- Expats realize: they live in a dictatorship
- South Korea rejects US chip alliance
- Jorge Toledo Albiñana to become EU ambassador
- US warns against support for Moscow
- Oil companies show interest in Shell’s Russia project
- UnionPay refuses cooperation with Sberbank
- UN Human Rights Council investigates missing Tibetans
- Profile: Fu Zhenghua – infamous security chief arrested
Europeans who live in China, especially as employees of a large company, generally had a carefree life. The disadvantages of life in China were usually far away. Sometimes, the lack of the rule of law was a factor on a business level. But in private, life between meeting rooms, foreign schools, Starbucks and gyms was mostly pleasant.
The lockdown in Shanghai has changed that. The harsh measures of the government shocked many expats. Although there have been other drastic events in China’s big cities before, hardly anyone remembers them due to the rapid generational change of foreigners.
When Xi Jinping says that perseverance will lead to victory over the virus, he has a Chinese population in mind that the Party regularly inflicts hardships on. China’s politics sometimes moves with destructive power that crushes individuals on the sidelines. This is then considered collateral damage for the greater good. The ability to “eat bitter” 吃苦 is therefore vital for survival in China. Europeans and US-Americans never had to experience such things in their lives before. In today’s issue, Marcel Grzanna analyzes how the trauma of Shanghai affects foreigners.
Our second analysis looks at the US attempt to deal with the chip shortage. They courted South Korea to join a semiconductor alliance that would have been at least partly aimed at China. But Samsung country turned Joe Biden down, writes Frank Sieren. After all, China is a much larger and more important market.
Fu Zhenghua was officially arrested on Thursday. He is a real tiger – that is, a senior cadre who has been targeted by anti-corruption investigators. Fu is even a royal tiger: He was minister of justice and head of the intelligence service. Michael Radunski shows how closely Fu Zhenghua’s rise and fall are linked to the political course in the country.
Finn Mayer-Kuckuk
Feature
First-hand experience with dictatorship
In less than three weeks, the perception of China of 19-year-old Lisa from Muenster has changed dramatically. “I have to completely revise my opinion. I always thought the criticism of this political system was completely exaggerated. Now I’m appalled at what it actually means to live in a dictatorship,” says the young woman, whose Chinese parents had already migrated from Shanghai to Germany decades ago to escape the authoritarian politics of the People’s Republic.
Lisa grew up in Germany with freedom of expression and under the rule of law. Yet she never really took her family’s warnings about the ruthlessness of the Chinese leadership seriously. That is one reason why she went to Shanghai a few months ago in good spirits to brush up on her Mandarin.
When the lockdown approached in late March, she decided to flee to the Chinese resort island of Hainan. However, this did not save her from a positive Covid test. For more than two weeks now, Lisa has to live in quarantine at a hospital in the provincial capital of Sanya. “I feel completely helpless here, exposed to the arbitrariness of authorities and without privacy,” she says in an interview with China.Table. She has made the decision to leave the homeland of her parents and grandparents as soon as possible and not to live in China in the future, she says.
Continue reading now
… and get free access to this Professional Briefing for a month.
Are you already a guest at the China.Table? Log in now