Facing Down the Deportation Squad in Shanghai
How far will Commissar Sun go?
View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective
The 16th was a sleepless night for Xiao Yu's family.
Nine days after the general Pudong lockdown began, on April 6th, Xiao Yu tested “result pending” (待复核) which in today’s usage now means effectively positive. (When the system was originally designed, there was supposed to be a second confirmation analysis for each such case, but that system was apparently abandoned.) She had a bit of coughing, but that was it.
As soon as she learned of her positive status, she submitted an application for home quarantine to her local neighborhood committee. Living in a row house without any shared common spaces or ventilation systems there should be no threat of contaminating others. Three other households did the same.
One by one, her husband, son and father-in-law all tested positive. Only her elderly mother in-law remained negative. Given her elderly in-laws’ poor health, she worried about their ability to survive the poor conditions in the camps. Leaving them alone at home would also be dangerous.
Her application for home quarantine was denied. The applications submitted by the other households were also denied.
Then the calls started. The neighborhood committee. The local policeman. Then the neighborhood committee again. Hours spent on the phone to convince her to agree to deportation. Xiao Yu explained over and over why this was dangerous and emphasized the suitability of their case for home quarantine.
With over 350,000 cases now on the Commissar’s deportation list, the “official” internment camps – the so-called square cabin hospitals – are all overflowing. As a result, many deportees end up spending days in temporary holding areas (中转站). In Pudong, over 100 schools were requisitioned for this purpose. A sick man from one of the four households agreed to be deported, and ended up spending days in one of these. He reported back that conditions were atrocious – no medical treatment at all. As he put it, “不是人住的地方” – “This place is not suitable for living.” His suggestion: Avoid at all costs1.
On the 13th, Xiao Yu's father-in-law's condition worsened. He felt dizzy and vomited repeatedly. Xiao Yu sought help from the neighborhood committee. Their answer was that they were only responsible for arranging medical support for people who had tested negative. Sick residents who tested positive for Covid-19 would have to find their own solution for medical care.
In China, typically emergency medical help can be obtained by calling 120. Starting at 6am, she began calling. Several times she got through to a human, but each time was told that all ambulances were busy. She would have to wait. At 7pm in the evening, 13 hours later, finally an ambulance arrived. The 120 call center operator gave no guarantee that a bed would be available but said that the ambulance could try bringing him to Zhoupu Hospital’s Covid clinic.
When the ambulance finally arrived there was a dispute about whether or not he was ‘officially’ certified by the Epidemic Control Unit (疾控中心) as being positive. The ambulance driver said that without official confirmation he could not take him to Zhoupu. After he was already in the car the call finally came. Allegedly he got the last open bed in the Covid ward.
On the 14th, the neighborhood committee arranged another round of testing for everyone in home quarantine. Xiao Yu’s family declined to participate.
On the 15th, Commissar Sun issued a new directive: No compromises. All positive cases must be shipped off to the camps, regardless of the circumstances, and regardless of the capacity of the camps to receive them.
Xiao Yu had a bad feeling. The prospects seemed grim. Her house met all the requirements for home quarantine, there was no risk of cross-infection with other neighbors, and with one exception ALL of the residents in the compound had agreed to permitting home quarantine arrangements. But the pressure from the neighborhood committee continued to mount.
One neighbor with a household of four had also all tested positive a bit earlier than Xiao Yu’s family – two parent and two children. On the 14th they got re-tested, and their 10-year daughter tested negative. The others remained positive. On the morning of the 16th, the neighborhood committee told them they had no choice – they had to go. Their 10-year old was to be left alone at home. The neighborhood committee said they would deliver 3 meals a day. They agreed reluctantly.
The other households continued to stand their ground.
Around 9pm on the evening of the 16th, a team of people dressed in white blue striped PPE outfits came knocking at the first household. They were not local police. In total there were approximately ten people, of which five identified as police. They brought a megaphone. One man agreed to leave at 9pm.
They proceeded from house to house, pounding on the front doors each time for about 5 minutes. This they repeated every two hours until 5am.
After a long sleepless night, three of the targeted households gave up. Xiao Yu’s family was whisked away by an ambulance. For this purpose apparently ambulances are readily available. The driver said he had been driving for 24 hours straight without a break.
One household remains. Xiao Yu is now at a local school together with her husband and 6-year old son. She had a bit of luck — many ended up in far worse circumstances. At least the ceiling is not leaking water. Her sickly mother-in-law is at home alone.
Every positive infected person in Shanghai is a grain of sand and a tiny wheel in the intricate system which makes up society. We hope their small voices will be heard. And we hope that the basic human right to make one’s own decisions about health will one day once again be respected. For the children and elderly left behind we can only hope for the best, namely that they will soon be reunited with their family members who were forcibly taken away.
A few examples of temporary facilities which were built a bit too hastily:
Even from afar knowing far less about life on the ground in China than many of your other readers it seems that President Xi must know something about a dark future.
It looks to me that China is heading towards the North Korean model.
Again this can’t be about a cold virus.
Perhaps Shanghai might rise from the ashes as it’s own city state.
Something big is brewing.
Some sort of pending collapse that Zero CoVID is supposed to cover up at least through November is my only, admittedly not that well informed, hunch.