The Covid Lockdown of China, Nationwide, Forever By James Reed
While Covid lockdowns have ended in the West, perhaps to the disappointment of the Covid elites, the situation is different in China, which now Xi is supreme emperor, is doubled down. The CCP has said that the situation is a “grim epidemic situation.” That means that there is not yet zero Covid, which is not likely to ever be reached, since the very conditions for concentrating the virus through viral evolution is focussed. What is of interest here is the oppressive response which has led to people being locked into factories, as detailed below. Even Victoria did not reach these levels of tyranny, allowing people to at least be moved to their homes, which became prisons for solitary confinement.
“China’s coronavirus lockdowns spread across much of the nation this week, hitting large cities and manufacturing hubs in what the state-run Global Times conceded was a “grim epidemic situation.”
The Global Times reported Henan province is bracing for “potential [Chinese coronavirus] outbreaks in the winter and next spring,” which suggests residents of the provincial capital Zhengzhou should enjoy the lifting of coronavirus restrictions in select “low-risk areas” while they can.
Zhengzhou is the location of the Foxconn plant, the world’s largest factory for assembling Apple’s iPhones. Terrified workers are scrambling over fences and fleeing the city to escape a potential lockdown after a rash of Chinese coronavirus infections was reported at the facility.
The Global Times reported that Zhengzhou officials are simultaneously pleading with Foxconn workers to remain calm and regard Chinese coronavirus as a treatable disease of moderate severity – an astonishing 180-degree turn from the Communist Party’s usual rhetoric – and offering rides home to the workers who insist on leaving:
An additional 200 staff doing nucleic acid tests have been dispatched to the Foxconn production plant, as a way to detect the infectors as soon as possible amid several rounds of nucleic acid test, in order to curb the virus spreading, according to the local authorities on Monday. Meanwhile, an additional 400 working staff have also been dispatched to the region to do timely disinfection.
Foxconn previously denied rumors claiming that about 20,000 employees have been affected with COVID-19 in the company’s Zhengzhou park and claimed that “operation and production in the Zhengzhou park is relatively stable with health and safety measures for employees being maintained,” according to a statement sent to the Global Times previously.
A classified epidemic management will be conducted to help resume the normal life gradually in Zhengzhou. Residents should abide by the requirements of epidemic prevention and control, wear masks, scan health codes, check the negative nucleic acid test certificate within 24 hours before traveling, and residents are not allowed to go to the COVID-19 affected areas, said the authorities.
Even as city officials proclaimed looser coronavirus restrictions and the return of “normal life” to parts of Zhengzhou, they also instructed residents “not to leave the city unless necessary.”
Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong, has also reported a “serious outbreak,” which Chinese Communist officials blamed largely on “imported [Chinese coronavirus] cases from other provinces and overseas.”
“Chinese officials on Wednesday announced a one-week coronavirus lockdown in the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone, the district where Foxconn Technology Group’s massive iPhone assembly plant is located.
The plant made international headlines this week when workers began climbing over the fences and attempting to flee Zhengzhou before they either contracted Chinese coronavirus or were caught in one of China’s draconian “zero-Covid” lockdowns.
Taiwanese-owned Foxconn showed some sympathy for its panicked employees by offering them transportation to their home cities, which in some cases were over 60 miles away. The company offered daily and monthly bonuses to those employees who were willing to stay.
The Chinese Communist Party evidently decided it would be more expedient to cut off the routes of escape by locking the entire Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone down, as reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Wednesday:
Authorities said the district lockdown will last until noon on November 9, according to a statement posted on an official account. Extensions of such lockdowns in China are common.
“The current pandemic situation is severe and complicated,” the statement said, adding the lockdown was intended “to protect the lives and health of the people, reduce the flow of people, and quickly and effectively contain the spread of the pandemic”.
Private businesses have been closed, gatherings are suspended and only essential traffic is being allowed. Government employees were told to work from home or volunteer help for local mass testing or other community needs.
City officials also announced mass coronavirus testing on a daily basis and threatened to “strictly deal with those found to be disobedient.”
Chinese subjects are forced to install a smartphone app on their phones that enables the central government to flag them with color-coded health warnings if they do not test negative for Chinese coronavirus on a regular basis. The Communist Party has abused the app to force healthy people into quarantine for political reasons on several occasions.
The SCMP noted Chinese officials waited several days to disclose how severe the Zhengzhou coronavirus outbreak was, leaving city residents and Foxconn employees to speculate about their situation via phone messages and social media.
Foxconn moved quickly to implement coronavirus procedures in its plant, but that only led to complaints on social media about “inadequate living conditions threatening their health,” as the SCMP put it, so the sense of apprehension in Zhengzhou grew more pronounced.
Among other complaints, workers said the Foxconn plant was not stocked with enough food for the roughly 200,000 workers trapped within. Insiders accused plant management of putting workers who tested positive for Chinese coronavirus in close contact with those who had not, and said the factory’s modest quarantine zone was quickly overwhelmed.
Zhengzhou city officials made a show of relaxing restrictions in “low-risk” areas of the city on Tuesday after complaints from residents, but this only led to accusations of “performative lockdown lifting” on social media.
In short, critics accused the city government of trying to impress Chinese national media by claiming they had done such a good job of controlling the Chinese coronavirus outbreak that restrictions imposed in early October could be relaxed, but in truth “normal life” did not resume. The new lockdown on the area surrounding the Foxconn plant will provide fresh ammunition for these skeptics.
“Earlier experiences in China, such as those with the Shanghai lockdown earlier this year, suggest that the Zhengzhou measures could extend beyond what was initially announced,” the New York Times (NYT) posited on Wednesday, putting the fears of many Zhengzhou residents into words.”
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