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.