China Briefing | Xi’s zero-Covid message has implicit warning against Hong Kong drifting from the mainland
- The irony of Hong Kong residents sneaking into the mainland to escape the virus is not lost on the Chinese internet, which partly explains the unusual intervention
- Beijing is also dismayed with HK’s half-hearted backing of zero-Covid and warning it against drifting from the mainland. The next chief executive should take note
In Hong Kong’s old days of people smuggling, it was mostly one-way traffic; poor mainland Chinese would sneak across the border or take boats in the middle of the night across the choppy waters to seek a better life in the city.
That is why news of a group of at least 15 Hong Kong residents taking a high-powered tai fei speedboat to Zhuhai in the small hours of Monday morning, purportedly to escape the latest coronavirus outbreak, has gone viral on the Chinese internet.
Two young women in the group tested positive for Covid-19 and quarantined in Guangzhou after spending a day eating and shopping in hotels and malls. Another two drove nearly 500km to Chenzhou, Hunan, where they too tested positive and were quarantined.
Mainland police reportedly also tracked down the rest of the group, who had spread to other cities in Guangdong and Fujian province.
As a result, Zhuhai police have reportedly put up a reward of 100,000 yuan (US$16,000) for any tip that leads to a seizure of a people-smuggling boat, while authorities in Huizhou have ramped up the reward to half a million yuan.
Photos showing Shenzhen workers putting up and strengthening barbed wire along the land border have also been trending on social media. There have been reports that dozens of Hong Kong residents who failed to make Shenzhen’s daily entrance quota of 2,000 people went to the crossing point and waited for up to 30 hours pleading to be let in. Shenzhen’s designated quarantine hotels are fully occupied and new arrivals are now diverted to other cities.
