Shanghai in lockdown: “We are appalled by the senselessness”

The lockdown in Shanghai seems to be leading to a humanitarian catastrophe: the Chinese city of millions lacks water, food and electricity. Eyewitnesses report dramatic scenes.

Every morning, Thomas M. asks his employees how they are at home. This Sunday he felt particularly helpless. In the middle of the night, a fire broke out in his employee’s apartment building. The exit had been closed by the authorities due to the lockdown. The fire brigade initially found it difficult to get through. “Fortunately, no one was injured,” says the head of a medium-sized company in Shanghai, who has been locked in his apartment complex for more than four weeks. His name has been changed because he wishes to remain anonymous.

The fire and the bolted door are not isolated incidents. In the metropolis of Shanghai, a strict government lockdown has been tightened in many parts of the city for over four weeks. Regardless of the people who have to get through it. There have been numerous reports of food shortages, poor hygiene in quarantine centres, lockdowns, fires and even attempted suicides.

“For a few days, the neighborhood committees have been putting up fences and barriers in front of houses everywhere,” Thomas and Claudia M. said on the phone. Parts of Shanghai with an increased number of Covid cases have been in a “hard lockdown” since Friday.

This includes the old part of the city, where many of the numerous migrant workers and service providers live. Before lockdown, they were out and about all day delivering food, groceries and other things around town.

Many cannot pay their rent

“People have never been at home for so long at a time. The buildings are dilapidated, the power supply is completely overloaded,” reports Thomas M. This is one of the reasons why fires break out in some buildings. People share bathrooms, there are no kitchens as they usually eat outside in street kitchens. Now the government sends them food packages containing cabbage, raw meat and eggs, but people cannot cook any of them. Many older residents do not know how to order food online with their cell phones, and the delivery services are only just staffed. Most of these people who work in the so-called gig economy don’t make money unless they’re out there to work. Many cannot pay their rent and are in despair.

“We saw footage of banners being hung out of the windows. They say who in the buildings starved to death or died of other reasons due to the lockdown,” says the M couple. These images cannot be verified. However, like other testimonies of the protest, they are immediately deleted by the government’s censorship apparatus.

“I have neither food nor water”

A six-minute video called “Shanghai Voices of April” circulated on Chinese social media platforms on Friday. You can see the city from a bird’s eye view. Presumably recorded phone calls and audio recordings are played to sad music. “I have neither food nor water,” complains one man. “Since eight in the morning my sick father has been turned away from all clinics,” another. The video is deleted by the government but re-uploaded elsewhere. The authorities cannot keep up with the removal of the many critical posts. For weeks, people have been complaining that they don’t have enough to eat and aren’t receiving medical attention. It’s the largest online protest since Chinese whistleblower Li Wenliang died at the start of the pandemic.

A total of 400,000 cases have been recorded in Shanghai since the outbreak began in early April. However, the number of unreported cases is likely to be higher. By the middle of the month, the entire city of 25 million was under a strict lockdown. Nobody was allowed to leave their home. Now the city is divided into three colors: red, yellow and green. Thomas M. and his wife live in a yellow zone, which means they can move freely in their apartment complex.

Reports of increased suicides

A German lawyer who is in contact with t-online has not been allowed to leave the house for a day because there was a positive case in his area. At the weekend he made a frightening observation: “Yesterday a middle-aged man jumped off the roof of the neighboring building. We were able to observe the jump from a distance of 100 meters as the crow flies. It is the fourth suicide in our area and circle of acquaintances in Shanghai since the beginning of April,” says he.

Videos are also circulating on the Internet of people jumping from roofs and windows, apparently out of desperation. These recordings are not confirmed. There are no official figures on this. Until recently, the government did not even publish official death figures. This has now changed. A peak of 39 Covid deaths was reported on Sunday. Almost all were elderly, unvaccinated people with previous illnesses. But the people who die because they do not receive medical care or take their own lives do not appear in these statistics. Even the Chinese media are reporting an increasing need for psychological help. A large-scale Chinese survey in 2020 showed that almost 35 percent of those surveyed felt mentally stressed at the peak of the pandemic.

No end of lockdown in sight

An end to the strict measures is not in sight for the time being, especially in districts with a high number of cases, although the total number of cases on Sunday fell by ten percent compared to the previous day. Not only fences and bars, but also electronic door alarms are being placed on homes to prevent those infected from going out. Entire districts are currently being evacuated, and the empty apartments are then being disinfected. An official statement from local Communist Party officials in an area north of the city includes instructions to take residents to quarantine facilities more than 100 miles away, the BBC reports.

People who test positive and their contacts will be taken to one of the many new quarantine centers. There are sometimes bad hygienic conditions. At the beginning of the outbreak, parents were separated from their children, pets whose owners were in quarantine were beaten to death in the street. Those measures were dropped after a public outcry.

In Beijing, too, people fear a lockdown. Since 22 new infections were registered on Sunday, the supermarket shelves have been bought empty in many places. There is a feeling of powerlessness. “We are appalled by the pointlessness. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe,” says the German couple, who actually love Shanghai but, like so many foreigners, are now considering leaving the country.