The Chinese megacity of Chengdu has extended a week-long lockdown in most downtown areas after Covid-19 cases increased, underscoring the government’s commitment to eradicating the virus even as the economic and social costs climb.
Home to 21 million people and the capital of Sichuan province, Chengdu is the biggest city to close down since Shanghai experienced a bruising two-month lockdown earlier this year. Chengdu reported 116 local cases for Wednesday, compared to 121 the day before. Authorities said mass testing would continue and pledged to eliminate community spread of the virus within a week.
Another Covid lockdown has virtually paralysed a city of 6 million that houses much of the country’s electronic information, forcing Apple’s data centre operator to take emergency measures to shut out the pandemic.
Apple’s partner in Guiyang, which operates the server centre that houses all online data generated and stored by hundreds of tens of millions of Chinese iPhone users, has adopted a “closed loop” system under which employees are barred from leaving the premises. Many haven’t seen their families for a week, Guizhou Cloud Big Data said in a WeChat notice.
Guiyang, the capital of the mountainous landlocked province of Guizhou, has used incentives and policy support to attract massive server investments from the likes of e-commerce giant Alibaba and Tencent.
Apple’s Chinese data centre has become the heart of its nationwide operation, storing and handling an array of information from photos and videos to email. Apple was forced to hand control to a state firm under Chinese law, which critics have said jeopardises user privacy and security.
The decision to prolong the Chengdu lockdown shows that even as the Covid Zero approach becomes more costly for China’s economy, the country remains committed to the policy espoused by President Xi Jinping, who has staked his power on protecting people from the level of virus fatalities seen in the US, which has recorded 1 million virus deaths compared with the 5,200 officially reported by China.
However, the costs of sticking to that strategy in the face of more contagious variants are becoming increasingly clear, as growth forecasts are slashed and factory and retail activity slumps. China recorded 1,334 Covid cases nationwide for Wednesday, marking a month of more than 1,000 infections a day. While small compared with case numbers in other parts of the world now living with Covid, it’s significant for a system that is still hunting down every infection and trying to eliminate the pathogen.
Hopes for recovery in the tourism sector, already hit by snap lockdowns in top destinations such as Hainan and Xinjiang, were further dashed when the health authority urged the public to avoid travelling for upcoming Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays.
Travellers will need to provide a negative Covid test result within 48 hours before being able to board flights or trains, and will need to take another test on arrival at their destinations, said Wu Liangyou, a National Health Commission official, at a briefing on Thursday.
More infectious virus strains are forcing China to lock down more frequently, as officials continue with a policy of wiping out Covid cases. The country has shut down more large and economically important cities in 2022 than at any time during the pandemic, with Shanghai’s prolonged lockdown providing a cautionary tale for other cities on waiting too long to act forcefully.
Authorities are determined to let nothing spoil the Communist Party’s twice-a-decade leadership summit, which is to open on Oct 16, at which Xi is expected to break precedent by securing a third term in office. His opening address at the event will be scrutinised for signals on whether China will shift from trying to eliminate Covid, to living with it like the rest of the world.
Beijing, where the summit will take place, is on high alert against flareups, and is banning travellers coming from places which have reported Covid cases in the past seven days.
In another development, Hong Kong will require children as young as age 5 to prove they are inoculated in order to enter restaurants, indoor play areas and other venues, health department authorities said.
The city’s Leave Home Safe mobile app, which stores Covid immunisation records and tracks locations where visitors are required to check in, already is required for everyone aged 12 and older. The government is expanding the programme to include elementary school-aged children starting from Sept 30.
While not as strict as mainland China, Hong Kong continues to apply pandemic rules that have been abandoned in the rest of the world. While new cases have hovered around 10,000 per day, almost all of them very mild, since the start of the month, the city hasn’t re-imposed mass closures or social distancing requirements, but isn’t fully opening up either.
