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On April 26, a man in Beijing is tested for the corona virus
Photo: JADE GAO/AFP
At around 10am Monday morning, there was nervous activity at the Jingkelong Supermarket near the Workers' Stadium in Beijing's Chaoyang District.
Once you've got through the line that winds its way from the entrance across the parking lot, you'll first have to wait for a shopping cart, as all of them are in use.
Here someone is hauling away ten-kilo sacks of rice, there someone is carrying several canisters of cooking oil.
Fruit and vegetables are probably the most popular, gathered in quantities as if they were cooking for whole neighborhoods.
The people of Beijing pack their cars with such concentrated seriousness that it takes willpower not to get carried away: what if the shops are really closed tomorrow?
If Beijing does go into lockdown, as many fear?
The next day in the same shop, just after lunchtime.
There is no shortage of free shopping trolleys, and a manageable number of customers can do their errands in peace and quiet.
Strawberries seem to be doing well today, but there are still a few punnets left of them.
Only the ready-made noodle stocks could not be replenished quickly by the market management.
The nervousness of the day before has given way to a superficial normality.
High alert – because of 92 cases
The 21 million metropolis Beijing is in a state of limbo these hours.
A notable omicron outbreak developed here for the first time over the weekend, and a total of 92 symptomatic cases have been registered since Friday.
By international standards, this is a microscopic number, but in the People's Republic it is a reason for the highest alert.
In mid-April, a single omicron case was enough for the administration of the city of Wuhu to cordon off the entire city center.
And amid the impact of Shanghai's runaway outbreak, Chinese leader Xi Jinping recently underlined that China must not deviate from its zero-Covid strategy.
So what is happening to Beijing now?
Liu Xin of all people proved just how disoriented the city is.
With a quarter of a million followers, the presenter of the state broadcaster CGTN is one of the widest-reaching propagandists on Twitter.
"Now it's Beijing's turn," Liu tweeted Monday, including photos of empty store shelves.
She also stocked up on supplies.
"May the hard times begin."
Such angst from the mouth of a pro-regime state journalist was a worrying signal: Her job is to amplify government messages—about whose intentions, for that very reason, she is usually better informed than others.
But soon Liu deleted her tweet – and instead posted photos from a well-stocked supermarket.
It was "completely unnecessary" to worry.
Yes, what now?
Three tests in five days for 3.5 million people
The situation is most tense in Chaoyang, with around 3.5 million people the most populous of Beijing's 16 districts.
Chaoyang is home to all foreign embassies with the exception of Russia, and is also the location of the central business district of Guomao, whose skyscrapers dominate Beijing's skyline.
Here, on Friday, the first two small omicron clusters were discovered in a middle school and among participants in a travel group.
By Monday afternoon, the authorities had identified 2,116 people who are said to have come into contact with the sick.
Based on samples taken, Beijing's disease fighters want to have determined that the virus had been going around the city undetected for at least a week.
Since then, several residential complexes and a large area south of Guomao have been under quarantine.
A lockdown is already in place there, albeit locally limited: nobody is allowed to move out of the restricted zone, with the exception of hospitals and grocery stores, all companies there have closed.
Events are suspended across Beijing, with many people gathering.
Chaoyang is to be tested three times last Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The queues in front of the 1,301 test stations set up by the district for this purpose stretched for hundreds of meters on Monday.
At a press conference called late Monday evening, Vice District Mayor Yang Beibei announced something reassuring: All the results from the test stations that were already available at that time were negative.
Additional cases are said to have only been found among the contacts already in quarantine.
These findings seemed to confirm a view widely held among Beijingers: Because of the paramount importance of the capital for the centralized Chinese system, there could be no comprehensive lockdown here.
What at first glance seems like magical thinking - why does the virus care about political sensitivities - is actually at least partially justified hope.
Travel to Beijing has only been possible to a limited extent for a long time
After all, the capital is shielded like no other city in China.
Quarantine rules are even stricter for people entering Beijing from abroad than for the rest of the country.
Even domestic travelers have been restricted from entering Beijing since the weeks leading up to the February Winter Olympics.
The technical basis for this is the Corona travel app, which everyone has to install on their smartphone.
It stores the places that a user has visited in the past 14 days.
If an infection has occurred in one of these places, the place name is marked with a star in the app.
Those who have a star in their travel app are not allowed in Beijing;
he is denied boarding on express trains and planes.
Without a star in the app, a trip to Beijing is basically possible, but you have to show a fresh negative PCR test before departure and have yourself tested again within 72 hours of arrival.
In light of the current outbreak, the city government has also urged citizens not to leave Beijing without a compelling reason.
The city has repeatedly avoided feared omicron eruptions.
For example, when the variant was used in the neighboring city of Tianjin in January, from where hundreds of thousands of people regularly commute to Beijing.
Or when tens of thousands of athletes and officials from abroad entered the Olympic "bubble" without quarantine during the Winter Games: infections did occur there, but they did not overcome the barriers.
Since then, Beijing has repeatedly registered isolated infections, but these were always discovered quickly and never grew into a crisis.
In addition to its obviously alert health authorities, Beijing also owed that to luck.
Comprehensive lockdown of Beijing would be a disaster
Hopefully it hasn't run out.
After Chaoyang, five more districts are to be tested first, and now ten more;
an increasing number of cases can be assumed.
If the authorities still decide to implement a nationwide lockdown, Beijing can at best hope for a scenario like the one recently seen in Shenzhen, where the nightmare was over after a week.
"The city should have any contingency plans developed for the Olympics in place," writes Bill Bishop, author of the influential China newsletter Sinocism.
"A prolonged lockdown - especially one that was implemented so poorly as in Shanghai - would be an economic and political disaster."
For many years, the unwritten social contract between the Communist Party and the Chinese was: You can't have a say, but you can get rich.
The deal has changed since the beginning of the pandemic, today it is at least as valid: You are not allowed to have a say, but remain unmolested by the pandemic.
If this promise, which has already been tarnished by Shanghai, does not even endure in the sheltered capital, it would seriously damage the party's legitimacy.
And it would be a crushing defeat for the architect of the zero-Covid strategy, who wants to have a third term cobbled together in the fall: Xi Jinping.
