As China’s Covid-19 lockdowns snarl supply chains and spark protests from foreign firms, will zero tolerance pass the test?

Name: Police in Shanghai scuffle with residents over Covid-19 quarantine measures
Uploaded: 2022-04-16T02:00:21.000Z
Duration: 1 min 35 s
Description: Police in Shanghai scuffle with residents over Covid-19 quarantine measures

As many as 73 of China’s top 100 cities are under some form of lockdown as the country battles its worst outbreak of the pandemic

With jobs and economic data at stake months ahead of a key Communist Party congress, the impact, if any, on the stringent rules remains to be seen

Reading Time:6 minutes

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Medics from Chongqing depart for Shanghai to aid the Covid-19 battle there. Photo: Xinhua

Jane Cai

Published: 10:00am, 16 Apr 2022

Anxiety was getting the better of Xiao Ke. The trading company owner from Hangzhou was supposed to have delivered a Greece-bound cosmetics shipment to Shanghai earlier this month for customs clearance. But there had been no truck services available for weeks.

That is because Shanghai has been under near total lockdown since last month, as authorities stick with a “dynamic zero” Covid-19 strategy to contain the country’s worst wave since the pandemic hit in early 2020, and provinces next to the eastern logistics hub scramble to block transport links to cut off virus transmission chains.

Xiao thought about Ningbo, another port city some 150km (93km) from Hangzhou, in the same eastern province of Zhejiang. But then Ningbo was under partial coronavirus lockdown, and its stringent and complicated quarantine requirements were a deterrent for all the truck drivers Xiao contacted.

In the end, he had to send the goods 1,300km away to Beijing, from where they would be flown to Athens. “The eastern land transport system has become paralysed. I had to go northward. The change cost me an extra 3,000 yuan (US$471) and a 10-day delay,” he said.

“Given that the goods are only priced at US$4,000, the cost increase is significant,” he said. “If the supply chain disruptions continue, I’m afraid … small businesses like mine will find it hard to survive.”

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Police in Shanghai scuffle with residents over Covid-19 quarantine measures

Mainland China has reported more than 380,000 local infections since March, with financial hub Shanghai and the northeastern province of Jilin the worst hit. Jilin has logged over 60,000 infections since early last month, with the whole province effectively sealed off since March 14.