Tensions flare between residents and ‘big whites’ in locked down China
Angry clashes are taking place in China with residents going up against an army of Covid volunteers clad in white suits, known as the “big whites”.
Tense scenes are playing out on the streets of Shanghai where a stark divide is being drawn between the city’s 25 million residents and an army of volunteers clad in white hazmat suits – known as the “big whites”.
Overnight, shocking footage emerged from the locked down metropolis that shows just how fraught the relationship between the Covid officials and the residents has become.
In it, angry residents are seen shoving hazmat-clad “big whites” in the street before the volunteers savagely beat them with poles and scuffles break out.
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It is not the first time tensions have boiled over in this current lockdown, which has been in place for more than four weeks.
Disturbing videos on social media show desperate scenes inside China’s largest city, which has been placed under increasingly harsh restrictions as Omicron cases continue to rise and the city records its first officially recognised Covid deaths.
Last week it crowds of residents were seen looting food parcels in one video posted to Weibo. Another video captured the sounds of screaming from apartment balconies as people ran out of food.
What the?? This video taken yesterday in Shanghai, China, by the father of a close friend of mine. She verified its authenticity: People screaming out of their windows after a week of total lockdown, no leaving your apartment for any reason. pic.twitter.com/iHGOO8D8Cz
— Patrick Madrid ✌🼠(@patrickmadrid) April 9, 2022
In another shocking video, a government worker was filmed chasing down a Corgi and beating it to death with a shovel because its owner was infected.
The owner had released the dog onto the streets because he could not find anyone to care for it while he was in quarantine, China News Weekly reported.
Tensions explode between ‘big whites’ and residents
It is clear from the interactions seen in the clips that there is a growing sense of animosity between the “big white” volunteers tasked with controlling the city’s outbreak and the increasingly frustrated residents.
The volunteers spend their days carrying out millions of Covid tests every day. They also distribute food to locked down residential compounds and make the call on who can leave their building and who has to stay inside.
There are now massive numbers of “big whites” populating the city. Footage from inside Shanghai on Sunday gives an idea of the scale of the operation and what residents are confronted with on a daily basis.
Big White - the nick name given by people for those medical personnel or covid control volunteers wearing the whole body anti gem uniform.
— Eventful China ä¸å›½äº‹å¤š (@Eventful_China) April 16, 2022
Many of the Big Whites have tasted the flavor of power and don't even want the covid to end. pic.twitter.com/IV92n0rAc9
In the caption, the uploader of the clip, “Eventful China” hinted at the anger some residents feel towards their new white-clad wardens.
“Many of the big whites have tasted the flavour of power and don’t even want Covid to end,” they claim.
According to Quartz, the “big white” nickname comes from the Chinese name for the white robot Baymax featured in Disney’s 2014 film Big Hero 6.
In 2020, state-run media began to use it for Covid workers because of their white PPE kits – and they have been presented as national heroes.
“State media coverage is filled with anecdotes showing the dedication of big whites, such as one account of a volunteer who travelled by horse to deliver Covid testing kits to villagers in China’s Jilin province, or another who fainted amid overwhelming workload,” Quartz reporter Jane Li wrote.
“People have shared viral videos of them performing TikTok-style choreographed dance routines to get motivated for the day.”
Guo Ting, an assistant professor of language studies at the University of Toronto, who spoke to the publication, said the name “big white” is “a way to lighten the mood amid the pressure from Covid” and a way to make the volunteers seem more friendly.
“It is … treating citizens as children, which I would describe using a frame called ‘parental governance’,” he said.
Shanghai reports first deaths since lockdown
Shanghai on Monday said three people had died from Covid-19, the first official announcement of deaths from the outbreak.
Since March, a patchwork of restrictions has kept most of the city’s residents confined to their homes or compounds, with daily caseloads regularly edging over 25,000.
The announced deaths were all elderly people with underlying conditions.
They “deteriorated into severe cases after going into hospital, and died after all efforts to revive them proved ineffective,” the city said on an official social media account.
The statement said two of the dead were women aged 89 and 91, while the third was a 91-year-old man.
The eastern business hub posted 22,248 new domestic cases on Monday, according to the municipal health commission.
While relatively low compared to other global outbreaks, the figures extend the pattern of recent weeks which has seen the city log tens of thousands of daily cases, most of which are asymptomatic.
In response, authorities have doubled down on Beijing’s longstanding zero-tolerance approach to the virus, vowing to persist with onerous curbs on movement and isolating anyone who tests positive, even if they show no signs of illness.
Residents in Shanghai, one of China’s wealthiest and most cosmopolitan cities, have chafed under the restrictions, with many complaining of food shortages, spartan quarantine conditions and heavy-handed enforcement.
Social media users ripped into authorities for the filmed killing of a pet dog by a health worker and a now-softened policy of separating infected children from their virus-free parents.
Other footage and audio clips have indicated increasing desperation, including some showing people bursting through barricades demanding food.
Despite the blowback, China is sticking to its zero-Covid policy of mass testing, travel restrictions and targeted lockdowns.
But the world’s most populous nation has recently struggled to contain outbreaks in multiple regions, largely driven by the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
The country last reported new Covid-19 deaths on March 19 – two people in the northeastern rust belt province of Jilin – the first such deaths in more than a year.
Lockdowns hit China’s economy hard
China’s economy grew 4.8 per cent in the first quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday, warning of “significant challenges” ahead as a resurgence of coronavirus threatens Beijing’s ambitious annual target.
The world’s second-biggest economy was already losing steam in the latter half of last year with a property slump and regulatory crackdowns.
But Beijing’s unrelenting zero-Covid approach to outbreaks in multiple cities this year has clogged supply chains and locked down tens of millions of people – including in the economic dynamos of Shanghai and Shenzhen as well as the northeastern grain basket of Jilin.
China’s gross domestic product growth was 4.8 per cent in the first quarter, said the NBS on Monday, a figure that beat analysts’ expectations and which was up on 4.0 per cent in the final months of 2021.
But the data does not entirely take in the gnawing impact of the lockdown in Shanghai, which has left millions stuck at home for several weeks.
Virus restrictions hitting key cities in March also gouged at retail sales, driving up the unemployment rate.
It ups the ante on officials to meet the country’s full-year growth target of around 5.5 per cent, in a pivotal political period for Chinese President Xi Jinping who is eyeing another term in power at the Party Congress to be held later this year.
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