When H1N1 broke out in Mexico, China initially responded in a very generous way. They sent two 747s packed with materials to help contain the outbreak. Immediately thereafter, they started rounding up every Mexican in China and refusing to take our calls at the Foreign Ministry. 
I was summoned to MOFCOM for a meeting with a vice minister, no idea what it was about. He opened by asking what México needed to help contain the outbreak. I had no idea. I was not prepared for that question. He volunteered that they’d be sending the two planes.
This caught us so by surprise that, in gratitude, México’s president went to the airport, at midnight, to welcome the planes with the aid. We thought China was going to be an ally in this fight. We were wrong.
Immediately thereafter we started getting reports that “authorities” were knocking in the hotel rooms of Mexicans in China at night, asking them to come with them for a quick hospital check. Entire families, with children, were taken from their hotels to hospitals, and detained.
The criteria for rounding up Mexicans was the passport, not where they had been in the past days. They were detaining Mexicans who hadn’t been in Mexico for months, just because of their passport. We called the foreign ministry to find out what was going on, no one would answer.
We went to hospitals to try to assist Mexicans detained (Chinese called it a quarantine, it was detention), I was not allowed in unless I wore a hazmat suit, scaring the children. Inside the hospital were municipal authorities, with no protection whatsoever.
The big lesson is that this was all about pretending to do something about the potential pandemic, to be seen in control. It was never about actual health protocols. None of it made sense, but it made them look tough, and in control.
I went to see Mexicans detained at a hospital, after the Chinese realized that the detention of of our citizens had become a huge issue in Mexico, they did what they do best, stonewalled. They didn’t allow me in to see them (none of them were sick).
