Resentment over handling of Covid-19 feeds a view that the city would be better off on its own. In New York, an activist has a flag ready.
The Wall Street Journal
By James T. Areddy
Apr. 23, 2022 5:30 am ET
Stewing resentment over a government lockdown in Shanghai is bolstering a fringe idea: independence for China’s most cosmopolitan city.
Over much of the past month, as the world has shed Covid-19 restrictions, 25 million Shanghainese have been confined to their homes to crush an outbreak. The paralysis of China’s richest city has astounded its urbane residents, who are normally spoiled for choice with 100,000 restaurants but are now scrounging for food.
This painful episode is providing a ragtag group of pro-independence activists born in the city but living in such places as New York and London new urgency to promote their unconventional plan.
How receptive people in business-minded Shanghai itself might be to such a radical idea is harder to determine, though its residents complain that they are victims of a politicized approach to science designed for less-capable corners of the nation. Angered at central-government orders to halt commercial life, many in Shanghai see the situation through the prism of a longstanding tussle with Beijing over national importance, the kind of pragmatism-versus-politics battle seen between New York and Washington.
Viral videos of residents shouting down government representatives from their balconies, and other signs of public resistance to President Xi Jinping’s policy-making, are feeding predictions that revenge awaits, once Shanghai’s middle classes win their freedom.
“Hungry makes angry,” said Zhang Min, a Shanghai-born New Yorker who has spent recent years agitating for his hometown to declare itself an independent nation.
Hoisting a flag proposed for the independent city-state, the Republic of Shanghai, which is modeled on the colors that flew over sections of the city as a colonial outpost more than 150 years ago, Mr. Zhang plopped into a lawn chair facing China’s Consulate in Manhattan on a recent afternoon. “I have to let the Shanghai people know there is someone in New York who supports them,” he said. “I know I can’t give them food, but this I can do.”
Mr. Zhang, primarily known by his online nickname, “heanquan (何岸泉),” has seen a recent bump in his more than 25,000 followers on Twitter and elicited this week an occasional thumbs-up from ethnic Chinese passersby while demonstrating at Times Square.
Shanghai is a Chinese New York, though with three times as many people and spread over an area eight times bigger. It is a singular economic force, boasting the world’s busiest container port and longest subway system. Hollywood directors often cast its bright vista of skyscrapers as the near-future for such films as “Mission: Impossible III.” Its people, many of whom are haughty and cliquey, speak a dialect unintelligible to most other Chinese and prefer their delicacies sweet, rejecting as unrefined the salty, spicy tastes popular elsewhere in the country.
A legend illustrates the city’s sense of superiority: Shanghai is the head of a dragon that stretches across China.
As a political movement, the nascent Shanghai independence drive is a blip. The chance is zero that a section of China’s eastern coast could actually secede, but even half-serious talk reflects deep frustrations in Shanghai and among its global diaspora over the city’s recent humbling.
Zhang Min with a proposed Shanghai flag derived from a design used in the 19th century, when much of the city was run by Britain, the U.S. and others. PHOTO: JAMES T. AREDDY/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL(Note by HeAnquan: On October 1, 2020. The location is the square across the street from the United Nations Headquarters in New York)
While residents take pride in their city as organized and entrepreneurial, they have been horrified by the logistical struggle to feed them during a lockdown many see as orchestrated by Beijing. They have labeled neighborhoods’ organization of food distribution as acts of self-rescue, a rebuke of a state-run media narrative that government authorities are managing the crisis.
Ever since the Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified warring states as one nation in 221 B.C., the leaders of China have been judged by their ability to hold it together. Top officials demonstrate reflexive fury at criticism of their policies regarding places such as Tibet and Xinjiang, where allegiance to Beijing has limits, not to mention Hong Kong or Taiwan.
The platform of the Shanghai National Party, the independence movement’s organization, counters that view and argues that the metropolis is at its root a 19th-century European colonial construct, not an ancient Chinese city such as Beijing. Its members call for restoring the Western-style governance Shanghai had as a colonial trading port starting in the 1840s.
