BEIJING — China’s mounting Covid-19 restrictions are creating further disruptions to global supply chains for consumer electronics, car parts and other goods. A growing number of Chinese cities are requiring truck drivers to take daily Covid P.C.R. tests before allowing them to cross municipal borders or are quarantining drivers deemed to be at risk of infection. The measures have limited how quickly drivers can move components among factories and goods from plants to ports. Shanghai and other major Chinese cities have imposed lengthy, stringent lockdowns to try to control Covid…
Tag: Shanghai (China)
Your Friday Briefing: Russia’s Growing Isolation
Good morning. We’re covering Russia’s departure from the U.N. human rights council, a political blow to Pakistan’s Imran Khan and Shanghai’s growing frustration with Covid restrictions. Diplomacy: Prospects for successful peace talks have dimmed: Russia’s foreign minister said Ukraine had proposed a new draft deal that deviated from previous versions, and President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus demanded that his country be included in the negotiations. State of the war: Khan in jeopardy after court ruling Pakistan’s Supreme Court overturned Prime Minister Imran Khan’s move to dissolve Parliament on Thursday, setting…
Shanghai’s Covid Lockdown Poses Test to China’s Leadership
Parents have organized petitions, imploring the government not to separate children infected with the coronavirus from their families. Patients have demanded to speak with higher-ups about shoddy conditions at isolation facilities. Residents have confronted officials over containment policies that they see as unfair or inhumane, then shared recordings of those arguments online. As the coronavirus races through Shanghai, in the city’s worst outbreak since the pandemic began, the authorities have deployed their usual hard-nosed playbook to try and stamp out transmission, no matter the cost. What has been different is…
Your Wednesday Briefing: Zelensky Addressed the U.N.
Good morning. We’re covering President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to the U.N., a modification to Shanghai’s controversial family Covid policy and political tensions ahead of the French presidential election. Zelensky addresses the U.N. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine delivered a fiery speech to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, a day after visiting Bucha, where images have surfaced of civilian bodies in the wake of Russia’s retreat. Zelensky said that more than 300 people had been tortured and killed in the town north of Kyiv and that soldiers raped women in…
Inside Shanghai’s Covid-19 Lockdown
I told my husband that I would be happiest if we happened to fall under the third scenario: Our apartment complex would be locked down, but we could go out to enjoy the air, the community gardens, hedges and paths. I realized that my thinking was very Chinese: to enjoy freedom within strict borders, albeit with a virus raging rampant outside. The fourth option, the freedom to move around Shanghai, felt too large, too precarious. I have, over the past couple of years, become more and more isolationist — within…
In Shanghai, Covid Is Separating Parents From Children
Photos and video that showed young children isolated from their families and crying at a Shanghai hospital led to an outburst of anger online on Saturday, as China’s largest city struggled to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious Omicron version of the coronavirus. In the images, a series of hospital cribs, each holding several young children, appeared to be parked in the hallway of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center in the city’s Jinshan district. A video showed several of the children crying. The images and video could not…
Budi Tek, 65, Dies; His Fortune Built a Vast Trove of Asian Art
Unlike many of those collectors, however, he always insisted that he had a civic obligation to display his art. After a few years showing his pieces in a Jakarta cafe, in 2007 he opened the Yuz Museum nearby, making admission free of charge. Even that wasn’t enough. As his collection of works from China grew, he zeroed in on an emerging art district in Shanghai, along the Huangpo River, for an even larger venue. He settled on a portion of an old airfield, and in 2014 opened his second Yuz…
Covid Outbreak at Shanghai Hospital Exposes Risks to China’s Seniors
A coronavirus outbreak is ravaging a hospital in Shanghai for older adults, underscoring the difficulties officials have had in containing infections even as the city imposed a 10-day staggered lockdown. Two orderlies at the Shanghai Donghai Elderly Care Hospital said in interviews that the coronavirus was spreading widely among the mostly older patients in the facility, and that people had died on each of the past three days. The two, who declined to be named for fear of losing their jobs, said that on a recent night they had been…
Shanghai’s Lockdown Tests Covid-Zero Policy, and People’s Limits
Even before Shanghai imposed a lockdown to curb a rapidly spreading Covid outbreak, life for many in China’s wealthiest city had been upended by the virus — and the government’s response. Residents raced to hoard groceries in case they were ordered to stay home. Some protested at the gates of housing complexes that were locked with little notice. Others, sent to government isolation facilities, were forced to sleep on the floor because of a shortage of beds. For still others, the city’s Covid-19 restrictions have had life-threatening implications. Some residents…
Shanghai Imposes Staggered Lockdown, District by District
As coronavirus outbreaks spread across China, Shanghai is introducing new rounds of lockdowns to be rolled out sequentially across the city’s neighborhoods, the city government announced on Sunday night, as part of an effort to test its entire population of 26 million. The restrictions and mass testing will start Monday morning in areas east of the Huangpu River, with those lasting until April 1. Restrictions and testing in districts west of the river will begin on April 1 and continue until April 5. According to the announcement, all citizens, except…