Shanghai residents clash with Covid cops

Residents erupt as Xi Jinping’s hard line ‘Covid zero’ policy pushes China’s biggest city to near breaking point.

A medic in the locked down Jing'an district of Shanghai on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Police have clashed with residents in Shanghai as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s hardline “Covid zero” policy pushes the country’s biggest city to near breaking point.

Hordes of police in white medical uniforms tackled screaming residents after they protested against a government plan to turn part of their apartment complex into a quarantine station.

The dramatic confrontation underlined the intensely ideological environment in China today.

In one video of the skirmish, a policeman told an arrested woman that America was to blame for the violence in Shanghai, now in its third week of a ­severe citywide lockdown.

“The international situation has led to this!” he shouted in the video, which was soon scrubbed from China’s internet. “We will soon be at war with America! Don’t you understand? We have no option! Now only the communist party can save China!”

The chaotic scenes took place on Thursday as Shanghai recorded more than 27,000 cases of Covid-19, a daily record. It came hours after the confirmation of the death of a Shanghai health official, one of a rising tally of deaths apparently triggered by the lockdown of the city’s 26 million people.

Police scuffle with residents in Shanghai’s New Pudong Area on Thursday. Picture: Weibo

In a remarkable post on ­Chinese social media site Weibo, Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, confirmed the death of Qian Wenxiong, a health commission director at Shanghai’s Hongkou District. “This tragedy obviously exacerbated the impression that the epidemic prevention measures in Shanghai have overwhelmed some grassroots personnel,” wrote Hu, addressing Mr Qian’s suicide.

Writing before the residents’ riot in Shanghai’s New Pudong Area, Hu noted that “disturbing information and videos” were being shared on the Chinese ­internet. “They all point to the strong dissatisfaction with the secondary tragedy and cost of fighting the epidemic, as well as the anxiety caused by the prolonged lockdown.”

The online outpouring has seen China’s internet censors working overtime. That effort has also been taken up in the real world. “Do not post pandemic-­related messages online,” warns a banner sign in Beijing. “The internet is full of perils.”

Mr Xi has barely addressed the drama in Shanghai and has spent much of this week on the tropical island province of Hainan, known as “China’s Hawaii”.

The latest pictures from the trip show Mr Xi inspecting a spacecraft launch site and a new range of computers made by Chinese chipmaker Feiteng.

But Beijing’s propaganda machine has been emphatic that the Shanghai crisis will not change Mr Xi’s signature Covid response.

Xi Jinping gives a pep talks at Hainan’s Wenchang spacecraft launch site on Thursday

State news agency Xinhua said China’s medical system would “risk a breakdown” if cases were allowed to grow around the country. Shanghai officials have been put under the command of Mr Xi’s Covid enforcer Sun Chunlan, who has ordered that everyone who tests positive for coronavirus must go to a quarantine centre.

Neighbourhood committees have put bike locks on the doors of some apartments to confine residents. Food shortages are rife. Pet dogs of the infected have been clubbed to death. The outbreak has already passed 300,000 cases, leaving officials scrambling to find quarantine places – overwhelming for people with mild or no symptoms. New modelling from Peking University forecast Shanghai’s case numbers would more than double to 650,000-700,000 by the middle of June.

Speaking hours after Thursday’s protest, Shanghai deputy mayor Peng Shenlei said the city government would continue to find new quarantine locations “through expropriation” and “relocation”.

Addressing the situation in Shanghai, Australia’s ambassador in China, Graham Fletcher, said his colleagues had raised concerns about access to food, medical services and the airport with Chinese officials “without always getting the answers we want”. While saying the Australian government was not encouraging citizens to leave China, Mr Fletcher noted that “seats continue to be available on flights to Australia”.