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Nearly a million in lockdown in Wuhan

Of the four cases, two were reported 48 hours ago as a result of regular testing, which was quickly followed by the third and fourth via contact tracing…reports Asian Lite News

Nearly a million people in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province where the Covid-19 pandemic was first recorded, have been placed under a lockdown after four asymptomatic cases were detected, the media reported on Thursday.

According to a BBC report, the lockdown has been imposed in the city’s Jiangxia district and the residents have been asked to stay inside their homes or compounds for three days.

Of the four cases, two were reported 48 hours ago as a result of regular testing, which was quickly followed by the third and fourth via contact tracing, the report said.

Soon after, the city’s authorities imposed the lockdown.

Wuhan, a city of 12 million people, became popular across the world as the first place where scientists detected the Covid-19. It was also the first city to be put under harsh restrictive measures as the global pandemic broke out in early 2020.

A staff member helps a villager disinfect baggage when he returns to Lianqin Village of Beicai Town in Pudong New Area, east China’s Shanghai, April 26, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang/IANS)

Earlier this week, scientists said there was “compelling evidence” that Wuhan’s Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid outbreak, says the BBC report.

Two peer-reviewed studies have re-examined information from the initial outbreak in the city.

Meanwhile, China has adopted a “zero Covid-19” strategy under which authorities conduct mass testing, declare strict isolation rules and impose local lockdowns.

In June, Shanghai emerged from a strict two-month lockdown, but residents are still adapting to a “new normal” of frequent mass testing, the BBC report adds.

As of Thursday morning, China has reported a total of 2,167,619 confirmed Covid cases and 14,647 deaths.

ALSO READ: Blackouts in China after record power usage amid heatwave

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Blackouts in China after record power usage amid heatwave

The Guangdong province power grid also hit a record high, reaching 142m kilowatts, an increase of 4.89 per cent over last year’s peak load…reports Asian Lite News

A long-running heatwave in China has pushed electricity usage to record levels in some areas and led to blackouts, with warnings that the high temperatures are expected to continue for at least another week, a media report said.

More than 300 cities were forecast to reach temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius on Tuesday. China Southern Power Grid Company said Monday’s usage had surpassed last year’s peak load by 3 per cent, The Guardian reported.

The Guangdong province power grid also hit a record high, reaching 142m kilowatts, an increase of 4.89 per cent over last year’s peak load. Blackouts were reported in the provincial capital, Guangzhou, which has recorded a full week of maximum temperatures above 37 degrees Celsius, including highs of 40 degrees Celsius on Sunday and Monday.



Yang Lin, the manager of the company’s dispatching office, said once temperatures in Guangzhou surpassed 35 degrees Celsius, every extra degree meant a corresponding load increase of 3m-5m kilowatts.

The company said it was inspecting equipment to avoid overheating and malfunction, and pledged to maintain power supply. In recent years there have been widespread blackouts that have caused havoc across China, blamed on extreme temperatures, rising demand for electricity and shortages in coal, which is still the main source of China’s power, The Guardian reported.

China is among several countries to have moved back towards a coal-focused energy supply, despite ambitious emissions reduction pledges, amid a global crisis exacerbated by the Ukraine conflict. On Friday the ministry of emergency management warned safe operation of the power grid faced “severe tests”.

On Monday, 21 red warnings and 140 orange warnings were issued for high temperatures, predominately across the south-east and in the far west, including Xinjiang, The Guardian reported.

ALSO READ: China issues extreme heat alert

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China’s BRI spending falls to $28.4 bn

Green energy total engagement (solar, wind, hydro) in H1 2022 dropped by 22 per cent compared to H1 2021 to about USD 3 billion…reports Asian Lite News

China’s finance and investment spending in Belt and Road countries fell to USD 28.4 billion in the first half of 2022 as compared to USD 29.6 billion a year earlier, with no new engagements in Russia, Egypt and Sri Lanka, as per a research.

According to research published on July 24 by Shanghai-based Green Finance and Development Center (GFDC), multiple countries saw a 100 per cent drop in BRI engagement compared to H1 2021, such as Russia, and Egypt, while China’s engagement in Pakistan for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) dropped by about 56 per cent.

