The fear and frustration at the end of Shanghai's broken food chain

A woman with a baby in quarantine looks through the window of their apartment, amid COVID-19 full lockdown of the city in Shanghai, April 27. EPA-Yonhap

Cui Wen remembers the stress of the first week.

The 34-year-old Shanghai law firm employee and her husband were down to little more than some eggs, some milk and a zucchini in the fridge.

Most people in the city buy supplies of fresh food daily so they were caught unawares when the commercial heart of China went into a snap lockdown in late March.

Cui then started getting up at five every morning to try to get food via a range of grocery delivery apps but was beaten each time.

"I never imagined I could be so anxious," Cui said.

"Vegetables were sold out in the blink of an eye. After I tried and failed a few times, I suddenly found my breath was shallow and couldn't move the finger to tap on the smartphone. I had to call to my husband for help."

Suddenly people in a city brimming with supermarkets, grocery shops and convenience stores and linked into a sophisticated network of transport and logistics chains were struggling to find enough to eat.

The country's most prosperous city had ground to a halt and something that had before seemed unthinkable just days before had become a reality ― desperate food shortages.

The impact was felt around the country and made headlines around the world, putting ever more scrutiny on China's "dynamic zero-COVID" policy.

More than a month has passed since the Shanghai lockdown started and there is still no end in sight.

The city is the epicenter of the worst wave of COVID-19 to hit China since the disease emerged more than two years ago.

It has reported more than 500,000 community cases since the start of March, driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which has yet to show any sign of abating. For most residents confined at home for a month, securing enough food to eat is at best a day-to-day challenge.

Many people have taken to social media to show their empty refrigerators and cry for help to get medicine and other essentials.

It is not because there is not enough food for the city's 25 million people ― there are ample supplies in Shanghai and elsewhere around the country.

The problem is that the logistics system has ceased to function.

Most of the 4 million people involved in getting food from the field to the table ― from wholesalers to truckers to deliverers ― have been confined to their homes.

Meanwhile, farmers watch vegetables rotting in the ground, unable to transport their crops because their area has been sealed off.

Emergency suppliers from other provinces have also hit brick walls trying to get into Shanghai, with road transport largely blocked by stringent quarantine measures at checkpoints administered by various local governments.

Trying to step into that massive logistical breach are 300,000 grass-roots Communist Party members, social workers and volunteers, who work around the o'clock together with a few delivery workers.

The patchy efforts and the resulting chaos are testament to just how much Shanghai was caught off guard by Omicron.

A resident wears pajamas waiting for nucleic acid tests at a residential area during lockdown, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in Shanghai, April 30. Reuters-Yonhap

Previously hailed as a "model city" for its precision and targeted handling of Covid-19 outbreaks, the Shanghai municipal government launched a zone-by-zone lockdown at the start of this wave, trying to minimize disruption to lives and the economy.

But the virus spread quickly and shocked leaders on alert for spillover in the run-up to the party's twice-a-decade national congress in Beijing in the second half of the year.

A week before the lockdown, President Xi Jinping called on officials to make pandemic control their top priority, to stick to the zero-COVID strategy and swiftly contain outbreaks.

As case numbers soared in early April, Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan was sent in to hold the line, ordering local authorities to follow Xi's instructions closely and adopt tougher measures to curb the outbreak.

The curbs were initially supposed to be lifted April 5 but that plan was soon overtaken by a flood of cases.

Now residents of a few areas that have had no new cases for 14 days in a row ― about 12 million people, according to government data ― can at least leave their homes twice a day to buy necessities.

But the rest are still confined with limited access to food and other essentials.

In addition to government rations, group-buying has become a major way of getting supplies. Some groups have been organized by party committees while others have been arranged by residents themselves.

Either way, the suppliers and delivery companies must be one of around 1,000 firms certified by the Shanghai government to do lockdown deliveries.

