Sprawling Xinjiang is the latest Chinese region to be hit with sweeping COVID-19 travel restrictions, as China further ratchets up control measures ahead of a key Communist Party congress later this month.
Trains and buses in and out of the region of 22 million
people have been suspended, and passenger numbers on flights have been reduced
to 75% capacity, reports said Thursday.
As is often the case with China’s draconian “zero-COVID”
policy, the measures seemed out of proportion to the number of cases detected.
The National Health Commission announced just 93 cases in
Xinjiang on Wednesday and 97 on Thursday, all of them asymptomatic. Xinjiang
leaders on Tuesday conceded problems with detection and control measures but
offered no word on when they planned to lift the restrictions.
Officials are desperate not to be called out for new
outbreaks in their regions and Xinjiang has been under special scrutiny over
the government’s establishment of a series of prison-like re-education centers
in which Muslim minorities have been taught to renounce their religion and
allegedly subjected to a range of human rights abuses.
Tech makes survelliance simple
Xinjiang’s vast surveillance system, relying on ubiquitous
checkpoints, facial and even voice recognition software, and universal cell
phone monitoring has made controlling travel among the population especially
easy.
“Zero-COVID” has been closely identified with Communist
Party leader Xi Jinping, who is expected to receive a third five-year term in
office at the congress beginning Oct. 16. That’s despite criticisms from the
World Health Organization and massive disruptions to the economy, education and
normal life in China.
Last month, a nighttime bus crash that killed 27 people who
were being forcefully moved to a mass quarantine location in southwestern China
set off a storm of anger online over the harshness of the policy. Survivors
said they had been compelled to leave their apartments even when not a single
case had been discovered.
Leaders proclaim "zero-covid" a success
“Zero-COVID” has been celebrated by the country’s leaders as
evidence of the superiority of their system over the U.S., which has had more
than a million COVID-19 deaths.
Xi has cited China’s approach as a “major strategic success”
and evidence of the “significant advantages” of its political system over
liberal Western democracies.
Yet even as other countries open up, the humanitarian costs
to China’s pandemic approach have grown.
Earlier this year in Shanghai, desperate residents
complained of being unable to get medicines or even groceries during the city’s
two-month lockdown, while some died in hospitals from lack of medical care as
the city restricted movement. Last week, residents in the western region of
Xinjiang said they went hungry during a more than 40-day lockdown.
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