Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In October, when President Xi Jinping directed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be war-ready, he may not have expected China would have to, first, battle a homegrown enemy: Covid-19.
On Thursday, Beijing and Shanghai shut down, and Zhengzhou locked down, amid an unprecedented outbreak of pandemic infections.
According to official data, China’s daily Covid cases, because of the dominant Omicron variant, have climbed to the highest since the pandemic began. On Wednesday, the Communist country recorded 31,454 domestic cases — 27,517 of them asymptomatic.
These figures exceed the 29,390 infections recorded in mid-April when the megacity Shanghai was under lockdown, the media reported on Thursday.
This is the biggest outbreak since the pandemic began in early 2020, underlining the failure of the government’s brutal Zero Covid policy.
On Wednesday, many people wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) walked along a street in Beijing, parts of which turned into ghost towns.
The same day, violent protests erupted at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory in central China, with a video showing dozens of hazmat-clad personnel wielding batons and chasing employees, several of whom were wounded.
The surge of infections comes amid violent protests in the Zhengzhou iPhone factory complex, despite harsh Covid restrictions for over a month amid spiraling cases in its workers’ dormitories.
In Beijing, they shut malls and parks down as once-bustling areas of the capital resembled ghost towns. Worried officials requested people to stay home as infection numbers hit a new high on Tuesday.
In Shanghai, a city of 25 million that was locked down for two months earlier this year, China’s top auto association said on Wednesday it would cancel the second day of the China Automotive Overseas Development Summit being held there.
Chengdu, with 428 cases on Tuesday, became the latest city to announce mass testing.
Major manufacturing hubs like Chongqing and Guangzhou have seen persistently high infection numbers, accounting for most of China’s caseload. Cases in Guangzhou fell slightly on Tuesday to 7,970. Officials said infections continue to be concentrated in key areas of the Haizhu district.
Zhengzhou, home to a vast Apple iPhone factory, ordered an effective Covid lockdown for several districts after violent protests that saw angry demonstrators clash with police.
On Wednesday, footage uploaded on social media showed Foxconn workers pulling down barriers and fighting with authorities in hazmat suits, demanding pay arrears. The unrest follows weeks of turmoil as scores of employees fled the factory over stringent Covid controls.
The local government said the residents of Zhengzhou’s city center may not leave the area unless they carried a Covid-negative test and permission from authorities. They advised the people not to leave their homes “unless necessary.”
The fresh restrictions, which will last five days from midnight Friday, are affecting over 6 million people, or about half the city’s population. Zhengzhou’s order came after violent protests broke out at the city’s vast iPhone factory complex.
The anti-Covid measures are darkening the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy while the country faces its first winter battling the highly contagious Omicron variant.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged China to further recalibrate its Covid-19 strategy and boost vaccination rates.