Shanghai on the Edge of MadnessAaron Sarin
18 Apr 2022 6 min read
Starvation will push and pull human psychology in unusual directions—it is one of the few things that can overcome fear of the authorities. When famine came to China 400 years ago, it made Chinese peasants receptive to the preachers of class war. When the government failed to provide crucial supplies, the people rose up in rebellion. They pillaged the ancestral tombs of the incumbent Ming dynasty, fought their way to Beijing, and sacked the city (which was quickly deserted by imperial forces, who were also starving). The dynasty was overthrown, its last emperor left swinging from a tree above the Forbidden City.
A government that fails to feed the people has lost all legitimacy. There may be no famine in modern China, but the Communist Party’s ill-conceived “Zero COVID” policy is raising ghosts from the nation’s long history. In the abundant 21st century, we are seeing remarkable video footage of crowds confronting police outside their compound, screaming: “We are starving!” Scores of residents shriek and roar into the Shanghai night from their apartment blocks as if experiencing the onset of mass psychosis:
* * *
The Party’s leaders have always been careful students of the dynastic past—they are, after all, an imperial dynasty in all but name. They know what widespread hunger portends for the authorities. Beneath all the glitter and wealth and relentless modernisation, China nurses deep cultural memories, and one of these is the ancient link between starvation and violent rebellion. It’s not a sure link. No uprising followed the humanitarian disaster caused by Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward 60 years ago. But it has happened enough that we can sense the creeping fear they must be feeling today in the Party headquarters at Zhongnanhai.
China had seen a number of lockdowns in recent months, but Shanghai residents were still detained in March for “spreading rumours” that their own city was next. Then the inevitable lockdown arrived. At first it was staggered, with the city to the east side of the Huangpu River closed for four days, and then the west side closed for four days. Finally, authorities shut down the whole city, with no end date announced. Lockdowns are essentially useless against the highly transmissible Omicron variant, as the rest of the world has long since learned. And so, case numbers spiralled, and by April 10th, the city’s daily caseload was 25,173 asymptomatic, 914 symptomatic. (Those were the official figures. Official figures should always be greeted with a raised eyebrow when dealing with the Communist Party.)
* * *
These are hardly unusual scenes in the context of 73 years of Communist Party rule. The CCP has always inflicted unnecessary suffering on the lives of ordinary people. But in the Internet age, that suffering is instantly visible. Viral videos show the outside world a thousand tragic stories: a COVID prevention worker beating a Corgi to death because the dog’s owner had been taken into quarantine; a mob of policemen in white protective gear accosting a man in the street and savagely kicking and punching him; a paramedic sitting impassively in an ambulance, ignoring a woman as she screams that her male companion’s “heart has stopped!”; babies and children packed five to a bed in those grim quarantine centres, having been separated from their parents after testing positive.
There were also snapshots of absurdity. Robot dogs patrolled the empty streets warning everyone to stay inside. One video showed citizens opening their flat window to sing as a form of protest, only to find themselves confronted by a hovering drone. “Control your desire for freedom,” it told them.
* * *
Source:
https://quillette.com/2022/04/18/shanghai-at-the-edge-of-madness/
