I've seen a bunch of conflicting reports regarding this. Some propaganda outlets are like "they're killing cats and dogs and people are throwing themselves out of building" but I've also heard reports from more reasonable people that they indeed fucked up some of the lockdown measures.
Does anybody have some (reliable) info? Did they resolve the supply chain issues and how many people were affected anyway?
Here is the mango press article:
spoiler
The epidemic control situation in Shanghai has been a disaster, as per other Chinese cities containment procedures, but why?
For one, Shanghai is a very “liberal” city, being the heart of China’s tech / foreign trade industries, being home to many immigrants (or ‘expats’ as they refer to themselves) and having differing laws with regards to other Chinese cities, in part due to Shanghai being a ‘Special Economic Zone’ - which affords it special legislative exemptions.
As a result, the average Shanghai citizen, when compared to a Beijinger, a Wuhanese, or a Tianjin resident, tends to be more critical of direct government intervention and oversight.
The infamous “Shanghai Clique” formerly headed by former Chinese premier Jiang Zemin, is known throughout China as the CPCs “liberal wing” - being more in favour of finance capital and friendly relations with the West than almost any other branch of the CPC leadership. They’re also less likely to ‘take lectures’ from Beijing, and due to the high economic value of Shanghai, have often been “given a pass” by the central government as a way to further Chinese economic growth (which, through taxation, is redistributed to poorer and more rural areas of China to aid with infrastructure construction and poverty alleviation)
Added into the above pressures, Shanghai is the world’s third most populous city, with approximately 28.5 million residents; third only to New Delhi (32 million) and the Tokyo metropolitan area (37.2 million).
Never in human history has a lockdown of a city of this size been attempted. Before now.
The key failings of the anti-epidemic prevention measures in Shanghai, as discussed by Chinese people, are as follows:
• Poorly timed imposition of lockdown - in cities like Wuhan, 3-5 cases is enough to trigger community lockdown, and a single case is often enough to require full testing of residents to prevent spread. Shanghai’s local government waited until the case numbers had already passed 200 confirmed cases, which, with Omicron, is “too late”
• Poor food provision - before the arrival of the PLA, the situation for some in the city was becoming dire, as the local government had not budgeted nor prepared sufficient stockpiles for a whole-city lockdown. Prior to this outbreak, Shanghai has never really had significant covid outbreaks, so the local officials clearly grew lax.
The positive takeaways, however, are as follows:
• the local government succeeded in conducting three rounds of mass testing, meaning the entire city of 25~28 million were successfully tested, three times. Cases were isolated and treated were applicable.
• once the local government realised they were unable to cope, they petitioned the central Beijing government for support, which came in the form of mass PLA/CPC deployments, and rerouted food supplies being sent in from all across China. With luck, and the successful and rapid deployment of the PLA, this situation will hopefully resolve itself soon.
In China, the approval rating for the Central, Beijing government is approximately 94%. Contrasted with this is an approximate 72-75% approval rating for ‘local governments’ - this Shanghai Covid situation exposes the reasoning behind such a differentiation.
Let this be a lesson to the ‘anti-authority’ people in Shanghai; only through constant communal effort can an outbreak like this be defeated.
and a few people here and GenZedong still admire Jiang Zemin, his rule was probably the worst period of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics' capitalist expression.
a few people here and GenZedong still admire Jiang Zemin
"Too young, too simple, sometimes naive"
I have heard that Shanghai local gov fucked up pretty badly due to 'Living with Covid' western brainworms, implementing half-hearted rolling lockdowns measures instead of decisively from the start causing the cases to rose up significantly. The 'killing dogs' things are true (though isolated to a few cases I think) and people have a lots of complaint due to ineffective, insufficient lockdown support, though this vary and depend on the competency of local councils in charge of neighborhoods.
iirc, pet owners had to stay at quarantine places and the staff didn't know how to handle the pets so they killed them, people in China were super angry about that too.
Damn that sucks. If the government ever kills my kitty I'm turning into a raging libertarian instantly.
I've been in touch with family and friends in Shangahi (all Chinese) who say that they're doing fine and are just bored. However, they've heard stories too so maybe there have been localized failures.
There's shit circulating on WeChat but there's always a bunch of shit stirring and panic mongering on there. Basically, just remember that if someone says "people are freaking out on Chinese social media" that you should parse it the same way as "people are freaking out on Facebook".
:parenti:
when they thought it was shanghai: "the people are rising up against their oppressive govt/lockdowns!'
when they find out its on taiwan reddit island: "goes to show how free the people are there to protest!"
https://twitter.com/moghilemear13/status/1513316497929773058
They probably fucked and are struggling to deal with people's demands, but western media is obviously just making shit up too.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010069/the-qualms-and-queries-of-locked-down-shanghai-residents-?source=chanel_home
Sixth Tone is pretty reliable (owned and run by Chinese people living in Shanghai, so no western brainworms) and they've had a lot of articles like this lately about how people in Shanghai are struggling.
