Throughout the entirety of the pandemic, China's Covid restriction policies have stood out as the most controlling and most strict in the world. This is because the use a "zero Covid" strategy, which seeks to reduce cases through strict quarantines, lockdowns and testing on a mass scale. While this policy has been effective in restricting the spread of Covid, it has led to the constant restriction of peoples freedoms leading to a growing dissent towards the government.
Things were only made worse when last Thursday, a fire broke out in an apartment building in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang. At least ten people were killed and nine injured during the incident. Urumqi has been on full lockdown since August, so when the fire broke out, the response time was slowed due to the massive amounts of restrictions possibly contributing to the number of deaths and injuries.
The incident was the final spark to peoples growing distaste for the strict Covid restrictions, as the people of Urumqi took to the streets in protest shortly following the incident calling out in chants of "end lockdowns."
The protest in Urumqi was not an isolated event either. Across China, people are starting to take action against the government, and the "zero Covid" lockdowns that the government says is necessary to their safety. In Zhengzhou, workers at an iPhone factory turned to violence against hazmat-suited security officers over a delay in bonus payments and chaotic Covid rules. In Chongqing, a rallying speech was given by an individual protesting the lockdown in his residence saying, "Without freedom, I would rather die!" And in Shanghai residents boldly called for Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to step down.
The government was quick to censor all media outlets regarding the protests, yet footage and images still spread across China and the rest of the world. This only added to the growing outrage at the imposed restrictions.
The main ethical dilemma revolves around peoples freedom versus their safety, and the government's power to regulate both. While the policies imposed by the government greatly restrict people's freedoms, the have had an undeniable impact on the impact on the limited spread of Covid in China. Yet, in my, and many others' opinions, these policies, and the methods in which they are being carried out, are simply not worth it at this point in the pandemic.
Since the protests, the government has said that they would ease lockdown measures in neighborhoods categorized as "low risk" by authorities "in stages." Yet, whether this will have any significant effect on peoples personal freedom remains to be seen.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/world/asia/china-covid-protest.html?auth=login-google
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/26/asia/xinjiang-urumqi-china-lockdown-protests-intl-hnk/index.html
24 comments:
Lockdowns during perilous times are necessary, but today is not the same as 2 years ago when the virus had just started to spread and when death rates were high. Vaccines and other measures have greatly reduced the severity of the virus. It's quite absurd that China is continuing to restrict citizens from leaving their homes even if there are a couple of cases. Although Chinese people reflected their disapproval of the lockdown policies early in 2020 and 2021, the government has never stopped their strict restrictions. The protestors are brave individuals certainly. However, with China's control over the media, it remains a question of how influential these protests would be if a majority of the people are not aware that this is happening around them. Hopefully we will see a change with these lockdown restrictions.
China is a clear representation of the most extreme examples of lockdown, and when it prevents emergency workers from doing their job it is clear that restrictions have gone too far. I agree with Grace that China's restrictions are too extreme at this point in the pandemic and with current medicine availability. The censorship of freedom of speech is a standard Chinese procedure to prevent protests and information the government cannot control. The communist party is known to block all media in the country, and as a result, I doubt the protests and speeches will do much for the citizens. I think this issue of Covid stems from the larger issues with China and the communist party controlling its citizens to create a uniform society with the justification of equality and socialism.
Lockdowns are necessary during horrible times but there are other factors that can help control the virus. My opinion is that during 2020, lockdowns would have been somewhat justified but now, it seems forced and unnecessary b/c there are vaccines that are available. China's control of where people are living and where they can go seems unfair and I agree with Christian in that it shows China's controlling communist government. It shows "equality" but takes away people's freedom. I think that isn't what a government should do.
The common rhetoric going around China right now is: we can't die to Covid, but we can die to anything else? Furthermore, although I agree that many Chinese citizens have a distaste for the severe limitations of freedom, I'd like to add that their frustrations are also economic. China's economy has slowed down significantly since pre-pandemic times due to lockdowns. As a result, young people in China today have less economic opportunity, causing a trend called "摆烂" aka "letting it rot" in China. "Letting it rot" is a phenomena where many Chinese youth refuse to stress themselves for career success; instead, they don't think their efforts will pay off, so they do the bare minimum to stay afloat. This trend is especially prevalent amongst young, educated Chinese citizens, whose access to high-paying professional opportunities has also decreased due to the zero-Covid policy. Overall, the frustration is driven by much more than a desire for democratic ideals (a perspective held mostly by highly educated, young Chinese people). The frustration stems from economic reasons as well.
The clear protest here is not a matter of safety versus freedom, but of one on government control and power. China's government control and influence on the behavior of its citizens, through core systems in place such as social security and mass surveillance. The economic downfall of China has not been resolved by the CCP's strict control of the country, and has led to less opportunities for success from newer generations. At the end of the day, this protest from the fire and the deaths it caused reflects the pain that the strict regulations and control the government exercises from the citizens of China.
