Hi everyone, this is Klaus.
The most recent outbreak in Shanghai is simply China’s epidemic prevention at its most absurd.
At first, before Shanghai was locked down,
word had gotten out about the city’s upcoming closure.
Those who leaked the information were arrested.
Government officials stepped in for rumor control.
And then a few days later, Shanghai was indeed shut down.
After Shanghai was closed, tanks were driven into the city.
Were they planning to bomb to death the virus invisible to the naked eye?
Recently, the government of Guangzhou said they wouldn’t build fangcang shelter hospitals.
But now one is being built.
Guangzhou, the “unclosable” city, might soon be in lockdown as well.
Those in Guangzhou had better stock up supplies.
Also, the government's attempt at rumor control has been incredibly absurd.
State media Pengpai News released a fact-check article headlined
“Shanghai residents cursing the government when asked to sing red songs? Misinformation!”
But the article only said the name of the neighborhood was wrong.
It never denied that the government had asked people to sing,
nor did it deny that supplies were low and residents were cursing the government.
So what was the point of this fact-check article?
Shanghai is China’s most developed area, the pride of the Chinese,
a city featured in every Chinese propaganda film,
China's economic center, a cosmopolitan city,
whose GDP is over 4 trillion dollars, ranking among the top 20 in the world.
A lack of supplies? People going hungry?
It’s a joke, right? Who would believe it?
But it’s indeed what is happening now.
Famous Taiwanese actor Li Liqun expressed concerns about Shanghai’s famine on TikTok.
Many people in the comment section confirmed that they had not eaten for days.
One netizen said,
“Never saw this coming! Shanghai 2022, my goodness!
Lujiazui! The financial center!
From daily chats about venture capital, Nasdaq dollar interest rate hike, the live price of gold,
to today’s ‘You’ve received tomatoes? We only got 8 cucumbers.’”
Netizen Mr. Wang said,
“I came to work in Shanghai at the age of 15. In the blink of an eye, it’s been 22 years.
The pandemic caused a food shortage, and today the government issued supplies.
My partner and I received one cucumber. Do you think I should thank the government?”
When people are starving,
they’re capable of anything, no matter how ridiculous.
One netizen said,
“In Shanghai, the richest city in China, many women live alone.
They sleep with volunteers or neighbors for food.
Dozens of cases have been exposed online, which might just be the tip of the iceberg.
In this day and age, that deserves a spot in history books.”
A guy even asked to be detained by the police, hoping to get some food.
Here is something even more bizarre.
Netizen King posted a photo of a dead cat in a house owners’ WeChat group,
saying he would skin it and make soup with it.
It's not just the Shanghainese who don't have enough to eat.
Even the American Consulate in Shanghai is running out of food.
The consulate staff had to ask for help online.
They appealed to their colleagues to save food to feed the American soldiers.
It is said that this is the first US Army unit running out of food since World War II.
China has done it again. China has won again.
Even more unreal is that while many people were starving in Shanghai,
the city’s government enterprises organized a cooking competition.
Contestant #23 Sun Yumen (I hope he's okay)
submitted a half-chewed bun.
He quickly won the first place with over 140,000 votes, which is over 94% of the total number of votes cast.
The poll was later deleted.
A random poll like this reflects true public opinion.
This is why the Chinese Communist Party is so afraid of democracy.
If even the employees of government enterprises and institutions can't get a meal,
you can imagine how miserable non-locals in Shanghai are.
But ironically, just last month,
China's Minister of Agriculture, Tang Renjian, said,
“The CCP has the ability to guarantee that 1.4 billion people will never go hungry,
and that they’ll be able to put more and more quality food on the table.”
Wang Sicong, the son of China's richest man, said,
“In the 21st century, only politics can cause a famine.”
Indeed, the advent of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the progress in breeding have increased food production dramatically.
Even disadvantaged regions can rely on advanced transportation of imported food so as to not go hungry.
The famine in China in the 1960s that starved millions of people to death was also caused by politics.
Although many people are starving, others are wasting food.
A neighborhood committee even treated group-bought food as garbage and threw it away.
It is said that the vegetables tested positive for COVID-19.
Some people even saw warehouse management burning supplies,
some say, to evade scrutiny because their admin records didn’t add up.
Many people have revealed that supplies from the government and other parts of the country
were sold to residents by their neighborhood committee at high prices.
China, thy doom is nigh.
After all, Shanghai is China’s most developed area,
gifted with the country’s best resources, located next to the granary of South China.
In addition, the whole country was donating to Shanghai.
If there is still a famine, then there must be evil forces behind the scenes.
During the pandemic, people suffer and animals suffer even more.
At the end of last year in Jiangxi,
a video of pet dogs being put down by COVID staff
caused outrage among netizens and made the news both in China and abroad.
Now something similar has happened in Shanghai.
Photos of dog-killing COVID staff and the PLA version of "I can't breathe"
have been captioned so as to resemble World War II’s Japanese army, and have instantly gone viral.
Here is a video that is hard to watch where many cats were caught in bags.
By the look of it, these poor cats will probably be "harmlessly disposed of".
