When Sally entered the Chinese civil service, she had not expected to be forced to don a white plastic suit to swab citizens’ throats and noses in the sweltering summer on the frontline of the country’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
But when Covid-19 cases began to creep up in the industrial city of Wuxi, near Shanghai, the 40-something worker was redirected from her office job to one of the thousands of testing booths that line the streets.
“It’s extremely hot wearing the personal protective equipment for hours. I’ve nearly passed out from the heat,” she said, adding that her daily remuneration for this arduous and repetitive task was just $23.
Sally, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, is one of the millions of civil servants, doctors, nurses and community volunteers who have been reassigned to administer Covid tests, sanitise public spaces and enforce lockdowns.
The Dabai, or frontline workers called “Big White” after their PPE, have played a pivotal role in quashing previous Covid outbreaks in China, from Wuhan in 2020 to Xi’an in early 2022, and have been hailed as national heroes.
But many complain of pay cuts and longer working hours with no overtime as the pandemic drags into a third year, with little sign President Xi Jinping will abandon his zero-Covid policy despite the economic consequences.
Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, which tracks workers’ movements in China, recorded an employee strike at a testing facility in Shenyang, the capital of north-eastern Liaoning province, in July.
“Everyone is complaining about working longer hours with no extra pay and fearing salary cuts,” said Sally.
The scorching summer has added to the Dabai’s troubles, as much of the country has been gripped by a heatwave, with temperatures soaring above 40C for weeks. A subsequent drought has caused power shortages in provinces such as Sichuan after the Yangtze, China’s longest river, reached its lowest level at points in more than a century. Wildfires have broken out near the megacity of Chongqing.
A liquidity crunch in China’s property sector, which accounts for about a third of gross domestic product, has already hit local governments hard by diminishing revenues from land sales and taxes.
“Fighting Covid is expensive and local governments, especially in lower-tier cities, have run out of money,” said Bo Zhuang, a Singapore-based analyst at Loomis Sayles.
Some local governments have slashed essential services as money has been redirected to fighting Covid. Authorities in the north-eastern city of Jilin were forced to divert funds from Xi’s signature poverty alleviation campaign to finance mass testing.
“There is nothing left to cut,” said Bo.
The fiscal shortfall has left local authorities unable to meet Beijing’s demands to expand the infrastructure that enables zero-Covid.
In May, Beijing told authorities to ensure that residents were always within a 15-minute walking distance of a Covid-testing booth, but dropped the mandate after local governments could not meet the costs.
“These booths are expensive to run with at least one medical professional and a Dabai staffing them,” said Bo.
A civil servant from Jiangsu, a province north of Shanghai, said she was working under “unbearable conditions”.
“We are so understaffed,” she said. “I work 12 hours shifts checking people’s health codes before taking a test. We have to pay for our expenses, including transport and PPE.”
The impact has been particularly pronounced in smaller cities. Public workers in the city of Gaomi, in the eastern Shandong province, are owed two months’ wages, according to people familiar with the matter.
“In some cities, the fiscal coffers are no longer robust enough to provide the financial support to implement this zero-Covid,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.
“In the smaller cities, there is a gaping mismatch between the multiple crises they face with coronavirus, the wildfires, the heatwave and sluggish housing market and their capacity to deal with them,” he added.
As China’s economic challenges mount, including the property crisis, zero-Covid and global inflation, analysts said policymakers would not be able to resort to their old handbook to revive growth.
“The Chinese government can’t multitask. Local governments have been very successful in past economic downturns at stimulating growth by targeting export growth and spending money on infrastructure and real estate,” said Bo.
“But now, local governments have been given two contradictory tasks: to fight Covid and to stimulate economic growth,” he said, adding that officials prioritised the former for fear of losing their jobs if there was a large coronavirus outbreak on their watch.
For the civil servant from Jiangsu, returning to her normal job cannot come soon enough. “None of my bosses have ever bothered to check in on us,” she said. “They’re not treating us like human beings.”
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