Opinion | Amid Shanghai lockdown and economic woes, how can Hong Kong best help China?

Name: Beijing students protest Covid-19 curbs on campus in rare act of defiance
Uploaded: 2022-05-29T22:45:27.000Z
Duration: 1 min 38 s
Description: Beijing students protest Covid-19 curbs on campus in rare act of defiance

Hong Kong has avoided the kind of strict lockdowns that have disrupted lives across the mainland and dealt a heavy blow to China’s economy

Given the mainland’s struggles, Hong Kong’s role as an intermediary between China and the West could be one of the best assets for the country

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A resident looks out through a gap in the barrier in front of a residential area during lockdown in Shanghai on May 25. Photo: Reuters

Alice Wu

Published: 6:45am, 30 May 2022Updated: 1:05pm, 31 May 2022

If things go according to plan, Shanghai’s stringent lockdowns will begin to ease on June 1 after more than two months. Remember when Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said that Hong Kong would not undergo “wholesale city lockdown” at the beginning of March? Most of us did not know what that meant before we saw Shanghai shut down.

There have been reports of people screaming from their homes, food shortages, infected young children separated from their parents, patients in desperate need of medical attention going unattended, pets of the infected being killed, and fenced-in residents taking down the barriers.

And, of course, how could we forget the nursing home patient who was mistakenly declared dead? The footage of workers pulling a body bag out of a mortuary van only to realise the person inside was still alive went viral and sparked outrage – as it should have.

We are fortunate that, while our health minister once casually floated the idea of a lockdown for the city on the radio, Lam ruled it out. Having been battered by previous waves of Covid-19, and given the city’s cramped living spaces, our response to a “wholesale lockdown” may well have been unimaginable.

In a study, Polytechnic University researchers found that 12.4 per cent of respondents exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder due to the pandemic.

That survey was conducted between December 2020 and February 2021 during the city’s fourth wave, and researchers warned that the situation could be much worse after the fifth wave. The mental health crisis facing the city should be a lesson for our compatriots and policymakers across the border.

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Beijing students protest Covid-19 curbs on campus in rare act of defiance

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