Shanghai is China's new corona hotspot: lockdown for 26 million people - beginning of a nationwide crisis?

Created: 03/29/2022, 05:27

By: Christiane Kuehl

Shanghai is divided into east and west for the corona lockdown: roadblock in front of a tunnel under the Huangpu River.

© Hector Retamal/AFP

It is China's worst-case scenario that was actually ruled out: the most important metropolis of Shanghai has to go into the corona lockdown.

In two phases, all residents have to go to the mass test.

Shanghai/Munich – Well, then: China's largest city and financial metropolis Shanghai * has to go into the corona lockdown.

It is a scenario against which the authorities have been fighting with all means since the beginning of February *.

The city of 26 million is considered too important for the country's economy.

But in the end, sealed off housing complexes, mass self-tests, closed restaurants and controls via the local Covid app did not help against the highly contagious Omicron variant.

After weeks of moderate infection numbers, Shanghai suddenly became the country's hotspot.

2,631 corona cases were reported there on Saturday, 60 percent of all new infections in China.

Shanghai reported 3,500 new infections on Monday, with almost all those affected showing few or no symptoms.

Now it should be a short lockdown, including the mass tests usual in China*.

The fact that the city is divided by the Huangpu River plays into Shanghai's hands: in the east the old city center of Puxi, in the west the ultra-modern financial center of Pudong, complete with new test-tube cities, the Transrapid route and the international airport.

5.7 million people in Pudong must first go into lockdown until April 1st.

All connections across the river have been interrupted since midnight local time: bridges and tunnels have been closed, and the subway no longer runs.

The districts west of the river will then follow from April 1st to 5th.

The two-step lockdown is due to the fact that even modern Shanghai could not organize mass tests for all 26 million inhabitants at the same time within a few days, local residents suspect.

So these just run one after the other for the city halves, while both remain strictly sealed off from each other.

The purpose of the lockdown is to ensure the potential risk of an outbreak is brought under control, the

quoted Wu Fan from the Shanghai Covid-19 expert team as saying.

"We found that the city has regional clusters as well as some cases of infection that are scattered across the residential neighborhoods," she told the newspaper.

Shanghai in lockdown: economic bottlenecks feared

During the lockdown, all residents of the respective city districts must stay at home.

However, food delivery and courier services are still allowed to offer contactless deliveries to ensure basic needs are met.

Businesses within the restricted areas must close their doors and staff must work from home as much as possible.

Public transport is suspended.

The authorities did not initially say how the lockdown would affect Shanghai's important container port Yanshan and the international airport in Pudong.

The few international flights that China allows at all have been diverted to neighboring cities for weeks anyway.

Many German companies have their headquarters in Shanghai;

however, most of their manufacturing facilities are located outside the city limits in the outskirts of Jiangsu Province*.

Some large industrial parks are affected, such as the Caojing chemical park in western Shanghai, where BASF, for example, produces.

There is also a plant of the Shanghai VW joint venture SAIC-Volkswagen in Anting in the extreme west of Shanghai.

Companies suffer from the fact that large parts of their workforce have to be quarantined - or because of the division of the city they cannot come to work across the river.

VW had already had to temporarily close three factories in north-eastern Changchun*.

The EU Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC) expects companies in the manufacturing sector to be able to keep up reasonably well in the lockdown.

"Some of our members have already drawn up production plans in which the operating staff stays on the factory premises for up to seven days before a new team takes over," says EUCCC President Jörg Wuttke to Merkur.de*.

Wuttke warns that it will be more difficult for the service sector.

Business confidence is declining and many jobs are becoming redundant.

The supply chains also face major challenges due to logistical uncertainties.

Shanghai: People are angry

"Besides the strain on the economy, the population seems less willing to accept lockdowns as increasingly unpredictable municipal measures undermine citizens' trust in their local administrations," said Wuttke.

The very short notice of the lockdown only on Sunday afternoon local time was met with anger and incomprehension among the people of Shanghai.

"We really don't understand Shanghai's management and control measures," said a 59-year-old who queued outside a grocery store and gave his name only as Gao.

“After such a long time” the city has “still not brought the corona outbreak under control and the numbers are increasing”.

Joy at freedom: Residents of a Shanghai neighborhood celebrate the end of their lockdown in this picture from mid-February.

However, the sealing off of individual quarters and residential complexes was apparently not enough: now the whole of Shanghai is going into lockdown.

© VCG/Imago

It is indeed uncertain whether China's zero-Covid strategy can also be successful against the Omicron variant.

“Global experience with Omikron seems to indicate that this will not work.

We therefore fear that we could see the beginning of an omicron crisis across China,” warns Jörg Wuttke.

Zero Covid policy: China sticks to hard line so far

Beijing is still reacting to regional sources of infection with drastic measures*.

Millions of Chinese are therefore currently affected by tough lockdowns.

In the past few weeks, the north-eastern Chinese province of Jilin has been the most severely affected region. In addition to the provincial capital of Changchun, which has nine million people, the city of Jilin, which has a population of 4.5 million, has also been cordoned off.

Meanwhile, the southern Chinese tech metropolis Shenzhen * reported progress.

After two weeks of strict lockdown*, a return to normality in economic life is possible today, Monday, the local authorities said.

"Of course, Shanghai doesn't want the lockdown for Pudong in the east or Puxi in the west even one day longer than necessary," says Christian Sommer, Managing Director of the German Centre, which is based in Pudong and primarily looks after the interests of smaller German companies in China takes care.

Several of his employees were already there for the PCR test on Monday.

"It seems to me rather doubtful whether the announced four to five days will be enough." It seems as if the wave is just beginning to roll in.