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DEEP DIVE - DYSTOPIA

Worth reading at Bloomberg for the photos. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-23/wuhan-s-return-to-life-temperature-checks-and-constant-anxiety




Inside the Dystopian, Post-Lockdown World of Wuhan

The first epicenter is coming back to life, but not as anyone knew it. undefined

A view of Wuhan from inside an empty tram.
Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg Businessweek
Sharon Chen and Matthew Campbell, with Claire Che and Sarah Chen
April 23, 2020, 4:00 AM EDT https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-23/wuhan-s-return-to-life-temperature-checks-and-constant-anxiety


Every workday at Lenovo’s tablet and phone factory on the outskirts of Wuhan,
arriving employees report to a supervisor for the first of at least four temperature checks. The results are fed into a data collection system designed by staff. Anyone above
37.3C (99.1F) is automatically flagged, triggering an investigation by an in-house “anti-virus task force.”

Daily routines at the facility, which reopened on March 28 after stopping for over two months because of the coronavirus pandemic that began in this central Chinese city, have been entirely reengineered to minimize the risk of infection. Before returning
to the site, staff members had to be tested both for the virus and for antibodies that indicate past illness, and they had to wait for their results in isolation at a dedicated dormitory. Once cleared, they returned to work to find the capacity of
meeting rooms built for six reduced to three and the formerly communal cafeteria tables partitioned off by vertical barriers covered in reminders to avoid conversation. Signs everywhere indicate when areas were last disinfected,
and robots are deployed
wherever possible to transport supplies, so as to reduce the number of people moving from place to place. Elevators, too, are an artifact of the Before Times; everyone now has to take the stairs, keeping their distance from others all the way.

Presiding over all these measures one Sunday in mid-April was Qi Yue, head of Wuhan operations for Beijing-based Lenovo Group Ltd. Qi, who’s 48, with closely cropped hair and a sturdy frame, had been visiting his hometown of Tianjin, in China’s north,
when the government sealed off Wuhan from the rest of the country on Jan. 23. It had taken him until Feb. 9 to get home—and he was only able to make it by buying a train ticket to Changsha, farther down the line, and begging the crew to let him get
off in Wuhan. His job was now to bring the factory slowly back to life while emphasizing vigilance. Compared with keeping the virus out of the plant, he said, “how much production we can deliver comes second.”
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Qi Yue, head of the Lenovo factory in Wuhan.
Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg Businessweek

Qi is one of millions of people in Wuhan trying to figure out what economic and
social life looks like after the worst pandemic in a century. In some respects they’re in a decent position. The outbreak in Hubei province peaked in mid-February, and
according to official statistics there are now almost no new infections occurring (though other governments have cast doubt on China’s figures). But scientists warn that the novel coronavirus is stealthy and robust, and a resurgence is still possible
until there’s a reliable vaccine. How to balance that risk against the need to reignite an industrial hub of more than 10 million people is a formidable dilemma—one governments around the world will soon be facing.
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Workers on the production line of a Lenovo tablet and phone factory on the city’s outskirts.
Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg Businessweek

So far, Wuhan’s answer has been to create a version of normal that would appear utterly alien to people in London, Milan, or New York—at least for the
moment. While daily routines have largely resumed, there remain significant restrictions on a huge
range of activities, from funerals to hosting visitors at home. Bolstered by China’s powerful surveillance state, even the simplest interactions are mediated by a vast infrastructure of public and private monitoring intended to ensure that no infection
goes undetected for more than a few hours.

But inasmuch as citizens can return to living as they did before January, it’s not clear, after what they’ve endured, that they really want to. Shopping malls and department stores are open again, but largely empty. The same is true of restaurants;
people are ordering in instead. The subway is quiet, but autos are selling: If being stuck in traffic is annoying, at least it’s socially distanced.
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The cafeteria at Lenovo’s factory. On the partitions are slogans: 1. Wash your hands, health for everyone. 2. Finish your lunch, leave quickly. 3. Don’t chat, finish your food quickly.
Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg Businessweek

Qi figures he’s probably on the right side of this economic rebalancing. Tablets are in high demand as schools around the world switch to remote learning, and companies contemplating a work-from-home future aren’t likely to skimp on technology
budgets. Since restarting operations, he’s hired more than 1,000 workers, bringing the on-site total above 10,000, and production lines are running at full capacity.

He said he was painfully aware, however, of how quickly work would stop if even
one employee contracted the virus. “In my meetings with my staff I always tell them, ‘No loosening up, no loosening up.’ We can’t allow any accidents.”
relates to Inside the Dystopian, Post-Lockdown World of Wuhan
Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, April 27, 2020. Subscribe now. Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg Businessweek

More than 80% of China’s almost 84,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, and more than 95% of the roughly 4,600 confirmed deaths, have been in Hubei, of which Wuhan is the capital and largest city. Controlling the outbreak there, after a series of mistakes
by President Xi Jinping’s government, which initially downplayed the risk of human-to-human transmission and failed to prevent widespread infection of medical personnel, required a herculean effort. More than 40,000 doctors and other medical staff were
dispatched from other regions to reinforce existing facilities and operate field hospitals built in the space of 10 days, and car and electronics companies were pressed into making protective gear. People suspected of having the disease were required to
move into dormitories and hotels repurposed as isolation facilities, and allowed to go home only after they’d been declared infection-free.

Hubei was the last region of China to resume daily life, with curbs on movement
lifted progressively from late March until April 8, more than three months after the epidemic began. The government presented the moment as a decisive victory—part of a
comprehensive effort to rewrite the narrative of the virus as a Communist Party
triumph, in contrast to its catastrophic spread in Western democracies.

