How Covid-19 lockdowns in China’s Xinjiang region trapped millions for months on end
- Obtaining an official permit to leave Xinjiang involved navigating a long and Byzantine process
- All passenger train services leaving region were suspended in middle of ‘golden week’ holiday
All the people quoted in this story asked that their real names not be disclosed because they feared repercussions for speaking to the media. Those not identified as members of the Uygur ethnic minority are Han Chinese.
Lin, who worked in the southern province of Guangdong, flew to Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, on August 1 when the region was grappling with an outbreak of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. He travelled to Hami, where he was born and raised, the next day.
“It’s been locked down from summer to winter,” Lin said. “Even when it snows I can’t get out of Xinjiang.”
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Most of Xinjiang’s 25 million residents, along with many tourists and migrant workers, were subjected to partial lockdowns over the past two to four months. Since August, residents’ regular daily lives were put on hold – replaced by daily mass testing. Production was disrupted and management of the epidemic situation was chaotic, more than a dozen residents in a handful of cities across Xinjiang told the Post.
No citywide lockdowns were officially announced, but even districts and residential compounds in low-risk areas were effectively sealed off, with residents told not to leave home. People struggled to get by as savings dwindled, food supplies ran short and debts mounted, and the many who contracted the virus found themselves quarantined in poor-quality makeshift hospitals.
Since early October, when public transport connections were severed, tens of thousands of tourists and migrant workers have been stranded in the region. They needed to navigate a lengthy and Byzantine process to obtain an official permit to leave Xinjiang, and then wait for weeks to months for a designated vehicle or find one they could drive themselves.
Lin said the prices of daily necessities at government-approved shops in Hami had skyrocketed during the lockdown, with pork ribs 80 per cent dearer, and bottled water twice as expensive as usual.
“Unable to return to work, I’ve lost my job and have no income,” he said. “Feeding myself has become a problem. I’ve had to borrow money from the bank, and I have a mortgage and bills to pay.
“Everyone is living a very hard life. Some time ago, I really considered suicide.”
Lin said that sometimes he could only buy vegetables and have one meal a day.
“We don’t even have the most basic things, like freedom to go out or daily meals,” he said.
Abdulla, a Uygur in the Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture in northern Xinjiang who recently graduated from university, said many residents were running short of nan, meat and milk, and he became depressed after browsing numerous heart-wrenching social media posts.
He tested positive in October and was quarantined in a makeshift hospital.
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“The conditions inside were disgusting,” he said. “You couldn’t take a shower and the food was terrible. People were put together and easily got cross-infected and tested positive repeatedly.”
Another Uygur who recently graduated from university, Murat, said he believed daily mass testing had led to mass infections. Originally from Kuytun, a city in Ili, he contracted the virus in October and said the temporary hospital where he spent 10 days on a makeshift bed was actually a school.
“There was no treatment or any medicine – the nurses didn’t even know how to measure my temperature,” he said. “I couldn’t go out at all and could only look out of the window every day, watching the birds flying by, thinking that being an animal was happier than a human being.”
The complaints posted on social media in September were in stark contrast to the official picture painted by the authorities at the time, with just a handful of asymptomatic cases reported each day and government officials urging people to visit local tourist attractions.
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An official described the outbreak as the largest and longest-lasting seen in Xinjiang, and admitted “it is still not under full control”.
To prevent the virus from spreading to other parts of China, Xinjiang suspended all passenger train services leaving the region from October 5. That was during the National Day “golden week” holiday, traditionally a busy time for tourism in Xinjiang – with one estimate putting the number of visitors at the same time last year at 7.6 million.
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Most flights were also cancelled and the few remaining tickets were snapped up quickly. The controls were tightened soon afterwards and a huge number of tourists and migrant workers were left stranded, desperately seeking ways to get out.
They needed an official permit to leave the region, with approval from the authorities in their destination a prerequisite. Offline and online applications with supporting materials had to be submitted to the community where they were staying in Xinjiang, and they then had to wait for reviews and feedback from four levels of government.
Dou Yong, a migrant worker from Sichuan province, has lived in Kashgar, a city in southern Xinjiang, since 2016.
His flat was sealed off in early October. Shortly afterwards, his father was involved in a serious traffic accident and was admitted to a hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan’s provincial capital, with no family support. On October 28, Dou submitted applications to leave Xinjiang, including medical proof and a work certificate, only to be told “just wait”.
He waited until November 20 to call the police and find the local Communist Party chief, who was unable to give him approval.
“I’ve tried all means, I’m desperate,” Dou said. “No one understands my situation or has done me any favours.”