 Moreover, no coal projects received financing or investments in the first half of 2022.

Since 2013, cumulative BRI engagement amounts to USD 932 billion, about USD 561 billion in construction contracts, and USD 371 billion in non-financial investments. Oil and gas investments constituted about 80 per cent of Chinese overseas energy investments and 66 per cent of Chinese construction contracts.

Green energy total engagement (solar, wind, hydro) in H1 2022 dropped by 22 per cent compared to H1 2021 to about USD 3 billion, as per the GFDC research.

Average deal size for construction projects is getting smaller, dropping from USD 558 million in 2021 to USD 325 million in H1 2022. Major recipient of Chinese investments was Saudi Arabia, while various countries saw no Chinese engagement in H1 2022, including Russia, Sri Lanka, and Egypt.

BRI engagement in H1 2022 was dominated by state-owned companies (SOEs). In 2021, global FDI into emerging economies developed significantly faster growing 40 per cent (excluding FDI into China) compared to China’s BRI investments.

For the second half of 2022, much uncertainty can be expected with Chinese BRI engagement to stable at lower levels.

Potential engagement can be found in five project types: strategic assets (including ports), trade-enabling infrastructure (including pipelines, and roads), Information and Communications Technology (e.g., data centres) resource-backed deals (e.g., mining, oil, gas), high visibility projects (e.g., railway).

BRI engagement dropped significantly in the second quarter of 2022 compared to the first quarter. Cumulative BRI engagement since the announcement of the BRI in 2013 is USD 932 billion, about USD 561 in construction contracts, and USD 371 in non-financial investments.

Chinese BRI engagement was not evenly distributed among all regions. Countries in East Asia saw their share of investments drop from 48.8 per cent in H1 2020 to 10.7 per cent in H1 2022. (ANI)

ALSO READ: China issues extreme heat alert

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China issues extreme heat alert

Several Chinese regions including Xinjiang and Fujian facing record high temperatures as blistering heatwaves hit the country with the hot weather forecast…reports Asian Lite News

As intense heat waves continue to linger in several parts of China, the country issued an orange alert for high temperatures on Sunday.

Temperatures in parts of Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Xinjiang may surpass 40 degrees Celsius, China’s national observatory stated, reported Xinhua.

 During daylight hours on Monday, parts of Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Jiangsu, Anhui, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang are expected to experience temperatures of over 35 degrees Celsius, the National Meteorological Center said, suggesting that workers exposed to high temperatures shorten continuous working hours and outdoor activities during high-temperature periods should be avoided.

Several Chinese regions including Xinjiang and Fujian facing record high temperatures as blistering heatwaves hit the country with the hot weather forecast.

Yesterday noon, the Xinjiang region raised the high-temperature alert from orange to red, the highest in China’s four-tier weather warning system for extreme heat.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General last week warned that heatwaves will happen more frequently because of climate change, adding that the connection has been clearly demonstrated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC).

In the Mediterranean, a worrisome combination of climatic impact-driver changes (warming; temperature extremes; increase in droughts and aridity; precipitation decrease; wildfire increase; mean and extreme sea levels; snow cover decrease; and wind speed decrease) is expected by mid-century if global warming exceeds 2°C, reported Xinhua.

The prolonged heatwaves have threatened crops and people’s lives and pushed China’s power usage to record-breaking levels.

Since June, China has experienced this year’s first regional hot weather. In total, 71 national weather stations across China have broken records with the highest temperatures.

Some cities in southern China have been gripped by the dual challenges of heatwaves and sporadic clusters of COVID-19 infections.

China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue. (ANI)

ALSO READ: China’s realty sector rapidly losing its sheen

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China’s realty sector rapidly losing its sheen

Though Beijing has started firefighting to stabilise the situation by asking banks to ease lending for property developers, confidence among home buyers is at its lowest…writes Mahua Venkatesh

China’s once booming real estate sector and a pillar of economic growth is rapidly losing its sheen with prices of new homes in several major cities nosediving. This could dent China’s economic recovery at a time when it is just coming out of the stringent Covid 19 lockdown shock. Real estate sector accounts for about 30 per cent of China’s GDP.

