Just a few days ago, the Western media all but bragged about the idea that first a big Covid wave in Hong Kong, then a Covid peak in Shanghai, and initially only a limited building-level lockdown in Shanghai meant that China was in trouble. With the rest of the world, the “learning to live with Covid-19” approach is tantamount to “putting business first.”

China has locked down Shenzhen, the tech hub of 17.5 million people, for six days starting March 14. The Shenzhen operation was a success, with the city reducing cases to just four, small enough to be handled through contact tracing. Even so, while manufacturing plants reopened on the 21st, many restrictions remain.

In Shanghai, the local government tried to avoid a mass lockdown by imposing a 48-hour blockade of the complex and two mandatory tests for everyone, but this apparently exposed what China believes to be unacceptably high levels of infection. via South China Morning Post:

Despite previous assurances that Shanghai will not be locked down, areas east and west of the Huangpu River will be restricted separately in a two-phase plan

On Monday, China recorded 1,219 locally confirmed cases and 4,996 local asymptomatic infections

For reference, Alabama’s population is less than 5 million, less than 1/5 of Shanghai’s. Compare Shanghai to our winter Covid peak:

The actual level in Alabama is almost certainly higher because home testing is becoming more common and those results are not often reported to officials.

The scientist GM explained by email in mid-2021 why China is far less tolerant of Covid than capitalist economies:

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have written many articles explaining the old Soviet system – both the health care system designed by NS Semashko in the 1920s with the basic principle of preventing disease and infection, and the social system as a whole. Also – never let things go the way they have been in the past 16 months. Transmission will stop at all costs. Its residual effects may be the main reason why countries like China, Vietnam and Laos have sought to eliminate it from the start (and Cuba too, although they have been unable to control it recently).

I think the reason Russia and the former Warsaw Pact members didn’t stick to their previous priorities was that the dire post-Soviet situation set a new, very low baseline for public health standards. Read “The Death of a Nation”, embedded at the end of this postif you haven’t already.

Let’s not forget that China’s blockade pales the Western version:

People are confined to their homes. Video from the Republic shows they will be allowed to pick up food at nearby locations. I dare say it only works for a limited area:

Currently, the “Pudong Supermarket” tag has 130 million views on Weibo. The video, shared on social, shows the chaotic scene (the local supermarket is open until 24:00). pic.twitter.com/4sQXwUnHn1

— Manya Kotze (@manyapan) March 27, 2022

More details from the Financial Times:

Shanghai pushed ahead with a strict lockdown on Monday, dividing China’s largest city into two districts, as authorities struggled to contain a record number of coronavirus cases in the country’s most important financial center.

The government will shut down public transport this week as it conducts mass testing in Pudong, the city’s financial district east of the Huangpu River. Similar restrictions will apply to the Puxi district of Jiangxi from April 1.

The measures marked the first time the Shanghai authorities imposed a lockdown to keep residents at home, sparking panic buying across the city as shoppers rushed to stock up on vegetables.

Note that this reversal happened in just 48 hours. Officials in Shanghai have just reiterated plans to remain largely open. From the Guardian:

Covid-19 cases in Shanghai have risen sharply, but officials have ruled out a full lockdown because it would damage the economy…

Shanghai, however, aims to mitigate disruption with a more targeted approach, characterized by 48-hour lockdowns and mass testing of individual communities, while largely keeping the metropolis of 25 million people running.

At a daily news conference in Shanghai on Saturday, officials mentioned the importance of avoiding a complete blockade of the huge port city.

“If our city, Shanghai, is completely shut down, there will be many international freighters floating in the East China Sea,” said Wu Fan, a medical expert at the Shanghai Anti-epidemic Working Group.

“This will affect the entire national economy and the global economy.”

Shanghai is not letting the port close completely, but it is unclear whether the partial relief there will have much of an impact on shipping volumes. from splash 247:

For shipping, congestion at ports – already severe – is expected to intensify in the coming days, while overseas terminals in Europe and North America will have to brace for a bigger whiplash when cities return to normal productivity – — while global supply chains absorbed the impact of a seven-day lockdown from Shenzhen to the south earlier this month.

