Discontent has been widespread on Chinese social media ever since Shanghai started a rigid lockdown in late March. Now, it is moving into the real world.
Sharply falling case numbers have allowed more than half of the city’s 25 million residents to step out of their homes—and many are venting a month’s worth of frustration at being isolated with insufficient food via public acts of disobedience.
On Saturday, locals in one district found a government storage site full of vegetables that had rotted rather than being delivered to hungry families and smashed them in the street. In a western suburb, dozens of residents took to the streets twice over the weekend to protest continuing shortages of food. Across the city, many residents staged small, personal protests by refusing to line up for the repeated, compulsory Covid-19 tests.
Food shortages have been one of the major complaints during the lockdown in Shanghai, one of China’s wealthiest cities. The evening of April 28, sounds of bashing bowls and wash basins reverberated around many apartment buildings in a synchronized protest that organizers called “concerts.”
The protest went ahead even after local officials warned residents via
notices and loudspeaker announcements that the event was being drummed up by hostile foreign forces, and after police went around some neighborhoods threatening the organizers.
On Saturday, the city said it wouldn’t tolerate mistakes when it came to food supplies and would punish negligence or failure by officials.
The intensifying expressions of discontent show the growing impatience in parts of the country with strict Covid control measures that have trapped some people for weeks and have undercut economic growth. While the central government led by President
Xi Jinping
has doubled down on the strategy, asserting China can beat the…
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