The quality of the produce varies ― shoddy and substandard food products have made their way to the care packages sent by governments.

Nearly 100 residents in a community in Minhang district became sick after eating preserved food and snacks in a government food package sourced from qualified and uncertified companies, Shanghai-based ThePaper.cn reported on Sunday.

People in other districts have complained about other food problems, from moldy rice to poor-quality cooking oil and substandard laundry detergent, according to local media reports.

The continuing calamity in Shanghai has been felt as far away as Beijing, where a partial lockdown and mandatory mass testing sent many into a frenzy of panic buying last weekend.

Despite repeated official assurances that there are enough supplies of everything, people in the capital started stocking up last Sunday and Monday, right after the city sealed off a number of residential buildings in several districts and embarked on citywide testing. A total of 228 local cases have been reported since April 22 in Beijing.

"Have you hoarded food" became a popular greeting as people snapped up eggs, frozen meat, potatoes and carrots and emptied supermarket shelves of groceries, fearing the same ordeal as Shanghai.

Nanjing University political scientist Gu Su said the shortages in Shanghai were even worse than those in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the hotspot of the initial Covid-19 outbreaks in late 2019 and early 2020.

Gu said this was because Shanghai had twice the population of Wuhan and a higher population density.

Those differences exacerbated the supply problems, adding up to "systemic mismanagement with dire consequences."

"The elderly and the poor with no internet access could be on the verge of death," Gu said. "The government must adjust its Covid-19 strategy as soon as possible."

He said employees of the logistics sector should be allowed to work as usual to keep cities running, as long as they test negative for Covid-19.

Chen Daoyin, a political scientist and former professor at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, said shortages had been a feature of life under lockdown for cities across the country but Shanghai's woes were well documented.

Chen said this was because the city was connected to the outside world and many of its well-educated people dared to speak up for their rights.

"Shortages of necessities have happened in other places under lockdown, from Wuhan to Xian, the capital city of Shaanxi," he said.

Chen said there was no merit in the Shanghai approach to certifying deliveries because it only introduced inefficiencies.

"Under lockdown, shortages are inevitable because resources are distributed under government controls. Without a market mechanism, distribution cannot be efficient. And shortages always lead to rent-seeking and a black market," he said.

"Government intervention is prevalent in licensing suppliers, granting permits to warehouses operators, transporters and distributors, creating a big room for rent-seeking and irregularities."

Chen said some cities, such as the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, had handled lockdown better, nipping an outbreak in the bud in March with a week-long lockdown.

"The Shenzhen model centers on prompt and effective implementation of the zero-COVID policy, and the Hong Kong model is de facto living with COVID," Chen said.

"Shanghai tried a path that was in between but it was stopped. Local officials were unprepared to run a megacity under the planned economy."

He said the shortages would damage public confidence in the government, but with no known case of starvation, the crisis was unlikely to threaten the party's rule because "the public has no political demands in common, except for meeting daily needs."

Workers in protective suits stand by an electric tricycle wait before performing nucleic acid testing during a lockdown, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in Shanghai, April 30. Reuters-Yonhap

Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, said Shanghai's lockdown was based on China's well-established policy of dynamic zero-COVID, which the Shanghai authorities were required to implement.

But they could have been avoided.

"The priorities are to suppress the virus and protect the economy. The welfare of people in Shanghai is not one of the priorities," Tsang said.

"[Food shortages] can be avoided in a Leninist system if maintaining food supplies to the people under lockdown is set as a high-level target. It can also be avoided if the lockdown is done humanely, like allowing people to do their weekly food shopping under lockdown."

Meanwhile, Cui, the Shanghai resident, said she now tried to meet her needs through community buying groups and by bartering with neighbors.

"It's basically OK. But I cannot stop being anxious," she said. "I'm running out of coffee and short of salt and sugar.

"While many friends of mine in other countries are embracing normal life, I'm hungry and worried about tomorrow and the day after tomorrow."