Citizens turn on China’s ZERO-COVID strategy

Locked-down residents in China are protesting as patience wears thin over the country’s strict ZERO-COVID rules as the Omicron variant spreads.

A video online — already deleted by censors in China — showed people in a Shanghai housing compound chanting: “We want to work, we want to eat, we want the right to know, we want the local authorities to resolve the situation, we want freedom!”

Further north in Jilin province, which has been heavily affected this year by Omicron, 160 workers that built a makeshift hospital said they had not been paid for their labour, and were demanding that a state-run construction firm settle their wages.

The contractors built a 3,000-bed temporary hospital in five days, after which they were sent to quarantine in unsanitary conditions. Forty of them tested positive and weren’t given any care or food.

Discussions about their situation has been restricted online and their current status remains unknown.

In Changchun, another city in Jilin, people have been furious about not being able to order groceries under lockdown, and are criticizing the local government for mishandling the situation — reminiscent of the first Wuhan lockdown in 2020 when people posted online to complain and seek help.

Residents are upset that, even in the third year of the pandemic, local authorities are not able to manage sudden lockdowns, with many questioning why they need to resort to social media to receive help.

China’s ZERO-COVID strategy has worked repeatedly to contain outbreaks, and government messaging about “wartime measures” being part of citizens’ patriotic responsibilities has largely prompted most people to follow the rules. For most Chinese, the ZERO-COVID response was a source of pride — a sign that Beijing’s system was superior in times of emergency, compared with the chaos in other nations, including the U.S. and U.K.

But as much of the world gradually discovers a new normal and borders reopen, residents appear tired of the disruptive measures.

Some employees are forced to sleep at the office to keep working despite lockdowns, while others have been unable to seek medical assistance for elderly parents for NON-COVID ailments. Shanghai is the latest city to be sealed and China’s largest, with 26 million residents, as authorities implement a two-stage plan to isolate everyone and conduct mass testing.

Shanghai is also China’s financial hub. Along with the recent lockdowns, there could be impact to growth in the world’s second-largest economy, which has already waned under pandemic strain.

On Wednesday, China reported 1,629 new cases, bringing the current nationwide total to 28,163.