How Shanghai’s zero-Covid policy has made the city a dystopia
The “hard isolation” (硬隔离) decreed by local authorities in several Chinese cities as part of the Communist Party’s zero-Covid policy amid an outbreak of Omicron cases has created a dystopia, with empty streets, no food, people locked in their homes behind fences or panels, carted off to quarantine centers, with robots and drones patrolling the streets and air to “encourage” the population to be patriotic as they shout protests from their windows and balconies, and all capped by the biggest logistic jam in history around Shanghai’s port.
Highly disturbing reports from Shanghai, a cosmopolitan city of 25 million people prompted me to contact people I know in the city. What they have told me confirms the news, and provides chilling details about a situation they describe as “unimaginable and unreal. Some areas of the city have been in lockdown since early March, and residents remain confined in their homes, unable to go to test centers, and forced to take daily tests in their homes, which, if positive, lead to the continued confinement of the entire building, in what seems to many to be an endless and desperate cycle.
The confinement really took hold at the beginning of April, with the authorities saying it would initially last five days, which people believed, so they stocked up on supplies for about a week. But as…