In June the average prices of new homes declined by 0.5 per cent year-on-year, following a 0.1 per cent drop a month earlier, data website Trading Economics revealed.

The problem is deep rooted. The non payment would impact the country’s banking industry as the non-performing assets will pile up further. The shadow banking sector, which includes trust companies and is an important funding source for Chinese developers, will be hurt as well, Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) said in a blog.

Though Beijing has started firefighting to stabilise the situation by asking banks to ease lending for property developers, confidence among home buyers is at its lowest. The authorities are even looking at carving out a scheme facilitating a freeze of mortgage payment by homebuyers who have not been handed over the apartments.

“There is a real crisis-like situation in China and the authorities are aware of this. They are taking all measures required to address this. But we will have to wait and watch to understand how things take shape in the coming months,” a person engaged with the education sector in China told India Narrative.

The crumbling of real estate behemoths Evergrande Group last year and subsequently the fall of several other property giants have shaken up the market. Prices of new homes have been steadily falling for the last one year. While the demand for new homes, considered one of the safest investment options for the Chinese, have been surging until last year, developers continued to increase their debt levels.

The total debt level stood at about $5.2 trillion as of June 2021, according to financial services company Nomura.

Protests by home buyers have become rampant. Earlier this month thousands of home buyers announced on social media they would not pay their mortgage loans. The protests have intensified spreading across 100 cities in the country. China Briefing said that the homes in question were acquired through a pre-pay model, in which buyers acquire apartments that are unfinished – or in some cases have not yet broken ground – when the initial deposits are paid and developers are required to hand over the homes within a stipulated time frame.

But amid overly ambitious development plans, sky-high debt, and a tightening regulatory environment aimed at deleveraging the industry, many have failed to do so. “This has left some households making mortgage payments for several years before being able to move in,” it said.

Will this be China’s Lehman Brothers moment?

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com)

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Chinese digital loan sharks running scam ops in India

The racket was being run by some Chinese handlers in the garb of a local consulting BPO firm, Fly High Global Services and Technology…reports Asian Lite News

Chinese criminal syndicates and gangs are running scam operations illegally in India. Several such digital loan shark cases have been detected in the recent past and it is suspected that the scale of such illegal activities has increased over a period of time.

Recently, a case of so called ‘Chinese loan app’ racket came to light in Delhi’s Dwarka area.

The racket was being run by some Chinese handlers in the garb of a local consulting BPO firm, Fly High Global Services and Technology. The modus operandi started with the simple advertisement for ‘On Stream’ online loan app in social media to attract customers who wished to avail hassle-free loans in minutes.

It was targeting mostly local youth who suffered most during the recent pandemic and are in dire need of money to meet urgent family expenses. Once downloaded, the app sought permissions to access the victims’ contacts which were utilised later by the company to blackmail its clients.



The Chinese racket charged exorbitant interests and the victims were threatened, abused and even blackmailed. They sent derogatory messages to the victim’s contacts on his or her behalf. The telecallers also used victim’s photographs from Aadhaar and PAN cards to blackmail in order to extort money from them.

Over the last four months, the gang had allegedly extorted around $12 million, of which 30 per cent was the commission of the Indian local firm. The local police, who raided the three-story building in Dwarka and arrested the kingpin, were surprised to find around 150 staff working in the firm along with around 300 SIM cards in the name of a different local company.

Chinese entities have penetrated into the Indian credit market and are exploiting Indian borrowers making use of some loopholes in the legal system. Since the pandemic-induced lockdown, scores of Chinese-owned micro-lending apps started operating in India under very shady terms.

They are attracting customers who are under duress. The borrowers were charged exorbitant processing fees and interest rates, pushing many lower-middle-class people into the debt trap and forcing them to even commit suicide.

Claiming to play fair, Chinese instant-loan apps Momo, CashBus, Timely Cash, Y Cash, Kissht, Robo Cash, Fast Rupee, Cash Mama, and Loan Time were also offering payday loans to Indians, targeting borrowers on the lower end of the economic strata. Many of these apps show more than a million installs.