“There was a significant tradition of parts of Shanghai operating as a place that was physically in China but really stood apart,” says Jeffrey Wasserstrom, an authority on the city’s history at the University of California, Irvine.
Mr. Xi, the Chinese president, warned against breakaway notions during a 2017 Hong Kong address during public demands there for democracy. Any effort counter to national sovereignty “is absolutely impermissible,” he said.
Taking the cue, Hong Kong authorities soon declared as illegal a tiny political group called the Hong Kong National Party, which authorities conceded had no more than 100 members, and later jailed its young leader.
Mr. Zhang, a balding 60-year-old with a wispy beard dangling below his chin, said he had been on the path to a career as a surgeon in Shanghai but was rattled by China’s 1989 crackdown at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. He eventually immigrated to New York, where he has worked as a licensed acupuncturist. He became a citizen in 2010 and got active in Chinese online pro-democracy forums.
In recent years, demonstrators in Hong Kong inspired him to pursue a strategy for Shanghai independence, Mr. Zhang said. New York state records show he registered Shanghai National Party Inc. as a not-for-profit corporation in 2018.
Since then, Mr. Zhang has emerged as a fixture at demonstrations against Beijing in front of the United Nations and in the Chinatown of Flushing, Queens, along with dissident Tibetan, Uyghur, Taiwan and Hong Kong activists and members of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong. In recent weeks, he has toted a sign that refers to Shanghai’s lockdown as murder.
The Shanghai movement initially seemed like a group mainly intent on teasing China, said Ilshat Kokbore (伊利夏提), vice chairman of the rights group World Uyghur Congress, which wants to create a separate homeland for its ethnic group in the Xinjiang region. But Mr. Kokbore said he has since given the Shanghai National Party around $100 because “this movement is gaining some attention and is now well known in the dissident society.”
Shanghai-born Edward Wu said the extreme lockdown is part of the reason he decided to join Mr. Zhang for the first time across from the Chinese Consulate on a recent day, after reading his work online over the past few years. “Many people think if Shanghai is independent, it will be better,” the 32-year-old said.
Mr. Zhang said the party has received donations from about 100 members. He provided three years of tax returns, showing that the party reported balances of several thousand dollars, including about $1,700 for the most recent year. Some supporters post photos of themselves on Twitter holding signs advocating Shanghai independence, often with their faces obscured.
A spokesman for China’s Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu (刘鹏宇), said by email that he hasn’t heard of the Shanghai National Party. While he acknowledged that the pandemic has affected normal life in the city, authorities are confident it can be contained soon.
Under current plans, the Republic of Shanghai would adopt a flag modified from insignia dating to 1863 for an area of the city governed by an elected council of British and American stalwarts. Britain gained dominion over Shanghai’s riverfront, along with part of Hong Kong, after defeating Qing dynasty China in the Opium Wars. The U.S., France and other world powers likewise muscled into Shanghai to claim what they called concession territory.
Officially in China, these colonial carve-outs began the country’s “century of humiliation.” To supporters of its independence, Shanghai came of age under Western management; they point to its showpiece waterfront architecture known as the Bund, Mr. Zhang’s favorite part of town, which he last visited in 2010.
Imperial Japan slammed the door on Western power in Shanghai when it attacked the city in December 1941—the same day it bombed Pearl Harbor—an event captured in Hollywood director Steven Spielberg’s film “Empire of the Sun.” As Western influence in Shanghai waned, Mr. Zhang’s family suffered. His grandmother was killed in a wartime raid, and his grandfather is thought to have died a violent death during the Cultural Revolution, he said.
“I always say Shanghai should leave China and come back to Europe,” said Mr. Zhang.
