Shanghai’s formerly robust economy slowed significantly in the first quarter of 2022, lagging almost two percent behind China’s overall growth and five percent behind its performance in 2021, thanks to severe coronavirus lockdowns imposed on the city.
Hundreds of employees at the Shanghai factory of Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Inc. rioted over the weekend, pushing past barricades and clashing with police in an eruption of frustration after six weeks of punishing coronavirus lockdowns.
Shanghai officials claimed on Friday that the city’s coronavirus outbreak is “under effective control” after a month under harsh lockdown restrictions – but the lockdown will continue. Meanwhile, the city created some 9,000 permanent coronavirus testing stations in a bid to “normalize” mass testing forever.
A Weibo post began circulating this week, Radio Free Asia (RFA) said, alleging Shanghai authorities ignored calls from a multifamily building to take away an older man who may have died of starvation during the past month’s coronavirus lockdowns.
The Chinese Communist regime still resists imposing one of its deranged “dynamic zero-Covid” lockdowns on the capital city of Beijing, but more of the city slips into lockdown territory with each passing day, and on Wednesday the city shut down much of its mass transit system, making it nearly impossible for nervous residents to leave.
Chinese government officials canceled most of the lavish events – concerts, festivals, and major travel attractions – typically organized around the communist holiday of May Day, celebrated on May 1, this year, claiming it necessary for people to stay home to prevent the further spread of Chinese coronavirus.
As fresh rounds of mass testing raised apprehension about a possible citywide lockdown in Beijing, Chinese state media on Sunday sought to “normalize” mass nucleic acid testing as a permanent feature of life.
The shadow of a Shanghai-style coronavirus lockdown loomed even larger over China’s capital city Beijing on Friday, as health officials began shutting down businesses, quarantining residential compounds, and closing schools indefinitely.
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), China’s top maker of computer chips, said on Thursday its factories in Shanghai have resumed production under a “closed-loop system” that has about 60% of the staff sleeping at the factory to comply with Shanghai’s grueling coronavirus lockdown.
While the world’s attention is focused on Shanghai after four weeks of an insanely harsh coronavirus lockdown, a viral video produced this week documented some 30 million residents of smaller Chinese cities living under comparably hideous conditions.
A British court ruled that the government’s move to discharge hospital patients into care homes without testing them for covid was illegal.
China launched a series of mass coronavirus tests in Beijing on Monday, sparking panic among residents who fear a brutal Shanghai-style lockdown could be next for the capital city.
Lockdowns in China are expected to decrease demand for commodities such as oil.
The future of Florida’s Disney World is the subject of much speculation this week after its parent corporation decided to meddle in politics and met unexpectedly stiff resistance, but Disney can take some solace in knowing its Hong Kong park reopened on Thursday after three months of coronavirus shutdown, and the response from Hong Kong patrons was very enthusiastic.
The Chinese Communist regime on Thursday published a report titled “Youth of China in the New Era” that claims Chinese young people are head over heels in love with communism and cannot wait for their chance to become the authoritarian leaders of tomorrow.
Police in China’s Hunan province are ordering residents to surrender their passports until “after the pandemic,” an effort to prevent them from fleeing China as the omicron variant of the Wuhan coronavirus spreads and brutal “zero-Covid” lockdowns intensify, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Wednesday.
Tesla, the electric car company owned by billionaire Elon Musk, on Monday announced its “Shanghai Gigafactory” would reopen after three weeks of Shanghai’s harsh coronavirus lockdown.
After weeks of insisting China has no serious concerns about food security despite coronavirus lockdowns and the Russia-Ukraine war, state media on Tuesday tacitly admitted farmers will need to make extraordinary efforts to avert a crisis.
Chinese censors on Monday deleted a social media post listing over 150 people who purportedly died in Shanghai because of the coronavirus lockdown – not from the virus itself, but from other medical conditions they could not obtain treatment for, or because they committed suicide.