Different countries have different approaches to the Coronavirus. In this case, China emphasized greatly on the community's health rather than the individual's freedom. Community well-being is necessary, but at a time when there are vaccines and reasonable, valid precautions people could take, a city-wide lockdown wouldn't be crucial in securing everyone's lives. As a person whose family members are in China, their daily access to food has been limited, not to mention any outdoor activities for entertainment purposes. And the city they're living in now is posing mandatory charged PCR tests, which means that the government will no longer pay for these daily tests but testing is still mandatory for its citizens unless the people desired to be marked as "potential dangers". A sequence of protests happening first in Shanghai was quickly blocked by local governments. They engaged in this movement called the "A4 Revolution" which is protestors simply holding up blank printing paper, yet receiving police interrogating and sometimes violence. It is to show that even with no words at all, the government could be triggered and suppress any further actions taken by these young people. The process to start a revolution in China would be difficult because any mainlanders not living in Beijing or Shanghai could barely even hear the news about the uprising of the stirring objections to the draining governmental COVID policies. Nevertheless, the people are still trying everything they could to spread the actions.
Through the previous years, we have witnessed the vastly different approaches different nations took toward combating COVID-19. Initially, nations with fast responses, whether it's lockdown restrictions or vaccine distributions, were looked at as examples. However, as the number of cases remains more stagnant and not actively increasing in rate, it seems unnecessary to continue imposing harsh limitations that were debated upon in the first place. China's utilization of citizens' compliance to ensure the health of the population as a whole is dismissive of personal liberties and interests, especially apparent in the present situation.
Although China has a lower vaccination rate, especially among the elderly, I do not think that China's zero-COVID policy is the right way to go. Like others mentioned, the amount of COVID cases has significantly decreased since 2020 and its effects aren't as severe. Rather than mandating this policy, which I'm assuming is costly, China should spend more money on increasing accessibility to vaccinations and encouraging citizens to get vaccinated. As protests continue to occur, I'm curious to see if and when China will abandon this policy.
I agree with Angelo in that it seems the deeper issue is about government control and just how much the government should be able to impose restrictions the people they oversee. It's understandable that the Chinese government wants to keep its citizens safe, especially with the fact that COVID is not over; however, should they be able to impose strict restrictions despite clear pushback from the Chinese people? The push and pull of creating a balanced government that both allows citizens freedom and steps in when needed (protecting rights of minority groups, creating more government programs to support people's needs etc.) has always been a topic of conversation. Also, I think it will be interesting to see how lifting the lockdowns in "stages" will look like and if the Chinese government will keep their word.
I think it is clear how unreasonable the lockdowns are. However, China faces more COVID-related problems than most countries. They have refused to import vaccines from companies like Pfizer or Moderna, and instead, most people are vaccinated with vaccines from Chinese companies, which some studies have shown to be less effective. But still, at some point, the severe lockdown policies become a show of power. In the face of mass protests, the Chinese government is less likely to loosen its policies out of fear that they will show signs of weakness and incite more protests.
Like others have stated, lockdowns are definitely a reasonable tactic to enact during periods of serious illness spreading; however, the pandemic began several years ago. At this point, there needs to be less regulation of what people can do because it seems a bit excessive to keep people locked away for this long. Hopefully, the protests that are circulating in China will prove effective and protesters won't be repressed.
At the beginning of the pandemic China’s strict Covid-19 policies were highlighted as one of the best approaches at reducing cases. The strict quarantine and lockdown measures allowed the country to only have a minimal amount of cases over the course of 1-2 years. But, as highlighted in this article the new “zero Covid” lockdown approach seems to be leaning towards extreme. At this point in time it seems like the government should now work to move out of their original model and find a healthy balance between keeping their citizens safe and ensuring their freedom. To still be enforcing measures as they have, especially with multiple incidents as highlighted through this fire, and having negative responses throughout should bring light towards the need to develop.
At the beginning of the pandemic China’s strict Covid-19 policies were highlighted as one of the best approaches at reducing cases. The strict quarantine and lockdown measures allowed the country to only have a minimal amount of cases over the course of 1-2 years. But, as highlighted in this article the new “zero Covid” lockdown approach seems to be leaning towards extreme. At this point in time it seems like the government should now work to move out of their original model and find a healthy balance between keeping their citizens safe and ensuring their freedom. To still be enforcing measures as they have, especially with multiple incidents as highlighted through this fire, and having negative responses throughout should bring light towards the need to develop.
I agree with Niki and Sophie that China has not been doing enough to encourage vaccination. That is the most effective way to slow the spread of the virus but China is too focused on being anti-West to import the necessary vaccinations. I understand the compulsion that socialist asian countries have to be self-sufficient but that is just not appropriate when people are dying. I would also hesitate to blame this on socialism in general because in the case of socialist Vietnam, they ramped up vaccinations after their big spike and were able to bring cases down significantly.
If China doesn't reduce its lockdowns soon, the government could face much larger problems. As the lockdowns continue, more and more people will become dissatisfied with the CCP, and without ways to democratically affect policy, people will take to the streets and protest. The CCP has never looked kindly on protests (often resorting to violence to suppress them), and if the anti-lockdown movement continues to grow, the protests may quickly turn into an anti-authoritarian movement with the goal of limiting the power of (or even overthrowing) the CCP.
