Hainan’s Covid Chaos Exposes the Bad, Ugly, and Scary of China’s Virus Control Measures

My daughter and I finally returned to Beijing on Tuesday, 23 days after we arrived in Hainan for a week-long beach vacation and got stuck on a travel nightmare due to the extreme containment measures of Covid-19 in China.For nearly a month, we were forced to become nomads: first stranded in the tropical island province, then trapped thousands of miles away in Tianjin for a week while we waited to be cleared to return to the Chinese capital.
We have experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of China’s pandemic control measures, but our sorry saga is much more than a cautionary tale for travellers. It also shows how fragmented and chaotic the country’s bureaucratic command structure remains, especially in a crisis.

Since coming to power in late 2012, President Xi Jinping has consolidated power both in the central government and in his own hands. Local mandarins may cower in his presence and publicly pledge allegiance to him and the central authorities, but the truth is that explicit directives from Beijing are often ignored or obfuscated by regional governments.

This explains the widespread skepticism about Beijing’s grand plans, announced in aprilto develop a “unified internal market” that promises to eliminate the local protectionism and economic segmentation that has plagued the country for centuries.
The chaos and confusion have been revealed in the Hainan outbreak. At first, we assumed it was the local authorities to blame for us being stranded on the island province, as they apparently feared censorship if the highly infectious Omicron subvariant was allowed to spread to the rest of the country.

But it turns out that was only half the story. Since then, local governments across the country have been known to covertly ban flights from Hainan as soon as Sanya, the island’s main tourist area, announced the closure of the city August 6th.

This left stranded tourists scrambling to book any available flights, only to see them canceled the next day.

Since coming to power in late 2012, President Xi Jinping has consolidated power both in the central government and in his own hands.

In an attempt to resume activity, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, China’s top pandemic control officer, visited Hainan on August 13 and ordered all local governments to accept flights from the island again. The State Council also issued a formal notice to the same effect on the same day, but to no avail. Sun’s order was simply ignored.

It was not until an official cable from the Hainan provincial government was leaked online on August 15 that the situation began to improve. This cable accused officials in Jiangsu province of refusing to accept flights from Hainan and threatened to file a formal complaint with the State Council over this matter. Hainan officials also threatened to inform Jiangsu residents stranded on the island why they couldn’t get out.

This caused quite a stir on the internet, triggering small protests among stranded tourists, as Jiangsu was apparently not the only offender. Unfortunately, this behavior by the provincial authorities is not unusual. Local officials frequently ignored central government orders during the early days of the pandemic, digging up roads and blocking national highways to prevent people from coming and going.

All of this is reminiscent of the era of warlords in China (1916-27), when control of the country was divided between old military cliques that protected local interests and kept foreign competition at bay.

Of course, local officials are likely to be emboldened to openly disobey central government directives in this way because to the punishment pattern that has emerged in the midst of the pandemic, as officials who adopted excessive virus suppression policies rarely faced disciplinary action – despite causing economic damage and hardship – while their colleagues who failed to prevent outbreaks were summarily dismissed.

China’s Arbitrary Health Code System Looks Like It Will Stay

Our experiences also show the arbitrary nature of China’s vast surveillance network and how its health QR code mandatory applicationknown as jiankang ma, can be viciously abused for political control.

The health code allows authorities to track and control people’s movements by assigning them a color in the app. It follows a traffic light system: green allows the wearer to enter public spaces by scanning a QR code; yellow and red do not.

When our family was stranded, the three of us watched our Hainan health code turn yellow at different times, preventing us from leaving the island.
Since then, we have seen that many tourists have had similar experiences and we can only assume that this is a deliberate tactic by the Hainan authorities to buy time while they negotiate with other provinces to resume accepting flights from the island.

evoke the memory of the Henan province scandal in Junewhen local officials manipulated the health code system to prevent protesters from reaching the capital Zhengzhou by issuing fake red codes.

In our case, things were aggravated by the Beijing municipal government’s ban on residents returning if they travel to a county or city where there is even one new confirmed case.

Don’t Travel COVID-Zero China: My Family’s Vacation Nightmare in Hainan

This ban materializes in a pop-up notification in the application of the Beijing health code, which prevents the bearer from taking any type of public transport to the capital until the place where he is staying has no new confirmed cases for seven consecutive days.

All of this is reminiscent of the era of warlords in China (1916-27), when control of the country was divided between former military cliques.

The travel ban is apparently aimed at keeping the Chinese capital virus-free in the run-up to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, due in October, in which Xi is expected to seek a norm-breaking third term as party chief in a major leadership shakeup.

But the application of the rule is arbitrary and confusing. When we were in Haikou, where only a few cases had been recorded, some people – including my wife – saw their ban lifted and allowed to fly back to Beijing.
However, my daughter and I were not so lucky. We had to fly to Tianjin, a two-hour drive from Beijing, and quarantine in a hotel for three days while we waited for the pop-up to go away.

My wife, who needed to go back to work, was able to fly directly to the capital on August 16. All this despite the fact that we had all stayed in the same low-risk area for 10 days and had undergone daily tests for Covid-19, all of them negative. These tests are apparently worthless as most tourists from Hainan had to be quarantined for at least three days upon returning to their home provinces, according to state media and online reports.

Meanwhile, my daughter and I could only pray that no new cases were reported in Tianjin during our impromptu stay. On Tuesday, our prayers were heard, the pop-up notifications disappeared, and we were finally able to return home.

This prohibition materializes in a pop-up notification in the application of the Beijing health code

From the Chinese government’s perspective, the health code system has worked wonders in controlling both the spread of the virus and the population. It’s hard to imagine authorities voluntarily relinquishing those powers, even when the pandemic is over.

Note: The article was originally published in English on the SCMP portal, and its reproduction in Spanish is done with the direct authorization of the author. Link to original article: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3190293/hainans-covid-chaos-exposes-bad-ugly-and-scary-chinas-virus?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article&campaign=3190293