SHANGHAI, March 22 – In footage shared on social media last week, a crowd in the northeast Chinese city of Shenyang bangs on the windows of a clothing market as they shout in frustration at the announcement of another round of COVID-19 Exams.
Although the local government was quick to urge people not to spread “rumours” about the incident, netizens reacted immediately. “Reject quarantine!” said one. “Many people have woken up to the truth,” said another.
“It’s actually over,” said a netizen who posted on WeChat under the username “Jasmine Tea.” “The common cold is more serious than that… Testing authorities want this to continue. The vaccine companies want to vaccinate forever.”
The comments reflect growing frustration across China as authorities use every tactic in their “zero-COVID” handbook to deal with the more contagious Omicron variant.
As case numbers soar, citizens are wondering if the government’s increasingly complex “dynamic release” methods — including continuous testing of residents — are still working.
At a briefing last week, Wang Hesheng, deputy head of the country’s National Health Commission, said China’s increasingly sophisticated tactics have reduced the inconvenience.
“It shows that at the expense of the normal activities of a very small number of people and the control of movement in very small areas, normal production and life for the most diverse regions and people is achieved in return,” he said.
But there are signs that a lack of clarity and consistency is angering the public, and China’s social media censors have been working overtime to try to stem the spate of complaints.
In Yanjiao, in Hebei province, a dormitory town for workers in Beijing, residents are struggling to get home amid strict lockdowns.
Images shared online, many of which have already been deleted, showed residents queuing in heavy snowfall to get test results to leave the capital. The posts attracted hundreds of comments.
“Three years have passed since the outbreak and the government is still so ineffective in dealing with it – a lazy unity government that completely ignores people’s life and death,” said a netizen, posting on China’s Twitter. like Weibo platform under the username Aobei.
Economic difficulties have also increased. A courier named Mao in the hard-hit city of Changchun in northeastern Jilin province told Reuters that 90% of neighborhoods are closed and he cannot make a living.
“I have no choice but to wait for them to unseal the city – it’s hopeless,” he said.
RANDOM CONTROLS
Local residents have also complained about the arbitrary nature of the rules and the uncontrolled power of neighborhood committees responsible for enforcing them.
In Beijing, a family said their residential committee is installing a surveillance device on their apartment door to ensure they comply with a two-week stay-at-home order. The order came after a family member entered a supermarket visited by a confirmed COVID-19 case two days earlier.
In Shanghai, residents have also been puzzled by the uneven testing standards and lockdown thresholds imposed by apartment blocks and condominiums across the city.
But China’s policies have caused more than inconvenience as netizens are increasingly willing to discuss how lockdowns have led to tragedies.
A widely shared post on Weibo last week reported that a patient undergoing chemotherapy at Shanghai Cancer Hospital died while being confined in her accommodation next to the hospital.
In since-deleted posts, bereaved families also shared stories of the deaths of loved ones caused by COVID-related disruption.
“My father died of a stroke late last year,” said one who posted under the name MaDDNa. “There was some hope for treatment. Unfortunately we had to wait for a nucleic acid test report and missed the best time for treatment.”
reporting by David Stanway; Additional reporting from newsrooms in Beijing and Shanghai. Editing by Gerry Doyle