Indian investigating agencies informed that various fintech companies in collusion with Indian non-banking financial companies (NBFC) had indulged in predatory lending, violating the guidelines of Reserve Bank of India. Fintech companies backed by China had memorandum of understanding (MoU) with NBFCs for providing instant personal loans for terms ranging from seven to 30 days, by-passing the regulatory system.

Since fintech companies were unlikely to get fresh NBFC license from RBI to provide loans, they devised the MoU route with the already defunct Indian NBFCs to indulge in large-scale lending activities.

Indian tax authorities disclosed that decisions on fixing interest rates/platform fees etc. were taken by the fintech companies and they were operating on instructions from handlers in China and Hong Kong.

Many such cases were reported in India during the last 8-10 months. Observers pointed out that the undetected cases could be even more. There is mounting evidence that these are regionally well-coordinated, and linked to other nodes of illicit activities.

Chinese scammers are exploiting the loopholes in the legal system in the host countries, often hooking the unemployed youth and financially stressed lower strata of the society, who become easy prey for such gangs.

These instances are common in South East Asia too. Media reports from across the region allege that hundreds of Malaysians, Philippians and Indonesians have also been lured to Cambodia by organised crime groups based in and around Sihanoukville.

The city is notorious for lawlessness, casinos and Chinese criminal gangs. Investigators found that most of the kingpins are operating from China but they employ locals in neighbouring countries to run their wider transnational criminal activities.

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FBI uncovers dramatic escalation of Chinese espionage on US soil

Among the most alarming things the FBI uncovered pertains to Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers near US military bases in the rural Midwest.

A frenzy of counter-intelligence activity by the FBI and US other federal agencies has focused on what career security officials say has been a dramatic escalation of Chinese espionage on American soil over the past decade.

Since at least 2017, federal officials have investigated Chinese land purchases near critical infrastructure, shut down a high-profile regional consulate believed by the US government to be a hotbed of Chinese spies and stone-walled what they saw as clear efforts to plant listening devices near sensitive military and government facilities, CNN reported.

Among the most alarming things the FBI uncovered pertains to Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers near US military bases in the rural Midwest.

According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, the FBI determined the equipment was capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defence Department communications, including those used by US Strategic Command, which oversees the country’s nuclear weapons, CNN reported.

While broad concerns about Huawei equipment near US military installations have been well known, the existence of this investigation and its findings have never been reported.?Its origins stretch back to at least the former Barack Obama administration.

It’s unclear if the intelligence community determined whether any data was actually intercepted and sent back to Beijing from these towers. Sources familiar with the issue say that from a technical standpoint, it’s incredibly difficult to prove a given package of data was stolen and sent overseas.

Photo taken in 2019 shows then U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, FBI Director Christopher Wray announcing 23 Criminal Charges Against China’s Huawei & Wanzhou Meng.

But multiple sources familiar with the investigation tell CNN that there’s no question the Huawei equipment has the ability to intercept not only commercial cell traffic but also the highly restricted airwaves used by the military and disrupt critical US Strategic Command communications, giving the Chinese government a potential window into America’s nuclear arsenal, CNN reported.

“This gets into some of the most sensitive things we do,” said one former FBI official with knowledge of the investigation.

“It would impact our ability for essentially command and control with the nuclear triad. That goes into the ‘BFD’ category. If it is possible for that to be disrupted, then that is a very bad day.”

However, the Chinese government strongly denies any efforts to spy on the US. Huawei in a statement to CNN also denied that its equipment is capable of operating in any communications spectrum allocated to the Defence Department. 

ALSO READ: Understanding China’s intent on Taiwan

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Is China a threat or an opportunity to Russia?

That was just another political talk show on Russian TV, and, to make things lively, the editors rolled out a question list to all the attendees: Is China a sincere and powerful friend to Moscow in the current crisis, or is it a very fickle friend not to be trusted?… writes Dmitry Kosyrev

War, sanctions and a global crisis made such shows an intermittent fixture on all the main channels of Russian TV. Basically, they are all alike. Experts on foreign policy, on military questions and economy are standing or sitting in a circle and exchanging opinions.

Not every channel had such shows in the past, but now things are different. For the audiences, some of these have replaced even the news programs. After all, your country is at war, so you need not only facts, but their assessment — constantly.

