Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
RESIDENTS OF SHANGHAI are struggling to get meat, rice and other food supplies under anti-coronavirus controls that confine most of its 25 million people to their homes, fuelling frustration as the government tries to contain a spreading outbreak.
People in China’s business capital have complained online grocers are often sold out. Some received government food packages of meat and vegetables for a few days.
Zhang Yu, 33, said her household of eight eats three meals a day but has cut back to noodles for lunch. They received no government supplies.
Shanghai’s battle against the epidemic has reached the most critical moment.
“It’s not easy to keep this up,” said Zhang, who starts shopping online at 7 am.
“We read on the news there is (food), but we just can’t buy it,” she said. “As soon as you go to the grocery shopping app, it says today’s orders are filled.”
The complaints are an embarrassment for the ruling Communist Party during a politically sensitive year when President Xi Jinping is expected to try to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as leader.
Shanghai highlights the soaring human and economic cost of China’s “zero-Covid” strategy that aims to isolate every infected person.
Today, the government reported 23,107 new cases nationwide, all but 1,323 of which had no symptoms. That included 19,989 in Shanghai, where only 329 had symptoms.
Complaints about food shortages began after Shanghai closed parts of the city on 28 March.
Plans called for four-day closures of districts while residents were tested. That changed to an indefinite citywide shutdown after case numbers soared. Shoppers who got little warning stripped supermarket shelves.
City officials apologised publicly last week and promised to improve food supplies.
Officials say Shanghai, home of the world’s busiest port and China’s main stock exchange, has enough food. But a deputy mayor, Chen Tong, acknowledged getting it the “last 100 metres” to households is a challenge.
“Shanghai’s battle against the epidemic has reached the most critical moment,” Chen said at a news conference. He said officials “must go all out to get living supplies to the city’s 25 million people.”
At the same event, a vice president of Meituan, China’s biggest food delivery platform, blamed a shortage of staff and vehicles. The executive, Mao Fang, said Meituan has moved automated delivery vehicles and nearly 1,000 extra employees to Shanghai.
Another online grocer, Dingdong Maicai, said it shifted 500 employees in Shanghai from other posts to making deliveries.
Li Xiaoliang, an employee of a courier company, complained the government overlooks people living in hotels. He said he is sharing a room with two co-workers after positive cases were found near his rented house.
Li, 30, said they brought instant noodles but those ran out. Now, they eat one meal a day of 40 yuan (€5.70) lunch boxes ordered at the front desk, but the vendor sometimes doesn’t deliver. Today, Li said he had only water all day.
The local government office “clearly said that they didn’t care about those staying in the hotel and left us to find our own way,” Li said. “What we need most now is supplies, food.”
After residents of a Shanghai apartment complex stood on their balconies to sing this week in a possible protest, a drone flew overhead and broadcast the message: “Control the soul’s desire for freedom and do not open the window to sing. This behaviour has the risk of spreading the epidemic.”
The government says it is trying to reduce the impact of its tactics, but authorities are still enforcing curbs that also block access to the industrial cities of Changchun and Jilin with millions of residents in the north east.
While the Shanghai port’s managers say operations are normal, the chair of the city’s chapter of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, Bettina Schoen-Behanzin, said its member companies estimate the volume of cargo handled has fallen 40%.
Some large factories and financial firms are having employees sleep at work to keep operating. But Schoen-Behanzin said with no timetable to end lockdowns, “some workers aren’t volunteering any more.”
Residents of smaller cities also have been confined temporarily to their homes this year as Chinese officials try to contain outbreaks.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Clearly following science, starvation instead of the mind headcold I got.
@John Moloney: Not everybody was so lucky as to just get a mild (mind) headcold
@Charles Coughlan: lovely Ukrainian flag, you are so virtuous. I think we should take all cars off the road because not everyone is so lucky, people die every week.