Even those who managed to acquire permits faced daunting journeys on the three types of transport available. For the past two months, people in a dozen WeChat groups joined by the Post exchanged rapidly-changing advice about ways to depart.
The first choice was by plane. With the help of culture and tourism bureaus in Xinjiang, chambers of commerce in some cities outside the region arranged leaving permits and organised charter flights for people wanting to return from Xinjiang after the cancellation of regular flights. But ticket prices ranged from 3,000 to 6,000 yuan (US$425 to US$850) and schedules were uncertain. A charter flight arranged by the Guangdong Chamber of Commerce, which used a WeChat group to collect information from over 200 would-be passengers since October 27, had still not taken off by late last week.
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The second option, departure by train, was only available to some migrant workers and students, and only if local government officials in Xinjiang concluded negotiations with destination cities on arranging express trains that could each carry 1,200 to 1,500 passengers.
A coal miner from Henan province waited for two weeks before getting a train home to attend his father’s funeral, while Murat managed to board a train on November 26 after waiting for a month.
The last way out was by car, but many considered it the most difficult option. Trapped tourists and others faced drives lasting days, sleeping in cars without thick clothes or quilts, weathering sandstorms and snow, lining up at multiple checkpoints, and all with the risk of being barred from entry because their PCR test results were not recognised by some cities along their routes.
Wu Xuan, who works for a foreign-owned company in Beijing, was locked down in Kashgar on October 6. She lived in a high-risk area, obtained a permit after 20 days, and finally left by car on November 4 in a group of four.
“We drove for 108 hours,” Wu said.
They would have a PCR test at one checkpoint on the highway and then drive quickly to the next one while waiting for the result to show up on their health code apps. But they were constantly caught in traffic jams at checkpoints and petrol stations, including one six-hour stretch when they travelled just 2km (1.2 miles). At one point, one of the travellers had a problem showing a timely negative test result, and they were prevented from proceeding for 20 hours.
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They drove through Xinjiang, Gansu province, Ningxia Hui autonomous region and finally arrived in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province, on November 8.
“We had our first proper meal in five days,” Wu said, adding they only had nan and milk on the way. After a week’s quarantine in Xian they flew back to Beijing.
In mid-November, Yining in northwest Xinjiang became the first city to ease pandemic restrictions, with the authorities announcing it would gradually start to reopen and allow business activities to resume.
Residents told the Post traffic was gradually getting back to normal, but travel to other cities or provinces was still forbidden.
In Yining, those who have recovered from Covid-19 receive a certificate that exempts them from being subjected to mass testing for three months.
Sichuan migrant worker Peng Yi received the certificate in September, but could not afford charter flight tickets for his family of three and did not qualify for an express train service. When he finally got a car and tried to leave Yining on November 23, he tested positive again and the checkpoint said his certificate was invalid.
“We’ve been living in a basement without heating since August,” Peng said. “The endless waiting is really driving me nuts … had I not been able to live with my family, I might have gone crazy.”
Unlike Yining, where residents have been able to leave their homes since mid-November, the rest of Xinjiang remained in lockdown until recently.
The turning point came on November 26, when Urumqi authorities said the city would lift coronavirus restrictions “in phases” after rare protests erupted in multiple cities across China against strict Covid-19 rules, triggered by a fire in a block of flats in Urumqi that killed 10 people.
From November 29, Urumqi residents were allowed to use public transport to travel around low-risk areas for work and shopping. The cities of Urumqi, Yining, Turpan, Kuqa, Korla and Wusu have promised to relax control measures gradually and resume production, but authorities in the southern prefectures of Kashgar and Hotan said they were still “carrying out pandemic prevention and control measures resolutely and effectively”.
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On November 26, Urumqi’s propaganda chief said the city had “basically eliminated Covid cases in society” – meaning there was only a low number of cases among those who were not quarantined. The city reported 63 new cases on Friday, including 61 asymptomatic ones, while the whole region reported 823, with 812 yet to show symptoms.
The leaving permit was scrapped on November 28, flights from Urumqi to a couple of cities have resumed and more train tickets are now available, but not enough to handle the number of people stranded in Xinjiang.
Beijing-based IT engineer Charlie Du has been locked down in Kashgar for two months. Two flights and one train he booked were cancelled, and he said he was still unsure when he could go home, especially as the national capital has a pop-up window mechanism on its health code app that prevents high-risk travellers from entering the city.
Lin said Hami had reopened on November 28, but he planned to wait for a few more days as tickets were still too expensive.
“The good news is that now we no longer need a permit to leave Xinjiang,” he said.
