The video is stunning. The scene, filmed by two Internet users, takes place on Sunday May 1 in the afternoon in a street in the Putuo district of Shanghai in China, at the exit of a retirement home. Three mortuary service workers, in full blue and white Covid-19 protective suits, are seen carrying, on a stretcher, what is believed to be the remains of a man, wrapped in a protective bag yellow. They head for a van, a station wagon, to take the body away. And suddenly, the employees cringe. As if they were seeing a ghost. One of the employees unzips the body bag. And we guess it then from his reaction: the presumed dead man is alive.
上海 新 长征福利院 把 还 活 着 的 老人 装进 尸袋 ， 送去 殡仪馆 殡仪馆 火化 ， 被 运 的 殡仪馆 工作 人员 ： ： ： 活 活！ 看来 看来 是 嫌 老人 老人 死 得 还 还 不 够 ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ，人不算死于新冠就行。 pic.twitter.com/O6Zn5qV76L
— 方舟子 (@fangshimin) May 1, 2022
This story triggered a torrent of reactions in China. Many describe her as the symbol of the excesses of the government’s zero Covid-19 strategy. Several managers of the retirement home were immediately suspended, an investigation was opened. The funeral directors received a bonus for spotting the “anomaly”. As for the “living dead”, he was hospitalized. Affected by Covid-19 yes, but very much alive.
Shanghai has been in lockdown for six weeks. And the incidents linked to this very strict confinement are countless. What was supposed to last only a few days at the end of March, never ends. Half of the city, which has 25 million inhabitants, remains under strict confinement: total closure of shops, ban on leaving home. And in the part where residents are again allowed to leave their homes, the number of cases began to rise again on Monday, May 2. This is a sign that the highly contagious Omicron variant is still around. Chinese vaccines, the only ones authorized, are not very effective against Omicron.
And the government does not want to let the virus circulate: no risk taking. To the point of absurdity, to the point of wanting to get rid of a presumed dead man a bit quickly. On social networks, the anger against the restrictions is real: cries of anguish in the night, lack of food for some who beg in the street while defying confinement. The symbol is all the stronger as Shanghai has until now embodied the model city, well organized, the embodiment of the new Chinese middle classes.
And after Shanghai, the threat now hangs over the capital, Beijing; the Chinese power wants at all costs to prevent Beijing from experiencing the same scenes as Shanghai. But the risk is real. Containment has started in a hundred residences. And Covid-19 tests are now required for access to all shops and all public places, including gardens, in 12 of the city’s 16 districts.
It is the myth of Shanghai as a city that is better managed and organized than other cities that is collapsing.
Local authorities have taken the wall of reality
The challenge in Beijing is to ensure that this remains a Shanghai problem and does not become a Chinese problem…
— Antoine Bondaz (@AntoineBondaz) May 2, 2022
Beijing is at a standstill, whereas normally, after May 1, it’s party time, with a series of public holidays, until May 4 in the evening. Cases of Covid-19 only number in the dozens every day, but they are increasing. Until Beijing finds itself totally confined like Shanghai, there is only one step. In any case, the authorities will not change their strategy. That would be to repudiate the word of President Xi Jinping. Inconceivable, a fortiori a few months before the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
#Beijing tougher health restrictions. Eating in the restaurant is prohibited. Negative covid tests needed to go almost anywhere. Not funny this year the national holidays of May Day! pic.twitter.com/5zFO5HWHmz
— Seb Berriot (@SBerriot) May 3, 2022