The current situation in Xi'an #Xian illustrates how important it is to “disaggregate China", at least when trying to understand what caused the difficulties that are reported these days. A thread. 1/
When I looked at lockdown coverage on Chinese social media, I made out four broad types of posts:
1) government propaganda on the logistics of delivering food to 13 million people (sometimes reposted with satirical undertones, sometimes with commenters mocking the content); 2/
2) an increasing number of complaints by residents who say they have run out or are running out of food; 3/
3) comments by users who says they’re also from Xi’an but have received food, and on that grounds challenge the second group; 4/
4) comments about the lack of government efficiency and the danger of repression when speaking out. 5/
Especially interesting is the tension between 2) and 3), which can probably be explained by the two groups living in different parts of the city (and not necessarily by group 3 being CCP fanboys and -girls). 6/
Going through Weibo, it becomes apparent that by far the most complaints about lacking food come from Yanta district. There are also quite a few complaints from Weiyang (and, to a lesser degree, the other inner-city districts). 7/
Yanta is Xi’an’s most wealthy and developed, put also most populated district. It is also where by far the most Covid-19 cases were recorded. 8/
As is well known, Xi'an imposed a city-wide lockdown on December 23. Less well-known is that, because of the rapid increase of incidences, a lockdown for parts of Yanta was announced already on December 17. 9/
Shortly after, however, the government opened the up again, much to the bewilderment of some residents. 10/
Apparently, to contain the spread, the authorities imposed the lockdown without first obtaining permission from higher-level authorities. It seems, however, that those authorities were not pleased. Yanta's leaders had to apologise and open up again. 11/
This illustrates a shortcoming of China's hierarchy-cum-competititon approach to local governance: higher levels delegate a lot of responsibilities, but often without also delegating the requisite rights (and finances) to meet these responsibilities, leaving localities 12/
to fending for themselves. If it works out, the centre takes the credit, if it doesn't, local officials are blamed and given the boot. 13/
On the one hand, local officials cannot single-handedly lock down a district, but on the other, they are required to organise food delivery to more than a million residents at short notice. 14/
The bigger a district, the higher the coordination costs. I don’t know how many employees there are in Yanta’s District government, but I doubt that the numbers are proportionate to its size when compared with other districts. 15/
Two days ago, the party secretary and vice party secretary of the district were fired because their pandemic prevention work was allegedly insufficient. I’m not sure if this refers to the increase of infected, the food problem or both. 16/
Notably, the leaders of other inner-city districts with food delivery problems are still in office (unless I missed something). 17/
The whole episode illustrates what always happens in emergency situations like these: the centre blames local officials for problems that are really systemic in nature. There is some local blowback against the sacking, some say the higher levels are to blame. 18/
It would be worthwhile to compare the Wuhan and Xi'an lockdowns by zooming in on the district-, street office and neighbourhood levels. 19/19
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