The Telegraph

China’s strict zero-Covid policy means many of the city’s residents are trapped at home – and left fearing infection, detainment or famine

By Shen Yang

Breaking into people’s homes and detaining the infected in makeshift lazarettos; infants being forcibly separated from their parents; chronically ill patients unable to receive treatment; a dog being beaten to death out of fear of contagion…

Every time I open WeChat (a Chinese instant messaging and social media/news app), I get sucked into a huge black hole of anguish. I wish I could just put the phone away, but I can’t. I need to compete with millions of people in the new “Food Race”, scanning countless different groups to sign up for the group-buying deals before they run out.

What terrifies people the most isn’t the risk of infection and detainment, but rather running out of food. No one could have ever imagined that in 2022 the mighty Shanghai would have feared famine.

The latest policy states that if your residential compound has even just one case, everyone is urged to stay home. And if you dare to take an innocent walk around the compound, behind every window there’s one pair of eyes spying on you and your photo will appear immediately in the local chat group.

When you thought the red guards from the cultural revolution were long gone, here they are back in their mobile-wielding version. Yet you can’t really blame them, because if by any chance your next Covid test turns positive, the quarantine countdown resets to 14 days for the entire compound.

The violent enforcement of the zero-Covid policy, the countless tragic ways it affected people and the “I am just following orders” trope used by authorities are disturbingly similar to the one-child policy in the Eighties, which tore me apart from my family for 11 years just because I was the second daughter. Here again, after 36 years, I’m witnessing another dark period of the Chinese history.