The EconomistFebruary 22nd 2020 411C
hinese officialscall it “waging war
on two fronts”. One involves battling
the coronavirus that has infected more
than 74,000 people in China and killed
about 2,100 since it was discovered in the
central city of Wuhan in December. The
other is a struggle to revive the economy.
The daily number of newly diagnosed in-
fections has mostly fallen since February
13th. But a month after imposing the most
extensive quarantine measures ever en-
forced during an epidemic, most local gov-
ernments are hesitant to ease up.
Some coastal cities have made it easier
for businesses to obtain approval before re-
suming work and have eased requirements
for returning workers to provide proof of
their health. But controls remain harsh.
Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the
capital, is still under the tightest lockdown.
Since late January it has been all but sealed
off from the rest of the country. Until mid-
February residents of Wuhan—a city more
populous than London—had at least been
allowed to stroll in the streets. But lately
the authorities have stepped up the “war-time measures” that officials have put in
place to fight the spread of covid-19, as the
disease caused by the virus is known.
First, local officials began stopping peo-
ple from leaving their homes more than
once every two days. Then the government
banned all non-urgent excursions, even for
buying necessities. Local officials help to
arrange the delivery of essentials to each
home. One resident of Wuhan says that in
his district, households must choose their
food supplies from a short list of slightly
differing parcels.
Many less-affected cities outside Hubei
are also regulating their citizens’ comings
and goings. In Zhengzhou, the capital of
neighbouring Henan province, officials
have issued households with exit passes to
be shown at checkpoints at the entrances
to their housing complexes. This is sup-posed to prevent non-essential outings.
Similar restrictions are in place in several
other big cities, including in the far-west-
ern region of Xinjiang. The New York Times
calculates that, by February 18th, epidemic-
related limits on outdoor movement were
affecting about 150m people nationwide.
In the biggest cities, such as Beijing and
Shanghai, controls are not as strict. But
since people began returning from their
extended lunar new-year holidays check-
points have been set up in neighbourhoods
to prevent access by non-residents (how
strictly rules are applied varies according
to the enthusiasm of whoever is on duty).
On February 14th Beijing’s city government
said that people who enter the capital from
any other province will have to self-quar-
antine for two weeks, Beijingers included.
The longer such measures linger, the
harder it will be for officials fighting on the
economic front. Wuhan is an industrial
centre and Hubei’s gdpis bigger than Po-
land’s. In an internal speech on February
3rd, made public 12 days later, China’s
leader, Xi Jinping, said the country’s origi-
nal economic targets for the year “must be
fulfilled”. This is an ambitious goal. Many
of China’s firms have been crippled by tight
quarantine measures and have yet to re-
sume normal business despite a supposed
return to work on February 10th in most ar-
eas. Businesses in Hubei had been sched-
uled to reopen on February 21st. The date
has been pushed back to March 10th.
For some people, the restrictions are aThe coronavirus epidemicCasualties of war
BEIJING
Daily numbers of confirmed new infections are falling, but barriers stay upChina
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