Shanghai’s Struggle Between Safety and Political Goals in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Reaching over 500,000 confirmed cases, Shanghai has become the most serious hotspot of the COVID-19 pandemic in China since the outbreak in Wuhan in 2020. China has been experiencing several waves of the pandemic in different parts of the country; however, the current outbreak rocking Shanghai poses the greatest threat to human life and health.

Apart from the rising number of confirmed cases, people in Shanghai have to deal with acute concerns about meeting basic medical needs given the current lockdown. For example, a patient with hemodialysis passed away because he could not go to the hospital for regular treatment or necessary medicine. Although other parts of China have been supporting the food supply in Shanghai, there are still residents of some communities seeking help on social media platforms because of lack of food. Shanghai is currently reliving the nightmare that Wuhan experienced two years ago when they sounded the alarm to the Chinese government for a reform in local response to public health emergency.

Fragmented local administration and lack of empowerment and concern for humanitarian issues explain why Shanghai is experiencing such mismanagement during this new wave of the pandemic.

In contrast to the authoritarian-stereotype found in international relations debates, China’s local actors, instead of China’s central authorities, have been playing a proactive role in the control of the pandemic. The ground level administration faces multiple and competing localities and other domestic stakeholders, leading to a decentralized decision-making process. The fragmented administration results in uneven distribution of public goods and chaos in virus prevention and control. This decentralized management has impacts beyond Shanghai. The lockdown in Shanghai disrupted people’s normal way of life, not only in the city but in other parts of China. These other regions have been continuously reporting imported cases due to loopholes in the health QR code (an app to identify whether the users have been to the high-risk regions). Moreover, the spread of the virus from Shanghai to other parts of the country continues because the ongoing designation as a “green” or low risk region means that residents in Shanghai still have access to public transport, significantly reducing the efficacy of the lockdown.

Under the lockdown in Shanghai, the coordination breakdown between different sectors, such as transportation, logistics and medical care, has left residents without access to food and basic medical treatment. Facing such a major public health emergency, the government should have made sure that the relevant agencies could coordinate effectively with each other. Empowering street-level bureaucrats is paramount as they are the first responders and most accessible to citizens during an emergency. However, the most frequent response residents get from their community officials is: “I need to ask for permission from the government,” which is a fatal waste of time when it comes to an emergency. Within the current Chinese administrative framework, the community officials serve only as an assistant role to a regulatory body. They do not have the power to ask the other public agencies to coordinate with them, delaying delivery of aid regardless of urgency.

In Shanghai, it is difficult to say whether the people are more afraid of the symptoms of COVID-19, or what the street-level bureaucrats can do to them once they get sick. Some of the officials have essentially ignored residents’ psychological health and humanitarian concerns during the pandemic. For example, there have been several reports of brutal cases where local authorities euthanized COVID-19 patient’s healthy pets for the “harmless treatment.” Patients with non-COVID-19 emergencies have passed away outside hospitals just because they could not show a negative test report within 24 hours. These tragedies happened not because of the pandemic, but because of the inefficient and cruel response of the authorities. People facing emergencies or with special health conditions are left to fend for themselves because there is no comprehensive pandemic response regulation which prioritizes social welfare. Instead, the focus is simply on limiting case counts. Street-level bureaucrats refuse to adjust each case as they are unwilling to take on the responsibility of the potential consequences of every adjustment. Without a waiver by the government, they act like a machine which can only follow the pre-set instructions by the superior officials.

General guidance and specific adjustments to each case are two crucial elements for efficient local administration. Shanghai needs to find a way to realize both internal and external coordination to ensure public goods delivery and virus control. It is time for the government and community to bear in mind that social welfare, including both physical and mental wellness, comes first instead of a nominal political goal.