![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/assets\/uploads\/2020\/11\/ogawa.png\")
\nToshiyasu Ogawa<\/a>
\nProfessor, Waseda University Faculty of Commerce<\/b><\/p>\n
As of October 5, 2020, the number of people positive for Covid-19 in Japan reached 85,569, exceeding the Chinese national total of 85,489 [1]. By the time this is published, it is feared that Japan\u2019s number will exceed 100,000.<\/p>\n
Contrasting with Japan, China was able to stamp out the epidemic quickly because it was able to curb the explosive spread of infections in Hubei province, or more specifically, Wuhan (Figure 1). Hubei\u2019s 68,139 infected accounted for about 8 of 10 in China, with Wuhan accounting for the majority with 50,340. However, the \u201clockdown\u201d measures implemented there severely limited the freedom of Wuhan residents, exposing the affliction of modern China.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/assets\/uploads\/2020\/11\/wuhan-610x379.jpg\")
Figure 1: Location of Wuhan and Hubei<\/p><\/div>\n
At 10:00 a.m. on January 23, 2020, Wuhan was \u201clocked down,\u201d and this was the world\u2019s first Covid-19 lockdown. The city of Wuhan was born after establishment of the People\u2019s Republic of China by combining the three cities of Wuchang, Hanyang, and Hankou.
\nIt lies at the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the capital of Hubei province and one of the largest cities in China with a population over 11 million. The return of Japanese residents of Wuhan by Japanese government-chartered flights after the lockdown is fresh in our memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cLockdown\u201d is f\u0113ngch\u00e9ng<\/em> (\u5c01\u57ce: closed fortress) in Chinese. I first saw the term in a January 23 New York Times article. The headline said \u201cWuhan Controls Novel Coronavirus Epidemic by \u2018Lockdown,\u2019\u201d and used lockdown in quotation marks. The New York Times online edition carries articles in English as well as Chinese or Spanish, depending on the content. This article is posted in two languages, and the English version says \u201cWuhan, Center of Coronavirus Outbreak, Is Being Cut Off by Chinese Authorities.\u201d Lockdown seems to be established as a translation for f\u0113ngch\u00e9ng<\/em> some time later.<\/p>\n There are two potential reasons why the translation of f\u0113ngch\u00e9ng<\/em> wasn\u2019t established. First is because f\u0113ngch\u00e9ng<\/em> is a new term born in the Covid-19 pandemic. Even a novice would know that ch\u00e9ng<\/em> (\u57ce) means city, but f\u0113ngch\u00e9ng<\/em> is not in the Hanyu Da Cidian<\/em> dictionary, a new term born in this historic situation, and the New York Times reporter must have been perplexed. What\u2019s more remarkable is the vagueness of the reality of f\u0113ngch\u00e9ng<\/em>. Stoppage of transportation and stay-home orders were reported, but no one can live if a metropolis completely stops the movement of people (transportation) and things (distribution). So, how to both prevent the spread of the infection and lock down? As of January 23, no one knew the answer.<\/p>\n The reality of Wuhan\u2019s \u201clockdown\u201d was brought to light by Diary of the Wuhan Lockdown, by Guo Jing (published in Japan by Ushio Publishing, Sept. 2020). Guo is a social worker involved in women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n Author Guo Jing (courtesy of Guo Jing)<\/p><\/div>\n Just after relocating from Guangzhou in late 2019, she published her experience suddenly encountering the \u201clockdown\u201d as a diary on the Weibo social media app, creating a large response. The lonely daily life told by an unknown 29-year-old woman conveys without embellishment the reality of life under Wuhan\u2019s \u201clockdown,\u201d and foreign media who noted the reaction rushed to report on it. When BBC News first reported on it (Jan. 30), the New Yorker (Feb. 7) and the Guardian (Mar. 15) followed. These reports increased her readership further, but Chinese officials repeatedly deleted and blocked her posts, thwarting its spread on the internet. In Japan, NHK broadcast a documentary program \u201cLocked-Down City of Wuhan, 76-Day Record of a Resident\u201d (BS1, May 4), including an online interview with Guo. Just after the broadcast, her story was published as a single volume in Taiwan, and in September it was translated into Japanese by Waseda Emeritus Professor Koichiro Inahata.<\/p>\n Guo couldn\u2019t buy masks and household goods were in short supply, but she found opportunities to go outside and speak to sanitation workers who continued to do their work on the streets. She ascribes this to her calling to help the vulnerable, even predating her activism as a feminist, but even this small liberty would soon be lost. From early February, as the epidemic worsened, the Wuhan government tightened restrictions, imposing \u201cclosure controls,\u201d a complete 24-hour curfew, and going out was not the only thing prohibited. Freedom of speech was also strictly limited.