The Wuhan Lockdown

The Wuhan lockdown in 2020 shocked the world. For seventy-six days, 12 million Chinese residents were sealed inside their apartments. Guobin Yang's book The Wuhan Lockdown describes how ordinary residents lived with uncertainty and endured those chaotic days. His protagonists include people from all walks of life—high school teachers, writers, feminist activists, frontline healthcare workers, officials, media professionals, and a food delivery driver. What these individuals have in common is that they penned pandemic diaries that they shared on social media. These online diaries—and the readers' reactions to them—form the main source material for the book.This book stands out in the vast literature on the Wuhan lockdown by situating the event within the larger historical context of the changing Chinese society. The first three chapters set up this context. Yang identifies troubling trends between 2011–20, the decade in which Xi Jinping seized power, cracking down on civil society, controlling the Internet, and stoking fear among officials for reporting negative news. These trends paved the “road to apocalypse” (19).During the national congress in January 2020, for instance, Wuhan's officials did not allow any reporting of negative news, such as the spreading of the virus. The officials gave a green light to mass gatherings for the Chinese New Year celebration, as they wanted to showcase the city's achievements. They also quickly silenced the early whistleblowers—eight doctors who reported the first cases of COVID-19. The local government's action and inaction typified government behavior for much of the country and, in that sense, the apocalypse was inevitable.A scrupulous student of China's internet, Yang devotes most of his attention to analyzing China's fast-changing internet culture through the lens of the Wuhan lockdown. Yang observes that the Chinese internet of 2020 occupies a different space from a decade ago, now dominated by profit-driven businesses and state censorship. It is a space of hyper commercialization and state suppression. To navigate the tightly controlled cybersphere, Chinese netizens must be “bold and careful” (145)—bold to voice their concerns and yet careful so not to be shut down by the censors.The book's middle chapters examine the various bold and careful acts of Wuhan residents during the lockdown. Chapter 4 focuses on the Wuhan diarists such as Fang Fang, for whom writing an online dairy was a way to cope with crisis and uncertainty. The diarists and their readers bond and form a community, where they share their anxiety and hope. Chapter 5 turns to a subgroup of diarists—doctors and COVID patients, who kept online diaries that provided glimpses of heroism amidst an inadequate health care system stretched to its limits. Chapter 6 discusses a wide range of citizens that sprang into action during the lockdown—supporting causes such as animal rescue, anti-domestic violence, and fundraising for medical personnel. These examples show that Chinese civil society takes different forms from that in democracies: it was individual citizens, instead of nongovernment organizations, who used social media to mobilize, both online and offline, during the lockdown.The book ends with a meditation on memory and forgetting. Amid the lifting of the lockdown in Wuhan and China's desire to declare victory over COVID-19, many pandemic dairies were deleted by censors. Will people remember the Wuhan lockdown? Yang underscores the permanence of memories and notes that even though many diaries about Wuhan have disappeared, memories leave traces on the Internet and in people's minds. He tells a story about a taxi driver, who uttered the anniversary of Dr. Li Wenliang's death a year after.After the Wuhan lockdown in early 2020, China imposed lockdown in every city where there was an outbreak, until it lifted the zero COVID policy in December 2022. From Xi'an to Tonghua, from Shenzhen to Shanghai, citizens in every lockdown city resorted to social media to share their fears, vent their frustration, and seek help, such as getting food and medical care. These personal accounts—in the form of diaries, blogs, tweets, photographs, and videos—present rich materials for research. Yang's book presents a superb example on how to use these unconventional sources to understand the everyday life and politics in China during the pandemic

China · Context (archaeology) · Government (linguistics) · Media studies · Political science · Power (physics) · Social media · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · History · Law