Implementing a lockdown during earlier years of the pandemic has been a solution to stop the spread of the virus, however, since the availability of vaccines have reduced the dangers of COVID, it seems extreme to continue lockdowns that become a restriction on the freedom of the people. Just by looking at Chinese social media platforms right now, like Douyin, the government has tried hard to keep people in the unknown. Most content are entertainment, and in recent times, focused on the World Cup. By controlling the media, the government shuts people out from information they deserve to know; when it's revealed, shock and anger can spread over the country.
Keeping a lockdown currently seems to be extreme, as there are vaccines to prevent getting life-threatening symptoms. China takes away freedom from its people by controlling their social media. China tends to feed information to its people in order to prevent any sort of rebellion and make sure the power stays in the government. ut keeping people in their houses is starting a protest. We can only hope that China wont be suppressing the protest. But it can be noted from past events, they are likely to do it again.
This problem is the reason that we have large scale issues like Covid in society today. A "zero-Covid" lockdown would be a great idea where every single person except those that absolutely must be are in lockdown without exception. This would wipeout the sickness completely while also keeping open only the essentials (hospitals, certain shipping, and certain food outlets). Then we would only need to have a Covid lockdown for less than a month and then the world could fully resume again. Protests like this and the mask protests in the United States is the problem we have. Trump increasing the tension with horrible leadership and a ton of false media information and attention that he spewed to the entire country during a time of struggle.
I think that initially the lockdown for Covid was necessary because we didn't know about how badly the virus would effect people and there was no vaccine made to stop covid. However, now 2 years later the research and medical advancements towards covid has been extremely effective in limiting the number of cases around the world. I think that China still enacting the "zero-Covid" lockdown now is doing more harm than safety. Which as many have highlighted is where the imbalance of power is coming into play. I think that especially now with the fire in Urumqi, this imbalance is even more of a concern. People are essentially being held hostage at the expense that the government is trying to protect them, when really the government is preventing them from actually using world wide successful vaccines. I feel like the Chinese government is trying to hide behind the statement of trying to prevent the deaths from Covid in their country, but in reality are now just asserting their power over people.
While I believe that lockdowns and quarantining are a necessity when protecting our public's health at such high-risk periods, the government must consider the public's safety and freedom as well. This greatly-extended lockdown is a clear demonstration of China's abuse of its power over the people since this case reveals their extremity in terms of restrictions. While prioritizing safety is important, China's limitations are hypocritical when the public is inadvertently harmed. Furthermore, rather than focusing on solely restricting the public's freedom, a lack of awareness around the vaccine again shows their abuse of power encouraged by the pandemic. With lockdowns shutting down several opportunities and creating immense isolation, the government must keep these factors in mind instead of using them as a tool to further implement their authority within their nation.
The issue that they are protesting is that the Covid restrictions are so strict that if they break the restriction they can get up to 4 years in jail. With Covid restrictions being so strict it causes China's economy to plummet and the scarcity of food not only in the major cities but the rural inland cities as well. With the covid restrictions being so intense people would assume they would have a major issue with thousands maybe millions of covid cases, but surprisingly the restrictions can be caused by only a handful of cases. Yes, this is good because it helps push for zero covid zones in China, but it also hurts its citizens because of the scarcity of food but also jobs such as working in factories become a major issue. I think these strings of protests all across the country will help change and show true light to high china treats its citizens. One major scare from these protests is that will China act similarly to how they acted during the 1989 protest.
Although I agree that Covid restrictions are absolutely necessary in cases of outbreak, like how we saw across the globe when Covid was highly spreadable. I feel as if these covid restrictions, especially with the implementation of vaccines and masks are arbitrary now. However, we have to consider the high amount of people per square foot in China's cities, which could make an outbreak highly dangerous, as it could spread in close quarters. I still struggle with the highly controlled mandates. It seems that this is another authoritarian tactic from China in attempts to restrict the freedoms of their people. China should be focusing on other issues besides censorship and control.
The fact that because of the lockdown in Urumqi, the response time for the fire department to get to the burning building wasn’t as fast as it should have been, resulting in many deaths that shouldn’t have occurred is kind of sad. While I understand that the country is trying to focus on the safety of the people, the safety that the government is trying to maintain in the societies of its citizens is not shown through this incident. This lockdown isn’t only happening in China, it’s also happening in Korea, from what I know. When people fly to Korea, even now, they are required to wear masks and quarantine in a hotel they don’t even know they will be sent to for more than a couple days. They aren’t able to go anywhere until after being quarantined which demonstrates the lack of freedom that is noted in this blog post. I remember my mother telling me that her relatives in China, when the pandemic was really serious like 2 years ago, they had to stay home, and were not allowed to go anywhere. The police would bring groceries to each household, so families would be safe at home, rather than having to risk themselves catching the virus while shopping. I understand that the government is trying to keep the security and safety of the nation at that time, but the fact that people still have to quarantine for like a week even if they take a covid test is a little insane. People travel to these countries because they want to meet their families or travel around the country, but because of the quarantine policy, many people are scared to travel because they don’t want to have to deal with this.
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