China: Lockdown Victims Running Out of Food While Regime Worries About Computer Chips

Chinese Communist Party authorities have seemingly prioritized microchips over hungry citizens this week, according to two reports published by the state-run Global Times on Tuesday, which reveal the Party ensured semiconductor production continued unabated in Shanghai during its latest lockdown to contain the Chinese coronavirus while simultaneously failing to provide sufficient food to residents of northeastern China’s Changchun city during its own lockdown.

Local Communist Party officials in Shanghai have ordered some semiconductor factory workers to live inside microchip foundries since mid-March, the Global Times revealed on March 29. The Party issued the extraordinary edict in an effort to allow semiconductor fabrication plants to continue normal operations while also complying with the city’s strict lockdown orders.

“Many chip companies in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang High-tech Park are running under a closed-off procedure by having employees work and stay in the factory campus so as to ensure production,” the newspaper detailed on Tuesday.

“An employee from a local navigation chip company in Zhangjiang said that several engineers have been living in the company for around two weeks, aiming to keep operations as normal as possible,” according to the Global Times.

News that Shanghai’s semiconductor factories have enjoyed priority status during the city’s latest lockdown came on the same day the Global Times revealed in a separate article that local Communist Party officials in the city of  Changchun in northeastern China let their own citizens go hungry during Changchun’s latest coronavirus lockdown.

“Authorities in Changchun, capital of Northeast China’s Jilin Province apologized to local residents for the short supply of vegetables as the city’s two major vegetable wholesale markets were temporarily closed due to the sudden epidemic flare-up of COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus],” the newspaper said.

“Due to COVID-19, two major wholesale food markets in Changchun have shuttered, leading to a shortfall in food supply,” Changchun Deputy Communist Party Secretary Liu Renyuan told reporters on March 29.

He said this problem was further aggravated by “a shortage of workers that has delayed deliveries to homes.”

“We are particularly anxious and angry about this, and we express our deep apologies to the public for the impact and inconvenience caused,” Liu said at a press conference.

Jilin’s provincial government responded to Changchun’s municipal-level failure over the weekend by agreeing to supply the city with 1,000 tons of vegetables in the coming days.

“Many cities in Jilin, such as Baishan and Ji’an, have come to their rescue by delivering vegetable packages to Changchun,” the Global Times reported on Tuesday. “A total of 210 tons of vegetable packages were transported to Changchun from Baishan between Saturday and Monday. Ji’an also sent 30,000 vegetable packages to the city in short supply of vegetables on Monday.”

Shanghai’s government ordered each half of the city of nearly 26 million residents to lock down for five days at a time starting on March 28. The ongoing lockdown order is part of Shanghai’s effort to conduct mass testing for Chinese coronavirus on its populace and to restrict movement to prevent further transmission of the disease. The metropolis, which is both China’s financial hub and home to the world’s busiest shipping container port, has been battling its latest epidemic of the Chinese coronavirus since early March. The government of Jilin locked down the entire province, which borders both North Korea and Russia, earlier this month to contain a surging outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus.

Both Shanghai’s and Jilin‘s current epidemiological struggles are indicative of a nationwide resurgence of the Chinese coronavirus across China in recent months.