前不久的一個下午,Zhang Min舉起一面為假想的獨立城市国家上海共和國(Republic of Shanghai)設計的國旗,這面旗幟參照了150多年前上海租界部分地區的旗幟(何岸泉註:部分地區指英美公共租界。當時上海還有法租界)。Zhang Min一屁股坐在一張草坪椅上,正對著曼哈頓的中國駐美領事館(何岸泉注:接受記者採訪時正在紐約的中國領事館前進行抗議上海封城活動)。「我必須讓上海人知道,在紐約有人支持他們,」他說。「我知道我不能給他們食物,但這個我能做到。」
1941年12月,日本帝國軍隊攻佔上海,結束了西方勢力在上海的統治,好萊塢導演斯皮爾伯格(Steven Spielberg)執導的電影《太陽帝國》(Empire of the Sun)中記錄了這一事件,當天日軍還空襲了珍珠港隨著西方国家在上海的影響衰減,Zhang的家庭也受到波及。Zhang說,他的祖母在戰時一次突襲中喪生(何岸泉注:1937年。当时祖母怀抱出生不久的父亲),他的祖父被認為是在文革中因暴力致死(何岸泉注:祖父成份为国民党官吏)。
A retired Shanghai professor died after hours of desperately seeking care without success, in what’s being seen as another non-COVID death attributed to the city’s strict lockdown, according to a former colleague.
Prof. Yu Huizhong at Shanghai-based Fudan University died, aged 79, on April 15, after experiencing a 4-hour wait for medical care, according to an online statement made by his former colleague Qu Weiguo.
“[It was] as long as four hours of seeking care across the city,” wrote Qu, the ex-principal of the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures. “What a torment for Professor Yu and his family!”
The colleague accused the local authorities of failing to maintain regular care for non-COVID patients during the containment, deeming “relevant policies” as barriers against health care workers looking after the ill.
The college confirmed Yu’s death in an April 16 obituary on its official site but did not detail the cause of passing.
Yu’s death is not an isolated case with reports of non-COVID deaths surfacing on social media platforms.
The victims include violinist Chen Shunping, who committed suicide due to denial to care for an unendurable acute pain in the abdomen, and securities veteran Wei Guiguo who died from delayed access to care following a cerebral hemorrhaging.
Another retiree, Wu Zhongnan, 78, from Shanghai Jiaotong University, died on April 9 after waiting for two and half days for proper treatment at the Renji Hospital’s emergency room, according to internet user “Zheng Zong Shanghai Ning,” who identified himself as the son of the deceased.
Nurses told the son they lacked adequate medical equipment, health care workers, and beds. The emergency room has a capacity of 50 but had more than 150 patients, according to the son. Even worse, he found the room included both positive and negative cases, adding to the risk of infection.
Non-COVID Deaths in Shanghai Increasing
A list maintained and updated by some Shanghai residents on non-COVID deceased people in the city, keeps increasing, said New York City resident and acupuncturist He Anquan.
“The actual death toll must be much higher than the current one known because some families fear reprisals or political persecution from authorities if they air the truth,” He told The Epoch Times on April 18. “I assume it might add up to 3,000.”
The Epoch Times cannot independently verify the figure due to a lack of transparency in China’s data on COVID cases.
He—who was born and raised in Shanghai—said he could obtain credible reports from his relatives and friends back in the Chinese financial hub. He also gathers information from some 1,500 members in his chat group on Club House. The members of the chat group live in various parts of the world, including his home city, and all speak the same Shanghai dialect. They’re all likewise concerned about Shanghai people under one of the world’s strictest lockdowns.
The acupuncturist blamed China’s brutal “dynamic zero-COVID” policy for causing unnecessary deaths.
“The humanitarian crises from the zero-COVID policy have far exceeded the damage incurred by COVID-19 itself,” he said. “Given the highly transmissible Omicron variant, China’s dynamic zero-COVID is an impossible mission.”
Additionally, the NYC resident said he is collecting signatures for a petition, which he will submit to the United Nations and U.S. lawmakers in hopes of seeking assistance for those still sealed in his hometown.
拜上海封城之赐,世界著名媒体《华尔街日报》记者James T. Areddy花费了一周时间密集采访上海民族党负责人、委员、沪裔美国人协会发起人、世维会执委副主席等相关人士,于2022年4月23日在《华尔街日报》发表了题为《上海封城催生上海独立运动》的英文专题报道。《华尔街日报》对上海民族党的专题报道宣告了上海民族发明第一阶段提前达标。