This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.
Five years ago, authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and surrounding areas in Hubei province imposed a travel ban on some 18 million people, just days after admitting that the newly emerging coronavirus was transmissible between people.
The lockdown prompted a mass rush to leave the city that likely helped spread COVID-19 around the country and beyond.
It also plunged China into three grueling years of citywide lockdowns, mass quarantine camps and compulsory daily COVID tests, with residents locked in, walled off and even welded into their own apartments, unable to earn a living or seek urgent medical care.
China is still struggling to recover today, despite the ending of restrictions in 2022 following nationwide protests, political commentators and a city resident told RFA Mandarin in recent interviews.
The most worrying thing about the Wuhan lockdown was that the authorities took that model and imposed it on cities across the country over the three years that followed, according to independent political commentator Qin Peng.
“The first thing [the authorities learned] was how to control public speech, how to arrest citizen journalists, how to block the internet, how to leak information and create public opinion through paid-for international experts and media,” Qin said. “The second thing was how to tame the public and bring everyone into line with the use of official narratives.”
“The third was how to turn an incident for which they were clearly responsible into a problem caused by somebody else … by blaming the United States, or nature,” Qin said.
The World Health Organization last month called on China to fully release crucial data surrounding the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in 2020, although the call was dismissed by Beijing.
Massive controls ‘still possible’
U.S.-based former Peking University professor Xia Yeliang said the government learned that it was still possible to impose massive and far-reaching controls on the population.
“They weren’t sure it would work after so many years of economic reform and opening up, although such strict controls had been possible during the time of [late supreme leader] Mao Zedong,” Xia said. “They thought people wouldn’t accept it.”
“But after the Wuhan lockdown, the authorities discovered that it was still possible.”
Wuhan was Ground Zero in the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first city in the world to undergo a total lockdown in early 2020.
Authorities claimed that only 2,531 people died in the initial wave of infections, but estimates at the time based on the number of cremations carried out by the city’s seven crematoria suggested that tens of thousands died.
Apart from the spread of the virus, the most immediate impact for many was the clampdown on freedom of speech.
Whistleblowing doctors like Li Wenliang and Ai Fen were threatened and silenced after they tried to warn people about the new viral “pneumonia” that bore all of the hallmarks of a SARS-like virus.
During the 76 days of the Wuhan lockdown, the authorities deleted 229 articles and posts by citizen journalists who rushed to the city to document the pandemic from the front line, according to the documentary film “Wuhan Lockdown,” which remains banned in China.
Police also pursued and detained several prominent live bloggers in the city, including Li Zehua, Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Zhang Zhan, all of whom were to serve lengthy terms behind bars for their attempts to report on the emerging pandemic.
Outside the city, censors were busy deleting articles and comments on the pandemic and the authorities’ response.
Wuhan residents also lost the right to freedom of movement, to earn a living and to seek medical care, and were effectively prisoners in their own homes, according to reports at the time.
Paying the price
There was a heavy price to pay, both psychologically and economically, however.
“Since the Wuhan lockdown, I’ve lost interest in so many things that I used to love,” Wuhan resident Guo Siyu told RFA Mandarin. “My health, my parents and my kids are my top priority now.”
“I barely have any thoughts of material success … and even my spiritual life has faded into the background: I just want to stay alive and be safe,” she said.
Xia said the initial attempt to control the citywide spread of COVID-19 was understandable.
“When you have the large-scale spread of an infectious disease, with an unknown source and outcome, it is not entirely wrong to choose to control the movements of the population,” Xia said. “But what really needs reflecting on is what they did afterwards.”
For example, Chinese President Xi Jinping never visited Wuhan in person, Xia said.
“He claimed to be overseeing operations in person, but he wasn’t there in person,” Xia said, adding that the emergency relief services had also failed to deliver reliable supplies of food, transportation and medical attention to everyone to needed them.
“Maybe they were taken by surprise initially, but what about a few months later?” he said. “It was a dereliction of government duty that they were still unable to achieve this several months down the line.”
Xia said the Chinese government seems incapable of reflecting on its errors and learning from them, and controls on public speech mean that nobody is allowed to do that for them.
“I think this is a government that doesn’t reflect, and a society that cannot reflect,” he said. “And a government that can’t reflect can’t run the country effectively.”
CCP’s damaged standing
Qin said the government’s insistence on the zero-COVID policy, using lockdowns and tracking people’s movements and infection status via the Health Code app, had ultimately damaged the economy and the Chinese Communist Party’s standing in the eyes of its own people.
“People used to have this irrational belief in the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to govern,” Qin said. “But from the extreme prevention and control measures right through to the way they relaxed restrictions with no preparation, we can see how inflexible their policies are.”
“And they failed to deliver the economic recovery that everyone predicted after the restrictions were dropped,” he said. “This has had a profound impact on all aspects of China’s political and economic development, and damaged the authority of the national government and Xi Jinping personally.”
“That’s why they dare not talk anymore about their victory over the pandemic,” Qin said.
Guo, who once made a living coaching Chinese students to apply to study overseas, said neither she nor her city has ever really recovered.
“Relations between China and other countries have broken down, and I have no income,” she said.
“It’s been five years, and yet the pandemic has never ended,” Guo said. “The impact of that lockdown on us, the native people of Wuhan, has never gone away.”