The problem is, the channels have to compete, so the shows need to be emotional, and your experts have to clash with each other. And what can be better for tickling the nerves of the audience, than debating on how reliable is China, Russia’s #1 trading partner and a “strategic competitor” of the West.

At the show I’ve just attended as an expert on China, we were been presented with a very familiar set of questions. We’ll talk later about why it’s familiar; let’s see some of these questions right now.

Is China just using Russia in its own clash with the West? Is China really eager to replace the Western consumer goods and technologies, denied to Russia due to Western sanctions, or is it abandoning the Russian market?

Does Russia feel comfortable with China’s economic activities in Central Asia and every other area of the world? Will Russia, one day, become only a junior partner of its huge neighbour?

This set of questions is vital to millions and millions of very ordinary Russians. The things is, with China, a #1 economy in the world at our side, we may rest assured that our military will easily finish the task of putting an end to that endless Ukrainian civil war — that, incidentally, is the real meaning of events unfolding in Ukraine these days. With China’s help, the Western sanctions against Russia’s economy will go on failing, while hurting the West, as they do now.

The Russian TV show I was attending evolved along predictable lines. These lines were dividing the experts who knew how “Xi Jinping” sounds in Russian, and the ones who could not really pronounce it. Meaning that the people who are just generally dabbling into foreign affairs have no idea about the exact facts. And facts do matter.

The anchor at the show have presented information coming from an obscure American research centre, claiming that the Russo-Chinese trade have plummeted 40 per cent in the first half of 2022. The experts on China, after an initial shock, have retorted that in fact that trade had jumped up between 30 and 40 per cent this year, and that’s not just oil. The Chinese media, after all, is following the subject very closely. And that media knows its facts well. The share of China-made gadgets in Russian shops (as in smartphones, printers and all kind of such things) used to be like 36 per cent, now it’s close to 70 per cent. The Chinese factories have received Russian orders on these items that they cannot fulfil in time. And that’s not to mention funny things, like a sharp raise in China’s export of wooden logs to the US, while China could never produce such amount of these by itself, only Russia can, and does.

And, no, nobody in Moscow (the people in the know, that is) is worried about the growing Chinese economic activities in Central Asia or anywhere else in the world.

There are two reasons for that, one is that Russia is not producing what China does, so we are not competing. The other is, Chinese presence is welcome anywhere if it squeezes out Western presence in all forms.

And so it went on, point by point in the mentioned list of question marks about the essence of the Russo-Chinese alliance. So, where have we seen that list before?

Here you have to look at expert publications is several American magazines, from The National Interest to The American Conservative to the Foreign Affairs. One and the same idea is being discussed by many authors.

Namely, our (American, Western) war against Russia in Ukraine has failed, our sanctions have hurt ourselves more than anybody else and have alienated about two thirds of the world.

China Russia flag. (Credit: Wikimedia commons)



So it’s time to stop posturing and making angry speeches, time to do the only thing that may yet work — namely, look for splits that could, if we are lucky, crack the Russo-Chinese alliance, sow distrust and suspicions in the two societies.

But how exactly do you create that distrust? You introduce the proper ideas into these societies, which are of course not isolated from the global media space. The only thing you need is to make a kind of a list of questions, that may shake folks in a serious way.

Which questions are these? Why, we have already listed them. Is China just using Russia in its own clash with the West? Will Russia, one day, become only a junior partner of its huge neighbour? And so on.

I’ve seen all these ideas all over the Western media, from where they spill into Russia over the non-existing information borders. In fact, I’ve seen similar lists in 2014, when the Western sanctions began in earnest after a referendum in formerly Ukrainian Crimea, that led to its incorporation into Russia. The very same ideas about China, the unreliable ally, were circulating then with dull regularity.

And if you are nor Russian, but some other China’s partner, the list will be slightly different. There you’ll read about “predatory nature” of Chinese business and a “debt trap”.

These primitive ideas are unlikely to impress the real experts, but then there are always the TV shows to promote them.