Yeah that's what I thought.
Seems like overall they handled it alright but there's definitely room for improvement. I imagine it's pretty scary there right now for a person with chronic illness or otherwise requiring regular medical attention.
creating an account just to say sixthtone is awful and made entirely for the consumption western libs, and everyone working there wishes they were working at some western rag
Sixth Tone is owned by the communist party… Honestly curious about specific issues you might have with them. They’re ‘liberal’ on issues like gender and sexuality, which in my opinion is good in a pretty conservative Chinese social landscape.
you're misreading them completely. you're assuming the things they're silent about are where they agree with the party but it's pretty much the exact opposite. they quietly seethe about the stuff they're not allowed to touch. the gender stuff just happens to be where their leash is longest
look up the twitter page of their former editor in chief and tell me how it's any different from any western thinktank reptile, look who the writers follow and commiserate with on twitter, look up any article and how it's laced with the same snide passive aggression and deliberate misuse of scare quotes, look for any article even vaguely resembling the tone/content of the very spot-on Mango press article someone else linked to above
They’ll also often draw attention to labor and economic issues from a left perspective.
western mainstream media does all sorts of coverage pretending to care about about overworked migrant workers & sweatshops. the subtext is chinanotrealsocialism, nothing more. it's not that it shouldn't be covered, it's about it being in obvious bad faith
They’re critical of the government sometimes, but that’s just a sign of the diversity of opinion within the Party. They’re not perfect but imo they’re the best that Chinese state media has to offer on society and culture if you actually want some nuance in your reporting.
they hate the cpc and its leadership, but theyre bourgeois libs so theyre not willing to become total pariahs over it. this isn't a 'letting pefect be the enemy of good' thing, they only seem nuanced and balanced because of how psychotic western media is
You fell for the oldest hexbear trick: posting bad takes to make people join
:inconceivable:
We are a team of writers, editors, and researchers from within China and abroad. We belong to Shanghai United Media Group
https://www.sixthtone.com/about-us
Shanghai United Media Group (Chinese: 上海报业集团) is a state media company of the People's Republic of China, established on October 28, 2013, through the merger of the city's two largest newspaper groups, Jiefang Daily Press Group and Wenhui–Xinmin United Press Group, to accelerate media reform and capitalize on the fast growth of Internet media. The media group is overseen by the Shanghai committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_United_Media_Group
How nice of the CPC to give libs their own containment newspaper.
I mean okay that kinda makes sense. But it's weird so many people here hate them then, if their main criticism of the party is that it's socially regressive, which is a criticism I thought most of the people here agreed with.
their main criticism is that the country is a one party leninist state and that english isn't the national language everyone learns from birth
I've only read like 3-4 of their articles so I don't really have a great grasp on what their politics are. Still, I find it weird that the Chinese Communist Party would fund a publication with such blatant anti-Chinese, anti-Communist takes so I think there must be something else going on here.
IDK reviving a genocidal war criminal using necromancy seems like a rather extreme move brah.
There's no reliable sources info right now, unfortunately. Here's what I've heard from being in Shanghai:
Killing cats and dogs: There's one case of a dog getting killed. No details so far. Likely more case than one, have not looked into them. I've heard multiple times of pet owners living alone tested positive being taken to quarantine sites and had to leave their pets at home. (With food and water, yes. But the pets are unlikely to be able to take care of themselves for at least 14 days)
People throwing themselves out of building: Not heard of it once. Likely bullshit.
What's the real problem is people are having problems keeping their fridges stocked until recently. In the first couple weeks of lockdown, the incompetent Shanghai gov could not handle the logistics of a city wide lockdown. Trucks and trucks of food are either denied to enter the city or the food rotted away before it's anywhere near the people. Food price got marked up to 200%-400% compared to normal, and some don't even have the chance to buy food at inflated prices.
The food situation is rapidly improving in the past few days. Heard some of the Shanghai gov got replaced, not sure if true. It's likely to be solved within a week or two.
Another thing that been happening is there's no established way to get critical medicine like insulin. People have to rely on a neighbor who knows a friend who have a cousin who knows someone with a vehicle pass who could get the medicine delivered to them. Heard they've opened a few more hospitals to handle situations like this yesterday. Hope it gets better. Had I not bought 3 months of meds by luck before the lockdown, would've suffered too.
All sorts of dark and depressing shit happened during the lockdowns in Australia. However, I refuse to believe that people in Shanghai are taking it worse than Australians did.