While many Shanghai residents are scrambling to find food and dying from lack of medical care during the third week of the city’s harsh coronavirus lockdown, others are indulging in a craze for paying shirtless African dancers to record customized cheer-up videos.
Sina Weibo, the heavily censored Chinese alternative to banned Twitter, appears to have banned a hashtag that quotes the Chinese national anthem to criticize coronavirus lockdowns. It also appears to have blocked searches for the lyrics to the anthem.
Reuters on Friday noted the ostensible support of the Chinese public for draconian “zero-Covid” policies “seems to be wearing thin” amid “food shortages, family separations, lost wages, and economic pain.” Disobedience is on the rise, and so are arrests.
Videos posted from Shanghai this week show Chinese police and health officials growing increasingly short-tempered and physical with the city’s 26 million desperate residents, now in the third week of a coronavirus lockdown that was only supposed to last a few days.
Chinese state media on Wednesday grudgingly admitted coronavirus lockdowns are causing serious problems with domestic distribution and international shipping, as new data revealed imports unexpectedly collapsed by almost 16 percent last month.
China’s state-run Xinhua news service on Wednesday sought to deflect growing international condemnation of the brutal lockdown imposed on Shanghai with a bit of scaremongering, by claiming the only reason the Wuhan coronavirus appears to be under control in the United States is because the U.S. does not perform enough tests to catch all the asymptomatic cases.
A Chinese National Health Commission (NHC) official justified the mass internment of asymptomatic Chinese coronavirus patients in Shanghai by claiming that, if left to isolate at home, they could infect others through the sewer system, the state outlet Global Times reported on Wednesday.
Wuhan, China – the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic – was once again placed under coronavirus restrictions on Monday, including travel restrictions and mandatory nucleic acid testing.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Monday cited anguished social media posts from Shanghai residents whose relatives died because the brutal coronavirus lockdown imposed on the city three weeks ago prevented them from receiving vital medical care.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping addressed looming fears of a food crisis on Sunday during a trip to the southern island of Hainan.
Boris Johnson’s office said he will be issued a fine over allegations of lockdown parties at government offices.
China’s state-run Global Times pushed back against a rising tide of international criticism and domestic discontent on Sunday by insisting the brutal lockdown imposed on Shanghai is appropriate and necessary for containing the Omicron coronavirus outbreak, and reports of misery from the lockdown are Western media exaggerations intended to “delude the Chinese public.”
During the “Overtime” segment of his “Real Time” show on Friday, Bill Maher expressed concern over massive levels of government debt, said that we’re not in a pandemic anymore, and stated that it’s questionable whether we should have had such
The Chinese government is using mass transportation to ship thousands of Shanghai residents who allegedly tested positive for Chinese coronavirus to isolation camps in neighboring regions of China.
More evidence of a looming food crisis in China emerged from the agricultural province of Jilin on Tuesday, as farmers said they have been prevented from planting corn by coronavirus lockdowns.
Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan was dispatched to Shanghai on Saturday to make it clear that dictator Xi Jinping expects harsh lockdowns and strict adherence to China’s “dynamic zero-Covid” strategy, no matter how much damage is inflicted on the vital industrial and financial hub city, or its citizens.
The China Nitrogen Fertilizer Industry Association warned on Friday that coronavirus lockdowns could jeopardize the spring corn and soybean planting season by disrupting the supply of fertilizer to farms in northeastern China.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted there is an adolescent mental health crisis due to the draconian coronavirus protocols it recommended.
A poll has found that the average child in Britain spends more than four staring at screens compared to just forty minutes outside.
After days of touting the multi-stage quarantine and testing strategy deployed in Shanghai as a pioneering experiment in soft-touch pandemic control techniques, Chinese state media abruptly reversed itself on Wednesday and hailed dictator Xi Jinping for demanding nothing less than total lockdowns in response to every outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus.
British police are fining 20 people over parties held by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff during coronavirus lockdowns.