The Shanghainese, once proud of their identity, have become pariahs of the nation.
According to a municipal announcement in Jiangsu,
there will be a 2000-yuan reward for reporting a Shanghainese to the authorities.
It seems that in China, even if you were merely remotely associated with COVID,
you would be hunted like a fugitive.
Nowadays the Chinese are more afraid of China’s COVID policies than COVID itself.
Read this scary announcement by a Shanghai neighborhood committee.
“Those who are positive-turned-negative must also be isolated at the fangcang shelter hospital.
The hospital is designated and cannot cater for individual needs.
Those who refuse to cooperate will be permanently red-coded.”
Writer Liu Liu is a Chinese Singaporean now living in China.
She wrote the TV drama "Together" after the outbreak in Wuhan,
a celebration of China's great victory against the virus.
At the start of the outbreak, she visited fangcang shelter hospitals and highly praised China's epidemic prevention policies.
However, recently, she got a taste of the iron fist of tyranny.
She wrote a post saying, “My parents have listened to the party.
After 17 days of isolation at home, they tested positive for COVID.
They never went panic-buying, and only came downstairs for COVID tests,
during which they must have been infected.
Now the neighborhood committee threatens to take them away every day.
They’re now living in infinite fear and despair.
They can’t get treated if they’re ill. If you’re reading this,
can you feel a daughter’s despair in her words?”
From her words, we can see how afraid Chinese people are of being isolated.
Nowadays in Shanghai, parents and their children need to be quarantined separately
no matter how young the children are.
The video of a mother crying about her 4-month-old baby being forcibly removed from home has gone viral.
It is said that a child barely two years old died after being put in quarantine.
The mother could not bear the shock and committed suicide.
So what is it like to be in quarantine?
Many netizens have revealed that
hundreds of people were forcibly dragged to a fangcang shelter hospital.
They waited all night only to find that
the fangcang shelter hospital had not been completed yet,
and that there was only one toilet that couldn’t be flushed.
You can try to imagine their situation. Just don't do it when you’re eating.
Netizen Bauhinia said,
“It's unreal. We hear about COVID every day.
Now people are no longer afraid of the virus itself.
They now fear the COVID policies.
Their family's beloved pets would be starved to death or even killed.
They would not be able to eat proper meals at home and would starve.
They fear being taken away to isolation and not knowing where they would be taken.
They fear being locked up in a room and having no access to medical care.
They fear having a sudden illness and being unable to find a doctor.
These days, I have never seen anyone die of COVID.
However, I have seen many deaths due to draconian lockdowns.
COVID was initially a natural disaster, but now, in its third year, it is a man-made disaster."
Now there are too many man-made disasters happening in Shanghai.
There was a young girl with a promising future, working in HR at a big company.
She didn’t have a negative COVID test result, and therefore was denied emergency treatment by 3 hospitals, and died at her neighborhood’s gate.
Some elderly people died at home due to lack of caregivers.
Here is something even more absurd.
A netizen reported that a friend's relative, bedridden with serious illness for years, had passed away at home.
When the funeral home staff came, they asked for a negative COVID test result of the deceased within 48 hours,
saying they wouldn’t take away the body without a negative test result.
There is a joke circulating on the Internet in China.
A Chinese guy said to an American,
“You Americans are great. You don't even treat COVID as a disease.”
Then the American said to the Chinese,
“You guys are even better. Nothing is a disease to you, except COVID.”
Netizen redsyp said his father was 77 years old, had diabetes and kidney failure
and needed blood dialysis, but the hospital refused to admit his father because the old man was COVID positive.
Eventually, his father died after 55 hours of delay.
Something like this does not only happen to ordinary people.
Taiwanese-born Lan Xianping, who abandoned his US citizenship and settled in China,
is a famous economist and great admirer of socialism and big government.
Just earlier this month, he wrote a blog post,
“Today, 25 million people in Shanghai are tested for COVID.
The whole country is working together. This is the power of China.”
But a few days ago, his mother urgently needed medical treatment,
but she didn't have a COVID negative certificate
and died after waiting for 4 hours outside the hospital.
He said that according to the past diagnosis, she would’ve been fine with just one injection.
But she needed to do a COVID test before she could seek medical treatment.
After four hours, the hospital still didn’t release the result.
Lang wanted to see his mother one last time
but the area was closed and he had to communicate with the authorities for a long time.
He was eventually allowed to visit the hospital, but in the end still failed to see his mother.
Even a man of his social stature could not see his mother one last time.
Things would be even more difficult for ordinary people if they had a matter of life and death.
The Chinese have no access to treatment for critical illnesses and serious diseases.
However, a foreigner who overdosed on Viagra received interprovincial medical treatment.
Shanghai NO. 6 People's Hospital released a news article headlined
“The ‘Battle to Preserve a Penis’ during the pandemic”.
According to the article, “the hospital leadership attached great importance to the incident,
and organized hospital-wide multidisciplinary consultation in person.
The leadership of the Municipal Committee spared no effort in treating the patient.”