The authorities decided to use the Huangpu River to divide Shanghai in two, imposing a new two-part blockade. The city recorded 2,631 new asymptomatic cases on Saturday, accounting for nearly 60% of the total number of new asymptomatic cases in China that day, plus 47 new symptomatic cases.

Pudong in the east of the city is in lockdown from today until Friday as mass testing takes place, while Puxi in the west will be locked down from April 1 to 5.

Public transport will be suspended and most factories will stop working. However, essential workers, including port labor, will not be subject to the stay-at-home order.

The Financial Times recommends President Xi backs more support for the economy:

President Xi Jinping this month stressed the need to “minimize” the virus’ impact on China’s economy after the southern tech hub of Shenzhen was locked down. In Shanghai, authorities said a few weeks ago that a full lockdown was not necessary, although buildings with positive cases were often locked down.

However, Western media have been attacking China’s “zero epidemic” strategy because it shows that the West’s so-called “no choice” is empty. So it’s not clear whether Xi Jinping’s words have been given too much weight. As GM points out:

Regarding the epidemic, I can’t read first-hand information, and I can only rely on fragmented information to do these things. The very primitive understanding that arises from this is that the local forces in Shanghai are somewhat disgusted with Beijing, probably because of the importance of Shanghai, and with the The West is also more connected, the largest center of its kind, so in a way, it makes sense for them to try to undermine containment given that Xi Jinping must be re-elected later this year and the coronavirus is raging across China It should do him a lot of damage. After much deliberation, most of the local Chinese experts who say they will be torn up are also from Shanghai, which is in line with this interpretation. It doesn’t make much sense that the central government allows this to happen so easily, and of course there is another explanation that continuing containment efforts at this point could be seen as a bigger political cost, so Xi Jinping himself will abandon them . But at least a million people will die in the next few months…

Unfortunately, it’s basically impossible to figure out what’s going on from English-language sources – most of these media outlets are allied with the West and have spent over a year pressuring Hong Kong for a major campaign against its elderly Mass murder, which ultimately succeeds, and the rest is propaganda outlets that reveal nothing of substance. And I somehow, despite all my years, never worked closely enough with any Chinese to discuss such issues, they all immediately diverted any attempt to steer the conversation away from talking about inside China…

Twitter, on the other hand, did a lot about the anti-blockade protests in Shenzhen:

The video appears to show protests in Shenzhen two days ago, with residents demanding an end to the lockdown.

Two days ago, citizens in a certain district of Shenzhen demanded to lift the protest https://t.co/LYiqgy8rBr

– Kevin Slaten (@KevinSlaten) March 24, 2022

However, all I’ve seen so far are two clips, each posted many times, possibly as two separate events. Even so, one shows up to 100 people and the other shows the crowd is bigger but still looks less than 1000. In other words, video evidence, which usually excels at overselling, does not support mass protests.

But if there’s really a lot of unpleasantness, it’s the result of a failed messaging.How many people in China know U.S. male life expectancy drops by more than two years during Covid? Or about the prevalence and severity of long-term Covid and other forms of damage, even in asymptomatic and mild cases? How about T cell exhaustion and increased risk of cancer? Or does reinfection seem to be more serious?

Michael Pettis, citing the South China Morning Post, highlighted the ability of large commercial centres to challenge the central government’s view:

2/2
“For local authorities in poorer cities,” the South China Morning Post added, “the economic cost is likely to be insignificant compared to the political impact of an out-of-control outbreak.”

— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) March 18, 2022

We might have a better guess if the sudden face change was the result of Xi Jinping’s idea of ??distilling the proper trade-off between public safety and business, or if it was a raw power struggle in which Shanghai tried to rebel against Beijing and was slapped in the face. Because the number of cases was found to be a number deemed unacceptably high by the central government.

Either way, this development shows that China is not on the “Let’er rip” and even if it does ease its zero Covid line, its tolerance for contagion will be far less than the rest of the world accepts .