(Dmitry Kosyrev is a columnist for the Russian State agency website ria.ru, as well is for other publications)

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Withdrawal curbs could fuel a banking crisis in China

Jin said restrictions on withdrawals could fuel a systemic banking crisis in China, with the real estate industry at the heart of the issue…reports Asian Lite News

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is moving to dampen concerns about a banking crisis amid an ongoing mortgage repayments strike and widespread protests over frozen accounts at rural banks, RFA reported.

Economic commentator Jin Shan, a pseudonym, said the restrictions on cards does point to an underlying crisis in China’s financial system.

“The financial system has poor capital turnover and can’t cope with demand for liquidity,” Jin told RFA. “In the background is the bigger picture of the long-term economic downturn, caused by (the zero-COVID policy).”

“This fatal blow to the economy results in a loss of (liquidity), as well as making bank deposits fall at the same time.”

Jin said restrictions on withdrawals could fuel a systemic banking crisis in China, with the real estate industry at the heart of the issue, RFA reported.

Several cities in the central province of Henan set up task forces to address the issue of unfinished housing projects, the Global Times newspaper reported, following widespread concerns over the systemic risks posed by mortgage defaulters.

Authorities in Henan’s Pingdingshan city were finding ways to kick start unfinished projects, while Gongyi city announced on July 14 that three stalled projects in the city had been “properly resolved,” the paper said.

“The accelerated moves by local authorities come as mortgage defaults in some Chinese cities, including those in … Guangdong … Henan and Hunan provinces, have raised concerns at both home and abroad,” the paper said, RFA reported.

“Risk management mechanisms are generally deemed strong enough to withstand the risk,” it said of the banking sector.

Financial markets commentator Chai Xin said the CCP is very worried that the mortgage repayment strike will have a knock-on effect on public confidence in the banking system.

“The suspension of mortgage repayments isn’t going to have a huge impact on the banks’ huge assets,” he said. “But the thing the banks are most worried about right now is wavering public trust,” he said.

“If public confidence in the banks is shaken, then they will have a big problem.”

The move to reassure the public comes after thousands of people protested outside the Shaanxi branch of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) in the northern city of Xi’an on July 14, calling for an investigation into bank loans to property developers, some of whom have been transferring funds overseas, RFA reported.

Since the protests began over the withdrawals freeze at the Henan rural banks, customers have also reported that their bank cards have been frozen or restricted by other banks in Beijing, Shandong, Hainan and other provinces and cities.

One newspaper quoted a depositor in Shaanxi as saying that his ICBC savings card wouldn’t let him withdraw or transfer his money, only deposit it.

The Securities Daily quoted several banks as saying that cards are generally restricted because of suspected money-laundering or other illegal activities, amid reports that Chinese banks have stepped up scrutiny of dormant accounts with no activity for three years or more in recent years, RFA reported.

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Outcry in China after break-ins to hunt for Covid contacts


Videos were captured of some of the break-ins and posted on popular social networks like Sina Weibo…reports Asian Lite News

Chinese officials have apologised to residents of a locked-down community in Guangzhou for removing the locks on the doors to their homes, media reports said.

A number of people at the apartment complex in the southern Chinese city had recently tested positive for Covid, BBC reported. Officials were searching for close contacts who may have been hiding in an attempt to avoid being moved to a quarantine centre.

China maintains a strict zero-Covid policy and quarantines are common.

Those affected by the break-ins have been told that they will be compensated for the damage, BBC reported.

According to the Tianmu News outlet, the locks were broken on the front doors of at least 84 homes by grassroots officials and community workers.

A staff member helps a villager disinfect baggage when he returns to Lianqin Village of Beicai Town in Pudong New Area, east China’s Shanghai, April 26, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang/IANS)



The incident took place on July 10, soon after several people at the complex had tested positive for the virus.

According to the Global Times, residents were moved to a centralised quarantine facility, but “some close contacts were found hiding in their houses”, leading to searches of other homes for “hidden residents”.

Videos were captured of some of the break-ins and posted on popular social networks like Sina Weibo.

It sparked an angry outcry, with many calling for those involved to be arrested for illegal entry, given that trespassing falls under China’s criminal law, BBC reported.

The district government in Guangzhou’s Liwan district apologised on Tuesday, saying the break-ins “deviated from the requirements of epidemic prevention”.

It said that an investigation would be carried out, and those involved will be punished.

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