The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is going all out peddling its narrative of a COVID-19 free region to the world. But going by the media reports, it looks like the natives of the country still do not have confidence in their country’s government. A report in Financial Times has emerged stating that Beijing’s efforts to get people back to work in China have been met with widespread opposition from citizens who do not trust government assurances that the virus outbreak is under control.
The residents of Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak are finding it impossible to leave the city to work in other parts of the country as local authorities are defying central government orders and refusing to lift travel restrictions.
Last Friday the opposition stand of local authorities led to violence as thousands of Hubei migrant workers tried to cross over a bridge linking Huangmei in Hubei to Jiujiang in neighbouring Jiangxi province. A video footage is doing the rounds on social media which shows police officers from Jiujiang and Huangmei wrestling with each other and hundreds of people attacking police and overturning their vehicles.
https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd/status/1243975854486622208?s=20
People in #Hubei want to go to Jiangxi to work, people in Jiangxi don't want them to enter as they fear #Hubei people may still have #CCPVirus #COVID2019 #Coronavirus
— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng 曾錚真言 (@jenniferzeng97) March 28, 2020
Hours after the incident took place, police from Jiujiang and Huangmei issued statements online, which were deleted shortly afterwards, accusing each other of causing trouble.
China says that its containment measures — which included a lockdown on nearly 60 million people in Hubei and strict quarantine and travel restrictions for hundreds of millions of citizens and foreigners — are working.
As a result, the cases have been brought to almost zero barring the imported cases. But as the country returns to work, residents and analysts doubt the near-zero community transmission rate, worrying that leaders have prioritized restarting the economy over decisively containing the virus.
As per the official reports, only 2,535 people in Wuhan have died due to Coronavirus, but several news reports have stated that there might be 40,000 dead in Wuhan alone.
The present difficulties faced by migrant workers, said a Beijing-based sociologist, are rooted in fears that the virus remains prevalent, especially in Hubei, even though official statistics have been showing zero new cases of infection in the province for many days.
The other reason the people of Hubei are uneasy of the government’s decision is because of the discrimination they are facing. Jiangxi is not the only province making life difficult for Hubei people to return to their employment.
In Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, Hubei residents have to provide proof of employment, proof that the company that employs them has reopened and a welcome letter from the local resident’s neighbourhood committee before they are allowed to enter.
While the Xi Jinping regime has been claiming that the situation has eased as a result of aggressive testing, quarantines, and social distancing – the countries all around have cast a shadow of doubt on China’s numbers. Fudging numbers is one of the cornerstones of the Communist country and therefore people tend to be apprehensive of China’s claims. Now, that the commoners have taken to the streets, the assertion made by Chinese officials is belittled several notches.
The violence on Friday and the sudden requirement for large amounts of additional documentation before people could move around the country underlined a growing distrust of authorities as Beijing struggled to restore credibility undermined by its cover-up of the pandemic that has killed more than 30,000 people worldwide.
The whole conundrum is a tight slap on the faces of the entire Xi Jinping regime. In its attempt to earn a few quick nickels, it has pushed the entire province into unrest. The phrase “An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one that crumbles from within, that’s dead. Forever.” finds relevance in the case of China. The country might be able to persuade everybody on the international platform by hiding its glaring chinks in the armour but what about the native people. They have to bear the brunt of the starkly different ground reality.
You can only suppress and censor people’s voices up to an extent. The revolution always begins with such sporadic revolts that later snowballs into a quest for seeking the truth. The people of Hubei have been done badly by the Wuhan virus but they have been further bitterly played by their own government and their lack of trust in CCP is only justified.