Shanghai officially lifted its brutal two-month coronavirus lockdown on Wednesday. The announcement was accompanied by a flurry of editorials from Chinese state media seeking to reassure nervous foreign investors that lockdowns are over for the time being.
Propaganda outlets like China’s state-run Global Times could see nothing but happy citizens with “earnest hearts” reminiscing about the “warmth of mutual help in Chinese culture” during their grinding weeks of imprisonment.
What actually happened in Shanghai was desperate prisoner-residents crowdsourcing networks to distribute food and medicine after their government abandoned them, but the Global Times framed the lockdown saga as a triumph of Communist management:
Shanghai authorities, instead of lying flat in the face of the rampaging epidemic, did not give up on the city’s residents. They were able to solve these problems step by step, for example, by helping transfer the elderly man to a hospital for treatment and improving the medical emergency system.
“A society is not afraid of flaws, but the ability to correct errors matters. Chinese society has the ability to correct errors, an important symbol reflecting our system’s advantages,” Zeng Guang, former chief epidemiologist of China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times.
“I’m glad that our society has the ability to detect and solve problems in a rapid manner,” said Zeng. “We can’t judge a society negatively only because individual problems occurred in fighting against Omicron, which is a new thing, and we should remain optimistic,” he noted.
The only sour notes the Global Times could hear as people emerged from the apartment buildings where they were quite literally held captive was a bit of anxiety about “a possible epidemic resurgence” and the difficulty of “returning to normal social activities.”
Another Global Times post on Tuesday sought to alleviate those fears of further lockdowns by assuring foreign businessmen Shanghai’s ports and industrial sector are once again open for business and are expected to stay that way.
A resident looks out at the street from their window during the Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown in the Jing’an district in Shanghai on May 5, 2022. (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)
“With the full work resumption approaching, we will ride the wave, and continue to use innovative methods to boost efficiency so we can make up for lost time as much as possible and finish all scheduled production missions of the year,” a press release from the Jiangnan shipyard pledged.
The Global Times quoted unnamed military officials to boast that work has resumed in the shipyard on China’s third aircraft carrier, whose construction was merely “delayed” a little past its scheduled April 23 launch date by the coronavirus lockdown. These military sources hinted the carrier could be ceremonially launched by the end of this week in a public-relations ploy, even though it would still be far from seaworthy.
Shanghai residents who spoke to foreign media described themselves as traumatized by their ordeal, with a “lingering sense of bitterness, sadness, and anger,” as CNN put it on Wednesday. Contrary to state media propaganda, many in Shanghai are furious at the needless suffering they were subjected to, angry at their callous government for planning the lockdown so poorly, and terrified it could happen again without a moment’s notice.
“A ridiculous drama is over and no one has come forward to explain, no one has apologized to the lives that were insulted, harmed and lost, and no one has been held accountable,” one resident complained.
CNN noted that despite the triumphalism roaring through state media controlled by Beijing, local Shanghai media is clearly nervous about public outrage, flatly refusing to admit that a “lockdown” happened at all.
“There is still a lingering shadow left by the lockdown. I feel like we can go back under it anytime now, so I will keep stockpiling goods just in case,” a Shanghai worker told Quartz.com, which noted China’s brutal “dynamic zero-COVID” policy is still firmly in place and could be invoked to lock down almost any city without notice.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) noted on Monday that as coronavirus restrictions began easing in Shanghai, a sizable number residents took the opportunity to flee the city, perhaps because they have learned through bitter experience that “dynamic zero-COVID” lockdowns are imposed by surprise to keep people from escaping.