China commerce city Yiwu imposes quasi-lockdown as local officials struggle to balance zero-Covid with business normality

The city of Yiwu in central Zhejiang Province, a major source of manufactured goods for the rest of the world, has imposed a quasi-lockdown amid a new coronavirus outbreak, in another sign of the difficulties local officials face when balancing a dynamic zero Covid-19 policy with the economic imperative of keeping businesses running.

The Thursday lockdown of Yiwu, with residents encouraged not to “leave the city”, comes just as authorities were trying hard to get the local economy back to normal after previous disruption. The city’s gigantic wholesale markets, which sell made-in-China manufactured goods from shovels to shoes to nearly every country in the world, have been badly affected by coronavirus outbreaks.

Yiwu reported its first four confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the latest outbreak on August 2, just days after a chartered flight carrying 163 merchants from Pakistan landed in the city as part of efforts to reopen markets to overseas buyers, according to a Tuesday report by local official newspaper Jinhua Daily. According to the newspaper, the city is also looking to arrange flights to fly in Indian merchants.

But as local coronavirus cases have mounted, the city has re-entered an emergency mode, with mass testing requirements for residents and a de facto ban on outsiders as people from other places are “not encouraged to come to Yiwu unless necessary”, according to a government notice.

Local officials have ordered that confined places such as KTV, cinemas, bars and gyms should be closed until further notice. Schools, off-campus training institutions as well as child care institutions, have also been closed until further notice.