Once China adopted a policy of lockingdown cities as part of its extreme pandemic control and prevention measures in 2020, border cities quickly felt the impact.
In the name of preventing people from outside China bringing COVID-19 into the country, the regime locked down border cities and turned them into ghost towns.
Dongxing, a small town just across the river from Vietnam, has been locked down since Feb. 23—more than 77 days. The city does not seem likely to lift the lockdown anytime soon.
Ruili, bordered on three sides by Myanmar, has experienced lockdowns on and off for at least 160 days since Jan, 2020.
‘Dongxing has Become a Ghost Town’
Dongxing resident Mr. Liu said, “The population here is down from 200,000 to about 70,000. This once hustling and bustling town has now become a ghost town.”Liu explained that Dongxing was popular with Vietnamese businessmen—shops fill the streets. But life has turned miserable since the authorities closed the border. He said, “The main business in this city is gone, many aliens [immigrants] had to leave.”
Life got even harder when Dongxing was closed during the Chinese New Year. The latest lockdown saw the city closed for at least 77 days, the longest since the outbreak in early 2020, before restrictions were slowly lifted.
Dongxing residents were not allowed to leave the city except under exceptional circumstances. There weren’t many confirmed cases from the official reports, “But the extreme prevention policy has wiped out the entire border trade,” Liu said.
The people in Dongxing have been struggling to survive since the city was closed on Feb. 23.
Residents are locked at home all day long, with no job or income, and prices continue rising. Those who have no food stocked or bank savings are suffering. Liu said, “The government just does nothing about it.”
People are panicked by the Covid virus under the regime’s propaganda. “In fact, people in the United States or Europe are still living a normal life; but the Chinese are paying such a high price,” Liu said.
He referred to the small businesses such as local shops and restaurants that have been left without any income during the endless closure.
“It’s not zero-Covid, but zero-pocket,” Liu said.
Ruili Resident Lost Tens of Thousands of Dollars in the Lockdowns
Ruili residents have experienced the city’s closure nine times since Jan. 2020, and undergone PCR testing at least 130 times.Ruili was popular for its jade, import and export, tourism, and catering industries.
These businesses and trades have nearly collapsed because of the lockdown policy.
Ruili’s latest round of PCR testing recorded about 190,000 people on April 18, 2022, compared to 380,000 people who took the test on April 13, 2021. At least 200,000 people left the city in a year. Mr. Wang was one of them.
Wang was a merchant in construction materials in Ruili. He invested in Ruili believing the border city would offer better businesses; but, the pandemic changed everything.
He decided to leave the city because every lockdown would cause his business to lag for six months. There was no business before or after each lockdown. The on and off enforcement of the lockdown policy forced him to leave the city.
Wang said he will never return to Ruili. “The long lockdown could kill the business. I can’t get new orders, the old materials have nowhere to go. There’s shop rent, wages, and my own apartment rent. In two years, I lost more than tens of thousands of dollars in Ruili.”
He said many others have also left Ruili because they encountered the same situation.
About 373 million people in 45 cities across China have come under some form of lockdown due to a surge in coronavirus cases, according to estimates by a Nomura International analysts in Hong Kong. The combined annual gross domestic product of those cities amounts to some $7.2 trillion, or 40.3 percent of the country’s economy, Kyodo News reported.
As of May 11, Dongxing remained closed; Ruili’s jade market was open, but the border remained closed.
Interviewees were given pseudonyms to prevent reprisal from the regime.
