shared widely by state media and on social media, show Li falling to his mother's feet and the pair embracing in tears. "I've finally found my baby," said Li's mother, according to The Paper. 

Child abduction has long been rampant in China, a problem experts say is exacerbated by China's one-child policy, which has been relaxed in recent years. For decades, those who had a second child were given heavy fines, or made to abort pregnancies.

Traditionally, families — especially those in rural areas — viewed boys as more able to provide for the family, and carry on the family line. This demand drove a black market for infant boys, and pushed many families to give infant girls up for adoption.

In recent years, technology, social media, and police departments dedicated to the issue have allowed a number of now-adult abductees to reunite with their birth families.

Independent Hong Kong news site Citizen News says it will shut down on Tuesday, citing the deteriorating media environment in the city and the need to protect its staff.

 

Citizen News was the largest remaining independent news outlet in Hong Kong following the shuttering of Apple Daily in June and Stand News last Wednesday.

 

The news outlet announced the decision on Facebook, saying it was made to protect the safety of everyone involved. 

 

"Unfortunately, the major changes in our society in the last two years, and the deteriorating media environment, have made it impossible for us to realize our mission without worries," it wrote. "At the centre of a brewing storm, we found ourself in a critical situation. In the face of a crisis, we must ensure the safety and well-being of everyone who are on board."

 

Citizen News was founded in 2017 by a number of veteran Hong Kong reporters and is supported entirely by crowdfunding. The statement said its website will cease to be updated from Tuesday and will be removed "after a period of time."

 

Since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law in Hong Kong in 2020, pro-democracy groups have dissolved, activists and journalists have been arrested, and independent media outlets have shut down. 

 

Last summer, Apple Daily, Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy publication, closed after the arrests of multiple journalists and the freezing of millions of dollars of assets under the national security law.

 

And Stand News shuttered after police raided its office last Wednesday, arrested seven people associated with the publication and froze about 61 million Hong Kong dollars ($7.8 million) worth of assets from the company. 

 

While an initial government notice referenced a "conspiracy to publish seditious publications" — allegations that stem from a colonial-era crimes ordinance — the police involved with the Stand News case were national security officers.

 

Police said the arrests were connected to multiple "seditious" articles published by the outlet between July 2020 and November 2021.

 

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam defended the raid, claiming it had nothing to do with what they wrote. 

 

"This was purely enforcement work. This has nothing to do with journalistic or media work," Lam said Thursday.

 

— By CNN's Eric Cheung and Tara John

Around Asia

• An unidentified man who crossed the heavily armed border from South Korea into North Korea on Sunday is presumed to be a North Korean defector who made the journey in the opposite direction more than a year ago, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has again admitted there is a "food problem" in the country, during a speech which brought an important five-day meeting of his Korean Worker's Party to a close.

• Seven states in Malaysia were hit by floods on Sunday and thousands of people were evacuated, taking the total affected by heavy rain in the past two weeks to more than 125,000.

• A stampede at one of India's holiest shrines left at least 12 people dead on New Year's Day, a local official said.