Late on the night of April 7, crowds began arriving at Wuchang station, one of three large railway hubs in Wuhan. The first outbound train in weeks, to Guangzhou, was scheduled to leave at 12:50 a.m., followed by a dense schedule of departures to many of
China’s major cities. (Wuhan’s position at the junction of several major rail and road routes, along with its industrial heft, has invited frequent comparisons to Chicago.) Police in black uniforms and medical masks seemed to be everywhere. “Scan
your code!” they shouted at travelers approaching the departure gates. The public-private “health code” system that China developed to manage Covid-19, hosted on the Alipay and WeChat apps but deeply linked with the government, assigns one of three
viral risk statuses—red, yellow, or green—to every citizen. It’s a powerful tool with clear potential for abuse. A green QR code, which denotes a low risk of having the virus, is the general default, while coming into contact
with an infected
person can trigger a yellow code and a mandatory quarantine. Red is for a likely or confirmed case.

Travel between cities requires a green code, and while Zeng Xiao, 22, had hers and felt fine, she was nervous about making her train. “There’s still a chance I’ll be stopped if my temperature is too high,” she said as she neared the departure
zone. Before going to the station, Zeng had checked repeatedly for a fever, worried that being even a little bit warm would prevent her from getting to Guangzhou, where she works as a teacher. “I haven’t seen my cat in almost three months,” she
said. She didn’t have to worry. Her temperature scan was normal, and she was soon able to board her train south.
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A traveler in a full protective suit at Hankou railway station.
Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg Businessweek

Another passenger leaving on the first day, Qin Xin’an, 26, had been stranded
since the lockdown began. He’d been on vacation in Wuhan when Hubei was cut off, and no amount of pleading with officials could get him on a train out. By mid-February he
was living off online loans. “I was eating instant noodles for every meal,”
he said. He ended up getting a bed in an austere dormitory constructed by the local government for people who couldn’t leave. He also found work doing odd jobs at
Leishenshan Hospital, one of the temporary infirmaries built to handle coronavirus patients. He’d lost his regular job, at a company in Jiangsu province that makes robots, because he couldn’t get back, and was now headed to Guangdong to look for
another one and see his family. He hadn’t told his parents where he’d been all this time; as far as they knew, he was away working. “I will not tell them I was in Wuhan,” Qin said.

When dawn broke, Wuhan came cautiously back to life. Hairdressers were some of the first businesses to fill up. The roads were noticeably busier, and workers flowed back into office towers in the city center. But these new freedoms felt distinctly
provisional. At the entrance to every mall or public building, guards stood sentry with temperature scanners, ready to turn away anyone whose reading was too high. Green codes, required even to ride the subway, have become the city’s most precious
possession, and one that’s easy to lose. Merely visiting a building around the same time as a person later found to be infected can turn them yellow. And apartment compounds still reserve the right to bar residents from leaving if cases are reported
there, as they did during the lockdown.
feat_wuhan_05
A deserted Wuhan mall.
Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg Businessweek

Even in the first city to confront the virus, following a containment effort as
intense as any in the history of public health, the danger remains acute. “Asymptomatic cases and imported cases are still risks,” Wang Xinghuan, the
president of one of
the city’s major hospitals and of the Leishenshan facility, told reporters at
a press conference before the latter’s closing. And many residents are still susceptible. Wang’s hospital gave antibody tests to all 3,600 of its staff, and fewer than 3%
came back positive—a result that shows “there’s no herd immunity in Wuhan.” There’s only one way to durably protect the population, he said: a vaccine.

Wuhan’s businesses are nevertheless hoping for a safe but speedy return to conspicuous consumption. In the days before the city fully reopened for business, the sales team at a local Audi dealership gathered for their daily meeting. The 20 or so
salespeople were all dressed in dark suits and face masks, standing well over a
meter apart in neat columns. As a manager briefed them on the day’s plans, a colleague made his way through the group, spraying everyone with disinfectant as they spun
around to ensure full coverage. “Customers may not be kind enough to tell you
if they don’t feel well, so try not to bring them into the store,” the manager said. “Just talk to them at the entrance if possible.”

After reopening on March 23, the dealership had been selling about seven cars per day, on pace with last year despite all the restrictions. Most were relatively low-end vehicles, such as the A3, which retails for about 200,000 yuan ($28,000)—the kind
of car often bought by families to complement a bigger, fancier model. “People are not willing to take public transport in Wuhan,” said the marketing director, who asked to be identified by only his surname, Pan. “And
they don’t dare commute by
Didi”—the ubiquitous ride-hailing app. The focus now, Pan said, was on following up with people who’d expressed interest in an Audi in the past but hadn’t bought one. They might be ready to bite. The dealership was looking to
expand its current
staff of about 150, and employees would soon receive the pay they’d missed during the lockdown. Another salesperson added, “It’s like a boom.”

For many other businesses in Wuhan, though, it’s anything but. Benny Xiao is director of international operations at Wuhan Boyuan Paper & Plastic Co., which
produces the kinds of unremarkable but essential goods that still form the backbone of Chinese
industry. In his case, they’re disposable cups, which Boyuan sells to U.S. airlines and Japanese retailers, among other clients. Xiao works from an office
inside a dilapidated residential compound, and, wearing a battered gray blazer over a green
button-down, he didn’t quite look the part of an international dealmaker. But
he beamed with pride as he showed off a glass cabinet in his office stuffed with examples of his craft, from thin plastic vessels for economy-class soda to
a sturdy tumbler
he’d tried, unsuccessfully, to sell to Starbucks Corp.
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Xiao with his company’s wares.
Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg Businessweek


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