In that pre-Olympic Beijing, jovial and carefree, the riots accompanied the arrival of the bus or the train. The authorities, worried about what the visitors of those feral masses would think, established the 11th of each month as “the day of the line & rdquor; and they sent volunteers to the stations to explain the relevance of the order of arrival and other aspects of the new doctrine. Almost 15 years have passed and no city shows more and better queues these days than Beijing, of Prussian discipline and scrupulous distances, with the throat scraping as a goal.
They started yesterday in Chaoyang, the main district of the capital, and today they have spread to another ten. Only two of the 21 million Pekingese are exempt from the three rounds of tests in five days. The immediate fate of the city depends on its results. Half a dozen cases were detected on Friday and the outbreak today added 80 after the last 33. It is a ridiculous figure for Western magnitudes but here it sets off alarms. Shenzhen, the northern macro-city, closed with just sixty cases and the crisis lasted a week. Shanghai delayed it until it was piling up thousands of cases a day and a month later it is still counting deaths. There is little doubt which recipe Beijing will apply.
Consumer stimulus
The news stimulated impulse purchases from Sunday night. Yesterday it was already difficult to find rice, milk and other basic foods in supermarkets and only the small neighborhood stores resisted the onslaught at the last minute. The recovered splendor of the shelves this morning belied the rumors of an imminent shortage and played down the drama. The owner of a greengrocer in Dongcheng, the old district of narrow streets and low houses, promised today that the government has ordered shipments to flow. Her Ling, an employee at a local telecommunications company, panicked when she saw her neighbors arrive carrying bags. “I immediately went downstairs and took tofu, soy milk and what was left. Luckily I found food for my cat that will be enough for two months. The Shanghai authorities do not send pet food & rdquor ;, he points out.
The confinement will depend on the number of infections that the massive tests show. The results are unknown but the indications rule out optimism. In the previous outbreak that the capital suffered, with its epicenter in a food market, the tests ended as soon as it was found that the virus had not left the area. In the current one they have spread from Chaoyang, where the first infections were diagnosed, to the rest of the capital. Health authorities suspect that the virus had circulated for a week in the city before it was detected.
Fewer contacts, more telecommuting
The threat has lulled the capital of the world’s second largest economy and imminent first. Beijing has asked its population to socialize less and companies to encourage teleworking, canceling mass events and trips are not recommended if they are not urgent. The Pekingese have never forgotten the minimum precautions such as the mask, not even when they accumulated months without a single case, but they accentuate them when the threat appears. The green mobile seal that identifies you as healthy at the entrance of the shopping centers it is demanded without excuses when the process used to be excused.
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These are favorable days to visit the restaurants that required waiting. Just a couple of tables are occupied in a central Sichuanese restaurant and the waitress explains that home deliveries have multiplied. A sign asks delivery men to wait on the street for their orders. A nearby real estate complex, they explain to me, is in quarantine because one of them had tested positive. Presumably everyone he attended in his hectic workday is too.
The suffering of the Shanghainese has brought back the debate on China’s zero tolerance policy. In China, discounting Shanghai for understandable reasons, the recipe that has prevented the carnage of the West and protected the economy enjoys massive support. The Chinese demand that it be applied well and soon to avoid the desperate and inhumane quarantines, unprecedented until Shanghai. The lockdown in Beijing is a certain possibility but few believe that it will last more than a week or two. From the capital, Shanghai is viewed with disdain, arrogant and chauvinistic, and reassures the diligent response of its own authorities. Regional rivalries aside, Beijing has a much more robust local organizational fabric that facilitates crisis management.