Shanghai goes hungry — Editor’s Note for Friday, April 8, 2022

Dear reader,

The big news of the week out of China has been the strict lockdown of Shanghai and the discontent it has caused, ranging from local food shortages to supply chain snarl-ups that will almost certainly affect global trade.

On Monday, we reported that Shanghai residents were seething as the city entered its second week of lockdown. Today we note that social media platform Weibo has censored a hashtag about food shortages in the city: “If we can’t solve the problem, we need to solve the person who raised the problem,” said one cynical online commenter.

Also today, the Wall Street Journal said that China’s COVID lockdowns are hitting “supplies to companies like Apple and Tesla;” the Financial Times reported that Shanghai residents have been “warned about online posts over the COVID lockdown;” and the New York Times warned that “China’s mounting COVID-19 restrictions are creating further disruptions to global supply chains for consumer electronics, car parts and other goods.”

Not even the ultra-rich are safe from lockdown anxiety: the South China Morning Post today published a story titled: “Even Chinese billionaire Kathy Xú Xīn 徐新 struggles to buy milk and bread under Shanghai’s coronavirus lockdown.”

Other news you may have missed earlier this week:

• China doubles down on coal
• Former top cop to be next leader of Hong Kong?
• China, Ukraine, and the Fed will shock Asia’s economy this year, World Bank says

Our phrase of the week is: Suffer a crushing defeat (折戟沉沙 zhé jǐ chén shā), a reference to the humiliating rout about 1,800 years ago of the powerful army of warlord Cáo Cāo 曹操.