The hospital used all its resources and connections to save a foreigner’s penis.
But on the same day, a netizen's father needed emergency treatment for his leg injury
but was repeatedly refused entry by the same hospital.
The netizen had no choice but to ask for help online, hoping to save his father's leg.
So many absurd events have happened in Shanghai during the city’s lockdown.
Shanghai’s lockdown is the most significant event in China since the start of the pandemic.
Its impact is even greater than the closure of Wuhan and Xi'an, etc.,
the main reason being that Shanghai is more influential.
More importantly, what is happening in Shanghai is a concentrated manifestation
of all kinds of absurdity in China’s draconian epidemic prevention over the past two years.
What Shanghai is now experiencing is nothing new to other parts of the country.
Back when Wuhan was closed, there were many cases of food shortages and famine,
but most people in other parts of the country couldn’t feel it yet.
Netizen Busydoudou said,
“Back then I scolded Fang Fang for her Wuhan diary.
Now I am stuck in Shanghai and I apologize to her.
I was too young to understand how government officials work.
Shanghai’s lockdown has let many people see clearly that
China's so-called “great power against the epidemic” big-government approach,
the so-called Chinese model, which other countries were told to copy, has failed completely.
State media Sina has released articles in the past two days
criticizing other countries’ laissez-faire epidemic prevention measures.
The whole comment section has become a train wreck.
The comment with 10,000 likes says,
“The official media should stop brainwashing me.
I don't want to be in lockdown anymore. I've had enough!
I long to breathe the air of freedom abroad.”
Netizen Xia Guiding said,
“Do not believe in rumors. Do not spread rumors.
Ask your relatives and friends abroad and you will know!
The clear-headed are able to separate the truth from fiction.
What exactly is the definition of ‘lying flat’?
Other countries are gradually opening up given high vaccination rates.
Singapore’s mask mandate is still very strict these days.
Do you call this ‘laissez-faire’ and ‘lying flat’?
Or are you doubting your own vaccines?
Do you want to get the imported vaccine?”
Netizen Jing Zhi said,
“We are at home, playing mobile games, and waiting for the committee to give out food.
We are not ‘lying flat’?
Have the 70,000 daily surgeries in Shanghai hospitals all stopped
and the patients recovered by themselves?”
Netizen Kiwifruit Maniac said,
“You’re kidding me, right? Isn’t closing the city a way of ‘lying flat’?”
Netizen HeroAnyan said,
“Pity that information is spread too quickly nowadays.
Pity that there are too many Chinese people abroad.
Pity that people trust their own family and friends rather than their country.”
Netizen Xiao Li said,
“LOL. China’s winning again, okay?”
Netizen Tree Inside the Heart said,
“I’m quite happy. I eat and I drink. Nothing is amiss.”
Netizen Proud Wei said,
“According to a friend overseas…
Forget it. Do not believe him. He must have lied to me.”
Netizen Depressed Again said,
“I only know that Shanghai now has 150,000+ confirmed cases and not one COVID death.
But because of the COVID policies people are starving,
exhausted, going insane, being killed by other illnesses.”
Netizen Banfan said,
“Everyone is dead. Only China has survived.
The foreigners we see now are all mirages,
illusions from a parallel universe. The world has been destroyed except for China.”
Netizen Donna said,
“How many times per year can our country withstand a major Shanghai-style lockdown?"
Indeed, even if the Shanghai epidemic could be controlled
using such physical and coercive measures,
the pandemic would definitely return once the lockdown was lifted.
To maintain the “zero policy” is to maintain the face of the Central Party.
But can the Chinese economy stand it? Can the Chinese people stand it?
Okay, time to hear your comments.
In our last episode, I talked about how to transfer capital overseas.
I analyzed the future trend of RMB in terms of currency value, import/export trade, etc.
I also provided ways to invest in USD with RMB via cryptocurrency.
A lot of people have raised questions.
If you don't know much about cryptocurrency, I recommend watching my video about it.
I think cryptocurrency is the future,
because cryptocurrency is a decentralized tool against totalitarian dictatorship.
This is also the real reason why cryptocurrency is banned in China.
Netizen CaiBu said,
“Don't exploit your fandom. Make proper videos.”
First of all, I can't exploit anybody.
I am not capable of controlling cryptocurrencies.
At best, you can say I encourage others to “be exploited”.
Netizen Joe Biden there said,
“An economist once said that a guaranteed annual return of 8% or more
was an absolute scam. Please be careful and don't fall for it!”
First of all, this statement itself is problematic. No one can guarantee a profit.
Even money deposited in the bank can be lost.
I said that the 20% return was only temporary.
A decentralized platform is not controlled by anyone.
Revenue is automatically calculated by the program and is ever-changing.
When fewer people use it, the profit will be lower.
In addition, to call it a scam is to completely ignore the meaning of decentralization.
A truly decentralized platform is not likely to have scammers.
Of course, the risk is there, but it definitely will not take your money and run away.
That only happens on centralized platforms.
Okay, that's it for this video!
Please like, subscribe, comment, and share!
This is Klaus. See you next time!