Thread by Naomi Wu

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So...my cautious thoughts Shanghai/COVID-Zero-in-China. Yes, I am self-censoring on this one, so this is one of those threads where those of you who need explicit statements and can't read implied meaning and nuance are going to have a tough time.
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Things are quite bad in Shanghai. China has a long and ugly history of famine, displacement, and civil unrest. The social contract we have is basically; no more of that, and a steady improvement in quality of life, and we won't quibble too much about the path that takes us there.
The general answer to why Chinese don't rise up against this or that, is because *overall* there's constant incremental improvement. Bad as something is, our parents had it better than our grandparents and we have it better than our parents, collectively, cooperation is rewarded.
Some countries were founded in a fight against fascism, freedom from colonial powers- every nationality has its buttons you do not push if you don't want people in the street. In China, our fight was against the humiliation of colonialism, but also the of humiliation of poverty.
Jokes about our conduct at seafood buffets abound, but plenty of us grew up with ration tickets, and before that, if you did not fight your way to the front of the line- your family didn't eat. Now a great deal of our culture revolves around showing off there is too much food.
There's a trick from old Shenzhen, a woman with a baby used to carefully clean the edge of a plastic garbage bag in a public bin. Put some rice on it and appear to eat out of the trash while holding her baby. Within minutes a horrified passerby would give her money for a meal.
We absolutely cannot abide any hunger*. You can do a lot to Chinese- you've seen us put up with a lot, but hunger we will not. Whether it's an epigenetic legacy I can't say but the memory of famine is firmly burned into the Chinese collective consciousness
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140731145845.htm
Shanghaiese will not starve in their homes- the powers that be are well aware of it. The only reason they have not taken to the streets in greater numbers is the population is highly educated, well invested in the current system, and aware that doing so will make things worse.
We've already seen the Shanghai authorities ease the lockdown today, but this will also likely speed the spread of this variant. If COVID escapes local lockdowns into the general population, any reasonable estimate puts the death toll at upwards of 5 million people.
So in the next few weeks, if there is no major progress, we are faced with the possibility of civil unrest caused by scarcity- either from lockdowns, or by a shortage of workers able to deliver supplies due to illness.
Food shipments in China are very time-sensitive due to our poor cold chain. Most Chinese want "fresh" not frozen or refrigerated foods. This is why massive amounts of food has been lost to spoilage in Shanghai as trucks could not make timely deliveries.
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/abd622
Few Chinese eat canned or frozen foods in any quantity, many rely on takeout. Overall, with the exception of rice, I would estimate 80% of our average caloric intake is perishable foods with a fragile, time-sensitive supply chain. We've seen even modest delays are a huge problem.
Add to this, most Chinese watching Shanghai are extremely upset by the situation there but almost none I have spoken to has acted on that awareness and begun to stock up on dry goods. Many of my friends in Shenzhen still rely on takeout and don't even have a sack of rice on hand.
The fact that many Westerners have a relatively unhealthy diet of processed, pre-prepared foods with an extremely long shelf-life actually serves them well here and makes the time-sensitive and precarious nature of the Chinese food supply situation a little counterintuitive.
I genuinely hope that ample supply trucks will get through, health care shortages eased, and people patient. Civil unrest is called for in some cases, but here it would only make things vastly worse, very, very quickly. But you should understand why this is such a delicate time.
*Yes I understand no one can abide hunger, some react more rationally to the prospect of it than others. If your take is some "everyone culture is the same" bullshit because you can't grasp that differences exist it will be the last thing you post in my feed.
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