Travellers confront officers after China continues Covid lockdowns
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Travellers were left stranded after a Covid lockdown was enforced at the Xishuangbanna airport in the Chinese province of Yunnan on Wednesday. Sixty-one reports of Covid were reported in the area and China faced a total of 273 new cases of the virus as of Wednesday morning.
In video footage, officers armed with machine guns can be seen pushing back crowds while people yell and film the event on their phones.
One person whose flight was grounded wrote on the Chinese social media website Weibo: “I spent 8,000 RMB (£995 pounds) for a two hour tour in Xishuangbanna airport, I am really speechless.”
China is the last major economy which is still enforcing zero-Covid policies and has aimed to stop the virus through border restrictions and strict quarantine requirements.
President Xi Jinping has made “Covid zero” an uncompromising policy in China, and the enforcement of strict lockdown measures has seen entire cities closed down and citizens unable to travel.
The lockdowns in at least 30 regions have affected tens of millions of people in China and have left them without food, medicine and other essential items.
A resident from Xinjiang told the BBC in September: “It’s been 15 days, we are out of flour, rice, eggs. From days ago, we run out of milk for kids.”
China had begun to relax restrictions in Xinjiang a few weeks ago, but on Wednesday officials banned residents from leaving the region after 38 new Covid cases were discovered.
As of July 30, Xinjiang has reported 5,790 Covid infections, and the entire region has a population of 22million people.
Xinjiang’s Vice Chairman Liu Sushe said officials will strengthen control measures in all travel points to stop the virus from spreading, and on Wednesday morning 97 percent of flights at an airport in Urumqi, a city in the region, were cancelled.
On the Chinese social media site Weibo, users have reacted to further lockdown restrictions, with one user posting; “I’m so tired, I almost can’t go on”.
Another commentator posted in response: “Me, too … the lockdown began in summer and now it’s winter already.
“If we still go back to where we started, after all the losses we suffered from the two-month lockdown, I really can’t live my life anymore.”
Another user posted: “Who can endure another round of suffering?” while someone else wrote: “People are hoarding supplies again today in our residential compound … Do I have to stock up?”
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On October 16, China will have its most significant political event of the year as the Communist Party will hold its 20th Party Congress where representatives will meet to elect delegates.
Xi is expected to secure a third term in power at the summit after the leader abolished the two-term limit for presidents in 2018.
The strict lockdowns China is experiencing are due to impact the congress meeting.
Xinjiang’s Vice Chairman Liu Sushe said the province would make sure it “create[s] a favourable environment” in order for the congress event to be successful.
In June, President Xi stressed the importance of the “dynamic zero Covid” approach and said the “herd immunity” method would be unimaginable for China.
However, Chinese Covid lockdowns have reportedly been hurting Beijing’s economy as the yuan has fallen against the US dollar.
Louis Kuijs, the chief Asia economist at S&P Global Ratings, said: “There is not a lot of point in pumping money into our economy if businesses cannot expand or people cannot spend the money.”
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