Uncertainty after the end of the lockdown in Shanghai

After the far-reaching opening steps in Shanghai on June 1, when the city administration released most of the 25 million residents into freedom, further easing came into force on Monday. Not only are shops allowed to reopen and outdoor restaurants serve guests, but secondary school students are also allowed to return to their classrooms. The Shanghai authorities also want to reopen cinemas and fitness centers soon.

Public life in China’s economically most important city came to a standstill for almost 60 days, and the metropolis resembled a ghost town. Still a bit incredulous, many Shanghainese stepped outside their houses and apartments last week. They didn’t really trust the new freedom, which ended up coming faster than originally planned. Eventually, shopkeepers began to clean their business premises, and the first queues formed in front of restaurants and cafés.

The police filmed the revelers

“It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was at least a little freedom regained,” says Liu Yue* on the phone. On the evening of the grand opening, she met friends for a drink in a downtown bar area. “There were police officers everywhere,” says the management consultant, “when we took off the masks to drink, they filmed us.” Shanghai is still a long way from normality, says Liu.

Liu, in her thirties, came to Shanghai from her home province of Shandong in north-eastern China a good six years ago. In her pocket she had a degree in business administration from the renowned Shandong University of Technology. And she quickly made a career. After working for several Chinese and foreign companies, Liu now works for an international consulting company in the insurance sector.

Before she moved to the “city over the sea”, as Shanghai is called in German, in early 2016, acquaintances had warned her. The Shanghainese are arrogant, they told her, and: “They will discriminate against you.” But Liu liked Shanghai right away. The greater freedom, the cosmopolitanism and the intercultural aspects are great. Liu says: “Shanghai is not a typical Chinese city.”

Confidence and optimism have given way to sobriety

But after two months in her apartment, Liu’s confidence and optimism have given way to a new sobriety. Your picture has cracks. The mixture of amateurishness and brute force with which the authorities enforced the lockdown surprised Liu. The government has given the order “zero Covid” from top to bottom, no matter what the cost. It is a system in which the individual counts for nothing when in doubt.

This policy led to the ugly scenes of security guards locking apartment complexes with bike locks, taking house keys from residents, denying medical attention to sick people, and forcibly entering homes, disinfecting them and ruining facilities in the process. The pride of a cosmopolitan city shattered by a Leninist party waging a Cultural Revolution-style mass campaign to eradicate a virus at all costs.

In addition, there is the enormous economic damage caused by the lockdown, which has also left its mark on Liu’s business books. She was still able to complete a few degrees. But because she could no longer meet clients, there were significantly fewer. She thinks she’s lucky in her misfortune. Many Chinese are now losing their jobs, says Liu, with the result that more and more people are looking to the future with great uncertainty. Many of them will experience for the first time in their lives that things don’t always go up.

Feng Feng wants to go back to Shanghai

Feng Feng* still has work and wants only one thing at the moment: back to Shanghai. The 42-year-old has been working as a domestic help for several Shanghai families for many years. On May 20, as the government began to ease lockdown restrictions, authorities approved her request to be released from isolation. She was able to travel to her family in Zhejiang Province, not far from Shanghai. Now that the city is open again, she wants to get back to work quickly.

Unlike Liu Yue, who lives in a large apartment, the seven weeks of isolation were torture for Feng. “We only got up briefly to eat and then lay down again straight away,” she says in a video call. There simply wasn’t enough space. Feng shares a seven-square-meter room with another domestic help in Shanghai. The two women spent the days in lockdown watching television and on their cell phones. “It was just horrible,” says Feng. The food supply worked, but the prices were exorbitant.

Feng consciously accepts the risk of another lockdown, because the pay for domestic help in Shanghai is better than in a few other cities in China. “I want to go back to Shanghai,” she says, “even if I’ll be locked up again at some point.” Concern about a new lockdown is also a constant companion for Liu. She firmly assumes that if the number of cases increases, individual quarters will be sealed off again, and adds: “That would probably be normal.”

Bad memories of the Cultural Revolution

It is the new normal in China, where head of state and party leader Xi Jinping has declared zero tolerance as the top priority in combating the pandemic. It is no longer just about avoiding serious illnesses. Rather, Xi’s zero-Covid policy bears traits of an ideology to which the party also subordinates people’s economic well-being. Unpleasant memories of Mao Zedong’s era are awakened.

Educated and enlightened Chinese women like Liu know that this policy is hardly sustainable in the long term because of the easy transferability of the omicron variant. Liu is concerned when people die from other diseases because they don’t have access to medical care because of the lockdowns. “Instead of simply locking people away, the government should ensure that the elderly are finally vaccinated,” Liu demands. “Zero Covid doesn’t work.”

Recently, the daily new infections are officially in the single or double digits. On Sunday, for example, the Shanghai authorities reported eight new infections. But that can change quickly despite the constant tests that the government has ordered. Then she should resort to drastic measures again. Peace in Shanghai is fragile.

* Name changed by editors.