Lessons from Shanghai lockdown

The second phase of lockdown in Shanghai, a city of 25 million people and centre of international trade, is currently underway. The city had about 20,000 cases of omicron virus in the month of March, the highest number of cases the city has witnessed since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Huangpu River in Shanghai flows through the centre of the city, dividing it in two. The area on the eastern bank is called Pudong and on the western side is Puxi. Pudong went into lockdown in the first phase while Puxi has had restrictions placed.

Pudong and Puxi house about 9 million and 16 million people respectively. All roads linking these two parts of the city and all the exits have been closed.

The situation has once again put China back at the centre of the debate on human liberties versus human survival. The deserted markets of Shanghai look as haunted now as the darkened towers of Wuhan did back in 2019 when and where the Covid-19 pandemic went global.

From the start, President Xi Jingping had announced zero-COVID policy. He made sure that everybody was tested and treated, if they were infected. This was the only way, but it was not as simple as it sounds. Other countries like India and the U.S took it for a Chinese curse and mocked Beijing for it. They grilled China over violation of human rights. People were confined to their homes or put in quarantine, extensive testing was conducted, and vaccine doses were given. There were no exceptions in this process.

The first lockdown in January 2020 continued till April 2020 in and around Wuhan. During that time, international media was flooded with reports of miseries of the people trapped in lockdown. Some people died alone in their homes because there was no one to look after them. Others were infected and left in quarantine facilities. Horrible accounts of Chinese health workers and their tough job routine made the front pages and prime time new bullions.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a pandemic, but the world leaders thought of taking advantage of the situation to smite China. Gradually, the worst happened, and the coronavirus began surfacing in other countries too. In a strange turn of events, India and the U.S were counted among the most affected countries. Hence, they followed China in taking preventing measures.

Intensive lockdowns were imposed in places in cities like New York and Delhi who started looking haunted. Mass graves were dug, and bodies were burnt before burial; nurses and medics wept on camera narrating their experiences at the hospitals; children were separated from their parents while many died alone. Many remain unattended due to the infection fear. The actual number of human beings that this pandemic consumed is controversial, but it is probably double the population of Shanghai. International media is adopting the same old tactics to report the Shanghai lockdown.

Back in 2020, we could have said that the bias is because of novelty of the phenomenon, but this seems to be a pattern. Every time I went to Washington, I witnessed the Chinese crowd outside the Chinese Embassy shouting for human liberties that they think Chinese government has taken away from them, though they are American citizens.

My perception changed when I visited China after Wuhan lockdown and saw that the Chinese people are so immersed in their own lives that they don’t even want to know what the international media is writing about them. The phone junkies, a fair portion of Chinese population, have their own social media platforms to express themselves. They have their own search engines, games and means of interacting with one another.

Jamil Bhatti, chief of the Islamabad bureau of Xinhua News Agency, who facilitated this trip, showed me their outreach in difficult parts of the world like Kashmir. The quality of their photos and reports inside the heavily militarized Muzaffarabad was nothing, but appreciable. It means that Chinese government has a comprehensive news gathering system in place.

The evaluation of international media strategies and demonstrations of G-5 technology that Chinese experts presented to international audience, including Indians, in China shows that they not only have a news gathering system, but are also responsive to threats to their society. Chinese people pay attention to their health and their environment. They are disciplined and workaholic.

Instead of mediatizing the Shanghai lockdown as an infringement on human rights, the international media needs to study the Chinese society from the point of view of the Chinese locals. The problem arises when they rely on the Chinese living in Washington and portray their opinions as the Chinese perspective.

The world has now been digitized and the concept of human liberties has drastically been changed. The robots walking and flying in Shanghai to enforce lockdown are the machines humans chose to live with. Survival is what makes them different from other species. If China is taking a lead in this front, others should learn from it rather than creating a perception that is not Chinese oriented.

The writer teaches mediatization at International Islamic University Islamabad