Shanghai residents clash with police over coronavirus policy

• Shanghai reports 23,000 Covid-19 cases as economic impact bites

Shanghai residents scuffled with hazmat-suited police officers ordering them to surrender their homes to coronavirus (Covid-19) patients, videos on social media showed, providing a rare glimpse into rising discontent in the megacity over China’s inflexible virus response.
The city of 25mn and China’s economic engine room has become the heart of the country’s biggest outbreak since the peak of the first virus wave in Wuhan over two years ago, rattling the strict zero-Covid policy.
Authorities are rushing to construct tens of thousands of beds to house Covid-19 patients as daily infections top 20,000 – small compared with parts of the world getting used to living with the virus.
Some stuck in Shanghai, locked down since early April, have flooded social media with complaints of food shortages and of over-zealous officialdom forcing them into state quarantine, challenging China’s “Great Firewall” of censorship which wipes dissenting views from the internet almost as soon as they appear.
Videos circulated late on Thursday showing residents outside a compound shouting at ranks of officials holding shields labelled “police”, as the officers tried to break through their line.
In one clip, police appear to make several arrests as the residents accuse them of “hitting people”.
The incident began after authorities ordered 39 households to move out of their homes to house virus patients in the development, according to Zhangjiang Group, the developer of the housing complex.
It has provided a rare window into public anger in China, where Communist authorities brook little dissent and censors routinely scrub information relating to protests from the Internet.
In one live-streamed video, a woman can be heard weeping and asking “why are they taking an old person away?” as officials appeared to put someone into a car.
Zhangjiang Group said that it had compensated the tenants and moved them into other units in the same compound.
The group recognised that videos of the compound that had “appeared on the Internet” on Thursday and said “the situation had now settled down” after “some tenants obstructed the construction” of a quarantine fence.
Search results for the name of the apartment complex disappeared from China’s Twitter-like Weibo by morning yesterday.
Some Shanghai residents have poured their anger at the handling of the virus onto the Internet.
They have ripped into authorities for allowing food shortages as well as heavy-handed controls, including the killing of a pet corgi by a health worker and a now-softened policy of separating infected children from their virus-free parents.
Other videos and audio clips have indicated increasing desperation among city inhabitants, including some showing residents bursting through barricades demanding food.
In one unverified viral video, a drone flying through a residential area broadcast a message urging residents to “control your soul’s desire for freedom”.
The vast majority of virus cases detected each day are in people with no symptoms – and there have been no deaths officially reported in the city since this outbreak.
Shanghai health official Wu Qianyu said on Thursday that there were only nine severe cases, mostly older patients with underlying health conditions.
Yet the authorities have vowed that the city “would not relax in the slightest”, preparing over a hundred new quarantine facilities to receive every person who tests positive.
Pressure on the city to bring its outbreak under control is mounting from above, with President Xi Jinping warning on Wednesday that strict virus measures “cannot be relaxed” and proclaiming that “persistence is victory”, in a speech published by state media.
While the daily tally of Covid-19 cases in Shanghai has fallen slightly, authorities said yesterday that the city’s lockdown threatened to exact a heavier toll on the world’s second-biggest economy.
China’s automakers may have to suspend production next month if suppliers in Shanghai and surrounding areas can’t resume work, the chief executive officer of electric-car maker Xpeng said, while airlines and the property sector are also feeling the pain.
Shanghai reported 23,000 Covid-19 cases yesterday, down from more than 27,000 the day before.
However, the number of symptomatic cases in that tally edged up to a record 3,200, from the 2,573 reported a day earlier.
Officials releasing the data did not comment on the reason for the overall fall in the city.
China’s efforts to stop the virus with a strict “zero-Covid-19” policy are triggering economic disruptions that are rippling through global supply chains for goods ranging from electric vehicles to iPhones.
Xpeng chief executive officer He Xiaopeng issued a dire warning for his sector unless the situation improves.
“If the suppliers in Shanghai and its surrounding areas can’t find a way to resume operations and production, in May possibly all of China’s carmakers will have to stop production,” He said on his Wechat social media feed.
An April 7 study by Gavekal Dragonomics found that 87 of China’s 100 largest cities by gross domestic product have imposed some form of quarantine curbs.
Covid-19 curbs have also devastated travel across the country, with carrier Air China reporting a 70% drop in March traffic from a year ago on Thursday.
Home prices stalled for a second month in a row in China’s 70 major cities last month, according to official data released yesterday, as the Covid-19 lockdowns sapped consumer confidence and undermined demand.
China’s State Council, or cabinet, said on Wednesday that more policy measures were needed to support the economy, but analysts are unsure if rate cuts would quickly reverse the slump as long as the government maintains its Covid-19 policy.

Xian imposes temporary, partial lockdown
The northwestern Chinese city of Xian said yesterday that it will temporarily impose a partial lockdown to reduce its 13mn residents’ movement, after reporting dozens of coronavirus (Covid-19) infections this month, as China fights a record wave of cases.
Since March, mainland China has been grappling with the worst Covid-19 outbreak since the virus first emerged in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Though the numbers remain moderate by international comparisons, the latest wave has put huge pressure on China’s “dynamic-clearance” policy that aims to leave no infections undetected, with tough measures disrupting supply chains and local economies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said there should be no let-up in virus control and prevention efforts while China would strive to minimise the policy’s impact on the economic and social development.
Xian, which locked down its residents in December to fight a Delta variant outbreak, found 43 locally transmitted infections in its current Omicron flare-up.
The city responded with curbs on residents’ movement from today through to Tuesday (April 16-19), though stopped short of imposing a full lockdown.