Has Shanghai Been Xinjianged? src

Shanghai and Xinjiang used to be the two sides of the China coin.

Shanghai was the glamorous China, with skyscrapers, Art Deco apartments and a thriving middle class that shopped in Paris and strolled around Kyoto, Japan.

Xinjiang was the dark China. The western frontier region, which is twice the size of Texas, is home to more than 10 million Muslim ethnic minorities who have been subject to mass detentions, religious repression and intrusive digital and physical surveillance.

Since April, the 25 million residents of Shanghai have gotten a small taste of the Xinjiang treatment in a strict citywide lockdown. They have been lining up for rounds of Covid-19 tests to prove they are virus-free, a pandemic corollary to Uyghurs lining up at checkpoints to prove they don’t pose any security threat.

The political slogans in the government’s zero-Covid campaign echo those in the Xinjiang crackdowns. Residents in both places are subject to social control and surveillance. Instead of re-education camps in Xinjiang, about half a million Shanghai residents who tested positive were sent to quarantine camps.

When the Orwellian animal ranch government doesn't let millions of people die of coronavirus

:19: :84:

Sun Zhe, the editorial director of a fashion magazine in Shanghai, has been reflecting on his life choices. “I’ll stop all unnecessary shopping. I’ll stop working hard. It was all a lie,” he wrote on his verified Weibo account. “The affluent, decent middle-class lifestyle that we managed to attain with hard work, intelligence and luck was smashed into pieces in the glorious anti-pandemic campaign.” “Prosperity is only for decoration,” he continued. “After all, there are luxury shopping malls and hotels in North Korea, too.”

lmao get fucked