Several districts in Shanghai put up metal barriers last weekend as part of the city’s battle against the COVID-19 outbreak, in a move that sparked protests and anger from some residents.
Workers in head-to-toe white protective gear erected chain-link fences and sheet metal to block highways, residential communities and even the entrances to some apartment buildings. Most of the city’s 25 million residents had already been prevented from leaving their homes during a month-long lockdown, though some neighborhoods have since opened up.
Barriers are deployed to ensure movement control, often leaving only a small entrance that can be easily protected.
IS THE USE OF METALLIC FENCES OR BARRIERS NEW?
The barriers are new to Shanghai, but have been deployed during the pandemic in other cities in China. For example, in early 2020, some neighborhood committees, the lowest rung of local government, erected fences and metal sheets in parts of Beijing to control access points to houses. Wuhan, where the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in December 2019, has also erected metal barriers across the city.
How they have been implemented varies. Sometimes the government puts up fences around entire blocks of the neighborhood, leaving only one or two entrances. In other cases, they build fences in front of individual residential complexes.
The fence has also been widely deployed in border regions, including in Suifenhe, a city in the northeast that borders Russia. Metal barriers block entire streets.
WHY DID PEOPLE PROTEST IN SHANGHAI?
Shanghai had not erected metal barriers on a large scale during the last two years of the pandemic, and prided itself on more targeted measures that did not depend on lockdowns. That changed in the latest outbreak, which is fueled by the highly transmissible omicron BA.2 variant. Central authorities imposed a city-wide lockdown that prevented people from even setting “one foot out the door,” according to a widely circulated slogan.
Many Shanghai residents were upset about the barriers blocking the entrances to their apartment buildings, and some angry citizens circulated videos online showing the protests. In video verified by the AP, residents leaving a building in Shanghai’s Xuhui district smashed through a mesh fence at the main entrance and angrily sought out the security guard they believed was responsible for erecting it.
Shanghai is using a tiered system in which neighborhoods are divided into three categories based on transmission risk. Those in the first category face the strictest COVID-19 controls and are the main target of the barriers.
However, some neighborhood officials in Shanghai have put up barriers in areas that are not part of the stricter category. One resident called the police to protest road closures near his apartment building, saying his residence was not in the first category. He and two other residents in his building complex tried to stop workers from erecting the metal barriers, but a neighborhood committee worker stopped them. The police officer told the residents that they had no right to leave the apartment, according to the man’s account, which he posted on WeChat.
“This deep, deep feeling of helplessness. Who can tell me: is there any hope for this place? he wrote. He declined to be named.
WILL THEY BE REMOVED?
In some cases, residents have been successful in their protests.
At an apartment complex in Shanghai’s Putuo district, residents fiercely protested after the residential committee placed a U-lock on the door of their building on April 16.
“It was very sudden, without warning, and it wasn’t just the building. Every place was locked down. It blocked any avenue of escape,” said a Shanghai resident who asked to be identified only by her last name, Zhang. “If there was any accident or fire, everyone is sure to die.”
Residents of the building called the police and the city’s hotline. The residential committee relented and duct-taped the door, but warned residents that destroying the tape would lead to legal consequences, according to a notice the committee sent to residents and Zhang showed to the AP.
In Beijing, many barriers were removed after the city had not had a major outbreak for the past two years. Now, however, residential complexes with positive cases are once again barricaded.