Now worried about foreign coronavirus threats, Chinese officials seek to reinforce Beijing

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Across this watermelon-growing town in the Beijing capital region, the vines of the new season’s crop have greened the inside of plastic greenhouses, a traditional sign of spring. But here and everywhere in the Chinese capital, little else is normal, as authorities race to reinforce Beijing as a fortress against a dangerous virus that is now spreading abroad.

In Panggezhuang, roads that bisect rows of greenhouses are closed off – some with berms of dirt, others with tall metal walls painted blue and fluttering with laser-printed signs that read: “All people with one mind. Unity is our strength. We support Wuhan. Fight this epidemic together.” At the entrance to local villages, groups of officials at roadblocks check the temperature of those returning home and deny entry to non-residents. Watermelon farmers have been ordered to wear masks as they work.

“We've strengthened screening and testing,” the Panggezhuang propaganda office said in a statement. “At present, the overseas epidemic is quickly spreading and this has become the most prominent risk of epidemic prevention and control work for Beijing.”

When the virus spread inside its borders, China shut down large parts of the country. Now that it’s spreading overseas, however, the country is erecting a new set of barriers, particularly in its capital, to defend against what it sees as a burgeoning foreign threat. Twenty people infected with COVID-19 have entered the city from abroad.

Beijing is not just home to China’s most powerful political leaders. It is also the headquarters to many of its most important state-backed enterprises, a major international transportation hub and one of the country’s most visible places. What happens in Beijing also relates directly to the work of the Communist Party and “affects China’s international image,” a meeting of city leadership concluded this week.

And China is keen to project an image of exemplary competence in managing the virus.

So Beijing is working “to build up an impregnable virus prevention and control fortress in the capital,” the official media of the Communist Youth League wrote in a lengthy account of the city’s efforts, which include dispatching 189,000 Communist Party members to erect “protective walls” around communities and deputizing 161,000 property and security workers to check temperatures and disinfect public spaces.

In recent days, they have trained their sights on foreign arrivals.

Beijing this week required all passengers arriving from overseas to quarantine for 14 days. It converted an exhibition centre into a transfer centre, where international travellers can be taken in designated vehicles to quarantine locations. Some of the city’s apartment complexes have begun conducting document checks on both incoming and outgoing residents, barring people from leaving home without credentials attesting to their health status.

At shopping malls, security guards keep out anyone unable to prove they have been in Beijing for 14 days, using a digital service run by a major military contractor that tracks cellphone movements. Officials have ordered embassies to make regular reports of their diplomats’ temperatures. Police have spread out to knock on the doors of foreign residents, demanding to know their recent whereabouts, while hotels are turning away foreign passport holders – the receptionist at the Lijun Hotel said she cannot accept any foreigners right now. Some hotels said such restrictions apply only to recent arrivals. But at Lijun, it doesn’t matter if the person has been in China for even a lengthy period of time, the receptionist said.

In other parts of China, things are markedly different. In manufacturing regions, most factories have resumed work – Wuhan, the city at the epicentre of the outbreak, has loosened its lockdown to allow some companies to restart operations. Wuhan has also closed the last of its temporary quarantine centres. Schools in remote Qinghai province have begun to reopen. Professional e-sports games have resumed – albeit with players in masks. Casinos in Macau are reopening. Even the Shanghai Disney Resort resumed operations at some of its restaurants and shopping areas, part of what it called a “phased reopening.”

Earlier this week, President Xi Jinping travelled to Wuhan, where he kept a careful distance from any possible contact with the virus, and declared COVID-19 “basically curbed“ in the city and its surrounding province, Hubei. The virus peak is past, the National Health Commission declared Thursday, when China reported just 26 new cases and 11 deaths.

Beijing itself counts only 93 active cases, and the return of bumper-to-bumper traffic at rush hour has given the appearance of a city returning to normal. But public transit remains largely empty – people are opting for cars instead – and only a small minority of shops and restaurants have reopened.

Many say they have been ordered to stay closed, as the city shows little sign of relaxing.

“That’s what we are supposed to do. Or else what? Risk people’s lives? Soften the measures and waste all of our hard-won improvements?” asked Zhao Yiming, director of the clinical epidemiology research centre at Peking University Third Hospital.

A new outbreak of the virus, he said, is “not a risk we can afford to take.”

With reporting by Alexandra Li

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