The northern Chinese city of Xiong’an is under intensive quarantine after authorities discovered five cases of Covid-19 in the city. ‘Lockdowns’ are common in China with the ‘zero cases’ policy, but there is something strange about the restrictions imposed on what is considered the ‘city of the future’ – few people outside, and even some inside the city, seemed not to know what was happening.
German newspaper ‘Die Zeit’ revealed that Xiong-an, a city of 1.3 million people less than an hour’s drive from Beijing, went into lockdown last Monday without any official government announcement, news or any reference in social networks.
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“We expect this lockdown to last about a week but the exact timing is uncertain”, stressed a government official. Authorities set up roadblocks across the city and told people they had to go into home quarantine. ‘Die Zeit’ further reported that some residents received messages last Monday from anonymous accounts on WeChat, a messaging app, informing them that the city would be locked down for the next seven days.
At the same time, the police showed up at restaurants and shops and told the owners that they had to close their businesses for a week. However, some residents say they were unaware that a ‘lockdown’ was taking place even after authorities closed the city, according to the German publication.
Authorities may be keeping the quarantine a secret due to the city’s unique status in China and the sensitive moment brought about by the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing. Xiong’an is China’s newest city, considered the ‘city of the future’ in the country – until recently it was just a rural location near Beijing. On April 1, 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping designated three sparsely populated farming towns as the “New Xiong’an Area”, and workers began building infrastructure.
At the time, the Xiong’an project seemed destined to help alleviate an increasingly crowded and congested Beijing, which is one of the world’s largest cities with 21.5 million people.
The Chinese government has said it intends to transfer all “non-capitalist functions” from Beijing to Xiong’an, which includes some state-owned enterprises, less critical government offices and research facilities.
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