The narrow alleyways of the Haizhu neighborhood have long attracted China’s hard workers, people like Xie Pan, a textile worker originally from a mountainous tea-growing area in central China.
One of the country’s biggest fabric markets, Haizhu is home to workers’ dormitories and textile factories in brightly colored buildings crammed so close together that neighbors can shake hands through their windows. Once a handful of rural villages, the area became an industrial hub when China opened up its economy decades ago. The government had promised to stand back and let the people unleash their ambitions, and millions turned to Haizhu to do just that.
Xie made the hopeful trip last year, joining others from Hubei Province who have also settled in this dense pocket of the southern metropolis of Guangzhou. They worked in noisy factories, selling fabric or sesame noodles, a hometown favorite. But when I met him a few months ago, his hopes had waned. Because of a slowing economy, he spent two weeks without a home, until he saved money to rent a 9 square meter room for US$ 120 (R$ 630) a month.
“There isn’t enough work to go around,” said Xie, 31, a soft-spoken man with hunched shoulders from many years working on sewing machines. “You can’t go to bed every night having to look for work in the morning. It’s too tiring.”
It would get much worse after a strict Covid-19 lockdown silenced factories and shuttered noodle houses. In October, Xie was quarantined for nearly a month.
Several weeks later, Haizhu erupted in discontent. After a weekend of protests against Covid-zero restrictions across the country, hundreds of workers defied lockdown rules and stormed the streets of Haizhu on Tuesday (29), demanding freedom. They knocked down barricades in the streets and threw glass bottles. “No more confinement!” they chanted, as police in high-protection suits marched through the alleys, banging their batons on their shields.
The eruption was a powerful illustration of how the world’s toughest pandemic restrictions have completely affected life in China. Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, is expanding the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on its population beyond what Mao Zedong achieved. Xi has linked the success of Covid zero to his own legitimacy as a ruler, and enforcing the restriction has taken precedence over nurturing the free spirit that has made Haizhu and China so vibrant.
The change strikes at the party’s old social contract with its people. After violently crushing pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, Beijing made an implicit bargain: in exchange for limitations on political freedoms, the population would have stability and comfort.
But now stability and comfort have diminished, even with increasing limitations. Nearly 530 million people — roughly 40% of the population — were under some form of lockdown at the end of November, according to one estimate. People died because of the delay in medical care, or starved.
China’s security apparatus is already moving to crack down on the Covid-zero demonstrations, the most widespread protests China has seen since Tiananmen. Police detained and threatened participants across the country. The government, while not publicly acknowledging the protests, has also tried to dampen public outrage by easing restrictions, including lifting some lockdowns in Guangzhou.
Even if Xi drives discontent back underground, the disillusionment that the protests exposed could remain. Covid zero made clear the ease and apparent arbitrariness with which the party can impose its will on the people. For many Chinese, this dominance has shattered their expectations of steady progress and destroyed their ambition and willingness to take risks.
Perhaps nowhere is this shift more poignant than in southern China’s biggest metropolises: Guangzhou and neighboring Shenzhen. It was here that Chinese market reforms first took off. A colleague and I spent two weeks in the region earlier this year to see how changing the social contract has fueled frustration, resignation and anxiety — sentiments wholly at odds with the triumphalist vision of national rejuvenation that Xi has promoted.
Xie was released from quarantine last month, before the protests. He fled Guangzhou, not knowing if he would return. “This place … if I can, I’ll avoid it,” he said.
The region’s main appeal was the promise of something for everyone. There were factories for rural migrants, tech powerhouses for aspiring programmers, stores for entrepreneurs. Anyone with courage and motivation could have a better life.
Xie moved to Guangzhou last year, looking for a bigger salary to support their two young children. But when she arrived she found a different stir than she had expected.
Many factories have reduced production as the economic slowdown and lockdowns have stifled demand for new clothes. Each morning, Xie pushed his way through the mostly still crowds of jobseekers to negotiate with factory bosses for ever-lower prices for handicrafts, such as finishing the hems of shirts or pleating skirts. In August, he earned between US$40 and US$50 (R$210 to R$260) a day, when he earned anything.
At work, he hurriedly wolfed down lunches of white rice and tofu, surrounded by knee-high piles of fabric and the hum of sewing machines.
Then, in October, the coronavirus began to spread in Haizhu, as did the lockdowns. Confined to his room and then to a quarantine center, Xie’s money has run out.
On the morning he was released, he boarded a train back to Hubei. “I’ve been unemployed for so long that I’m almost starving,” Xie said when he got home.
Even if Covid zero goes away, Xi’s fixation on control is unlikely to do so. In this environment, it remains to be seen whether the ambition that fueled China’s rise can still thrive.
That ambition led Li Hong, 36, to take over a clothing factory last year in Haizhu. Since she arrived from Hubei 16 years ago, Li has worked from the shop floor to management and was eager to keep pushing forward and betting on herself. She knew the economy was unstable, but with so many factories failing, she was able to buy one for a good price.
“Opportunities come to those who are prepared, but even if there aren’t opportunities, we want to find them,” she said last summer in her small office, where she kept a sofa for naps during long shifts.
But last spring’s lockdown in Shanghai halted orders from a major customer. Then came the outbreak in Guangzhou. Factories in Haizhu were ordered to close. Li tested positive for Covid-19 and was sent to a makeshift hospital.
After being released two weeks later, she returned to Hubei because her home in Guangzhou was closed, she said by phone. Her factory lease expires in January; she didn’t know if she would renew.
Controlling expectations is perhaps best summed up by a ubiquitous phrase in China’s Covid-19 restrictions: “Unless necessary.” Authorities instructed citizens: do not assemble “unless necessary”; do not leave the house “unless necessary”. Many Chinese who learned to dream of progress — even luxury — were suddenly instructed to expect only the essentials.
Still, some hold out hope that the retreat is a passing moment. Despite all the current difficulties, the years of extraordinary growth are still fresh in many minds.
Atop a hill in Shenzhen’s Lianhuashan Park stands a six-meter statue of Deng Xiaoping, the pioneering leader in China’s embrace of market forces after Mao’s death. Deng watches over the city that is a living reminder of the country’s ability to change direction. Deng is shown stepping forward, to honor his motto that the opening should speed up.
Chen Chengzhi, 80, a retired civil servant who walks to the statue every day to exercise, credits Deng with changing his life. Chen moved to Shenzhen in the 1980s shortly after Deng allowed economic experimentation here. The city had a few hundred thousand people, but Chen, who had lived through famine and the Cultural Revolution, believed in Deng’s vision.
“At the end of the day, all good things in China are related to Shenzhen,” Chen said on one of his daily walks, adding that he cheered when Premier Li Keqiang visited the statue in August and pledged that China would continue its openness. to the world.
If it doesn’t, Chen said, “China will hit a dead end.”
But Li is retiring as Xi’s era of increasing state control drags on.
For now, Chen continues to climb the hill—looking back at the city he helped build, and which he still believes in.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