@John Moloney: Or we can go the other way – do away with seatbelts, drink driving laws etc. At the end of the day some additional people will die – but so what right? Why bother doing anything to save lives if its only a small % of the total population. Let’s all jist get on with it. That is of course until its someone you know or love that is lost, in which case I have no doubt you would be right back here blaming the government for getting rid of the searbelt requirement or letting drunk people drive cars etc. Damned If you do and damned if you don’t.
@Gavin Conran: the word is proportion.
@John Moloney: you sound extremely unintelligent
@Daniel Andrews: everybody should wear hazmat suits like the photo, this virus is lethal.
@John Moloney: lucky you , well I didn’t get a mild head cold , I got three days in bed and long Covid and my parents ended up in hospital but that doesn’t matter as long you were ok and got mild symptoms. It’s the selfishness of certain people in society in some people that has really shone through with this virus
Sounds like there’s no longer any appetite among the population for continuing with the current lockdown strategy…
@William Tallon: eggcellent observation
It seems the Chinese authorities didn’t plan beyond their zero covid approach. When it fails, as it has everywhere with omicron, they’re banjaxed.
Who would believe anything that comes out of China after the fake photo’s of people lying dead in the street
Does the Chinese vaccine not work?
@Dave Connolly: Nope. Or at least, nowhere near as effective as the mRNA vaccines, which they refuse to use, as they are trying to develop their own in the meantime.
@Dave Connolly: A vaccine doesn’t prevent infection – it protects from the more series effects so you have less of a chance of ending up in hosiptal. With that in mind, it might well be working to an extent, but people will still contract covid, spread it and test positive for it.
@Gavin Conran: I’m old enough to remember when the makers of our most ‘popular’ vaccine claimed their product was 95% effective at stopping infections.
People may counter that variants have changed that…..what I can’t understand then is why the vaccine hasn’t been amended to cover later variations?
Either they can’t or they know there is no point.
I’m here in Shanghai. We budgeted food for 6th April as we were told we’d be out on 5th. Did everything right. Did as we were told and then had goalposts moved arbitrarily. Still locked down, but we’ve received very little food. Hearing 11th April. Some people saying 17th.
I’ve ordered loads of food but almost none has arrived. We’ve enough bananas to feed as many as who wants them, but veg, meat and other stuff nothing. We’ve a 6 year old boy and before bed last night we had to budget for today’s food around what he needed and we’ll fit in around that.
Complete shambles. Closed down the city including people whose job it is to get food and water to people. Absolutely no common sense here. Some friends of mine have resorted to sending begging messages on their compound groups for food.
@Marcus Massey: same here Marcus. No food has gotten into my building for over a week now. The only thing we have received is tests and traditional chinese medicine. 4 PCR and 2 antigens in the last 7 days
@eimear reen: yep. Same as. We got some fruit, but nothing else so far. Feels like all this food group promises were scams
I wouldn’t believe anything that comes out of China, same as Russia all faks news, end of.
Interesting statistic. Out of 19,989 cases only 329 had any symptoms. That means only 1.6% of people with covid had any symptoms.
We usually only get tested here because we have symptoms so considering this it means we are only finding out about less than a 2% of the cases that are actually really here because we never did any mass testing like China does.
With 1.5 million cases confirmed in Ireland it means that in actuality practically the entire country must have had covid by now and most people were oblivious that they had it.
@Johnny King: and for 329 people to be symptomatic out of 25 million people and they lock down the city seems a bit overkill.
It’s getting ridiculous. It’s been for more than two years and it’s the first lockdown in Shanghai, it’s been 11 days, if only one week I can understand, 28 million people, it’s hard, lots problems, learn, fix, improve it, but now near two weeks, its supply chain is still big problem, there is enough food, but no enough staff to deliver the food, why the authority didn’t prepare and plan for it? someone will be responsible for it after.
Saw this report on the BBC News last night. Nothing on Irish TV.
25 Million people in strict lockdown is hard to fathom. The pictures are scary. Full hazmat suites. Spraying the streets. Food not being delivered to homes etc. Really worrying stuff, what the hell is going on? Whats coming down the tracks?
have your say