<\/p>\n In the early hours of February 7, when the death of whistleblower Li Wenliang [2] was reported, condolences popped up on social media but were deleted one after another. Guo also posted a message of condolence, three times, only to be deleted each time. To me, this is the essence of China\u2019s epidemic control. China did bring the spread of the virus under control very quickly, but that was due to the digital monitoring system which the Communist Party of China established before the pandemic to eliminate speech and behavior which does not conform with its policies.<\/p>\n The core of this system is Alipay and WeChat. Both are essential to life in Chinese society, centered on a cashless payment system. They provide one-stop service from various reservation systems to utility payments. Personal information is centrally managed inside a small smartphone, and the system is a far-reaching network connecting individuals and the society.<\/p>\n Alipay affiliate Sesame Credit uses artificial intelligence to give individuals a credit score based on their payment history, and a high score makes one eligible for low interest rates on loans and other benefits (figure 2). Delinquency in payments causes the score to drop. In the future, in order to avoid losing benefits, it will be more difficult for people to oppose the will of the government. Since the pandemic, an \u201cepidemic prevention health code\u201d app has been added, and its certificate is required to enter public places.<\/p>\n Figure 2: Credit score by Sesame Credit. Moderate score shown here exempts one from prepaying at a hotel.<\/p><\/div>\n While China is a superpower with 1.4 billion people and enormous territory, very few Chinese escape this surveillance system with such conveniences because rejecting Alipay means exclusion from social services. Come to think of it, George Orwell\u2019s 1984 was idyllic. Escaping from a \u201cBig Brother\u201d surveillance system which uses digital data is extremely difficult.<\/p>\n This dystopian situation was captured on film by the documentary Coronation (August 21, 2020, directed by Ai Weiwei)[3]. A Chinese expatriate artist living in the United Kingdom, Ai Weiwei created a movie based on footage filmed secretly in China. Running without commentary, actual footage from intensive care unit to crematorium tells the complete story in silence of the terrifying collapse of the medical system, declaring that the dead of Wuhan\u2019s Covid-19 epidemic are victims of autocratic power.<\/p>\n As in China, we also can\u2019t give up the convenience afforded to society by digital technology. However, we cannot entrust the personal information which supports those services to certain corporations or state powers. Wuhan under lockdown has shown us the frightening dystopia which that can cause.<\/p>\n [1] Covid-19 data from Toyo Keizai Online (Japan) and National Health Commission (China) Born in 1963 in Tokyo, Professor Toshiyasu Ogawa was a full-time lecturer at Daito Bunka University Faculty of Foreign Languages before he started teaching at Waseda University Faculty of Commerce in 1996, becoming assistant professor in 1999 and professor in 2004. His areas of expertise are modern and contemporary Chinese literature and Sino-Japanese comparative culture.<\/p>\n Major publications include: Rebel and Recluse<\/em>; Zhou Zuoren in the 1920s<\/em> (Heibonsha 2019); and Zhou Zuoren\u2019s letters to MATSUEDA Shigeo<\/em> (coeditor, Guangxi Normal University Press 2013).<\/p>\n Major thesis include: \u201cOn the Ideological Framework in Human Literature<\/em>\u201d in YANGTZE RIVER ACADEMIC<\/em> vol.66, June 2020; \u201cZhou Zuoren and the High Treason Incident; concerning the encounter with NAGAI Kafu<\/em>\u201d in Yaso<\/em> vol.102, March 2019; and \u201cThe boundary between colloquial and literary style; with special reference to Xiao-shi Movement<\/em>\u201d in Retirement Collection of Professor INAHATA Koichiro, Research on Chinese Classical Literature <\/em>vol. 2 (Toho Shoten, March 2018).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What Happened in Wuhan, China Toshiyasu Ogawa Professor, Waseda University Faculty of Commerce As of October 5 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,117],"tags":[368,178,369],"class_list":["post-74015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-topic","tag-engagement-en","tag-research-en","tag-voice-covid-19"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74020,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74015\/revisions\/74020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/assets\/uploads\/2020\/11\/photo.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/assets\/uploads\/2020\/11\/fig2.png\")
Notes<\/h2>\n
\n[2] Wuhan Central Hospital ophthalmologist who recognized the danger of epidemic from the novel coronavirus and quickly sounded an alarm. After posting about the danger of epidemic on a Weibo group chat on December 30, 2019, he was reprimanded by the security authorities for \u201cspreading false and groundless rumors.\u201d He later became infected while treating patients and died.
\n[3] Published on Vimeo On Demand<\/p>\nProfile<\/h2>\n