BEIJING/SHANGHAI: Shanghai cautiously pushed ahead on Saturday with plans to restore part of its transport network in a major step toward exiting a weeks-long COVID-19 lockdown, while Beijing kept up its defenses in an outbreak that has persisted for a month.
Shanghai’s lockdown since the beginning of April has dealt a heavy economic blow to China’s most populous city, stirred debate over the sustainability of the nation’s zero COVID-19 policy and stoked fears of future lockdowns and disruptions.
Unlike the financial hub, Beijing has refrained from imposing a city-wide lockdown, reporting dozens of new cases a day, versus tens of thousands in Shanghai at its peak. Still, the curbs and endless mass testing imposed on China’s capital have unsettled its economy and upended the lives of its people.
As Beijing remained in COVID-19 angst, workers in Shanghai were disinfecting subway stations and trains before planned restoration of four metro lines on Sunday.
While service will be for limited hours, it will allow residents to move between districts and meet the need for connections to railway stations and one of the city’s two airports. More than 200 bus routes will also reopen.
Underlining the level of caution, Shanghai officials said commuters would be scanned for abnormally high body temperatures and would need to show negative results of PCR tests taken within 48 hours.
Shanghai found 868 new local cases on Friday, compared with 858 a day earlier, municipal health authorities said on Saturday, a far cry from the peak in daily caseloads last month.
No new cases were found outside quarantined areas, down from three a day earlier, health authorities added.
The city of 25 million has gradually reopened shopping malls, convenience stores and wholesale markets and allowed more people to walk out of their homes, with community transmissions largely eliminated in recent days.
Still, Shanghai tightened stringent curbs on two of its 16 districts on Friday.
The authorities “urge enterprises to strictly implement safe production, which is their responsibility, especially in meeting some epidemic prevention and control requirements,” an official from the city’s emergency bureau told a news conference on Saturday.
Delta Airlines said on Friday it would resume one daily flight to Detroit from Shanghai via Seoul on Wednesday.
Most of Beijing’s recent cases have been in areas already sealed up, but authorities remained on edge and quick to act under China’s ultra-strict policy.
In Fengtai, a district of 2 million people at the center of Beijing’s counter-COVID-19 efforts, bus and metro stations have been mostly shut since Friday and residents told to stay home.
A Fengtai resident was stocking up on groceries at a nearby Carrefour on Saturday, uncertain whether restrictions would continue.
“I’m not sure if I can do more shopping over the next week or so, so I’ve bought a lot of stuff today and even bought some dumplings for the Dragon Boat holiday” in early June, she said, asking not to be identified.
On Friday, thousands of residents from a neighborhood in Chaoyang, Beijing’s most populous district, were moved to hotel quarantine after some cases were detected, according to state-run China Youth Daily.
Social media users on China’s Twitter-like Weibo were swift to draw parallels with Shanghai, where entire residential buildings were taken to centralized quarantine facilities in response to a single positive COVID-19 case in some instances.
Shanghai inches toward COVID-19 lockdown exit, Beijing plays defense
https://arab.news/ceqym
Shanghai inches toward COVID-19 lockdown exit, Beijing plays defense
- Shanghai’s lockdown since the beginning of April has dealt a heavy economic blow to China’s most populous city
Thousands estimated to flee Cambodia scam centers after crackdown
- Hundreds of thousands have been forced to work in online scam hubs across parts of Southeast Asia
- New wave of releases come after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet pledged fresh crackdown
JAKARTA: Thousands of people are estimated to have been released from scam compounds across Cambodia over recent days, including more than 1,400 Indonesian nationals, who according to Indonesia’s Embassy in Phnom Penh have sought consular support to return home.
The online scam industry has flourished across parts of Southeast Asia in recent years, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to work in illicit operations in countries like Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, according to a 2023 report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
A wave of foreign nationals released from scam centers in Cambodia have been seeking assistance from their embassies since last week, after Prime Minister Hun Manet pledged a fresh crackdown on the multibillion-dollar industry.
Jakarta’s mission in Phnom Penh said it has received reports from 1,440 Indonesian nationals since Friday.
“The number is quite huge, considering the Indonesian Embassy handled a total of 5,008 cases throughout 2025. Looking at the ongoing trend of law enforcement by local authorities, we expect that the flow of Indonesian nationals (seeking our assistance) will continue for some time,” the Indonesian Embassy said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
In an earlier release, the embassy said that some Indonesians traveled from provinces like Banteay Meanchey and Mondulkiri to reach the Cambodian capital, which would take them at least five hours by car.
“Following the arrest of a number of main perpetrators in various cities, many syndicate networks then disbanded and let their workers leave,” it said, while urging Indonesians to be more cautious.
“Don’t be easily tempted by unrealistic job offers abroad, promising high salaries with minimal requirements. Don’t get involved in online fraud operations abroad.”
Many trafficked foreign nationals were employed to run “romance” and cryptocurrency scams, often recruited to deceive strangers online into transferring large amounts of money.
Large queues of Chinese nationals have also been spotted in front of the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh this week, while Amnesty International has pointed to recent footage showing “the mass release and escape attempts from scamming compounds” across Cambodia.
In a statement issued on Friday, Amnesty said it had geolocated 15 videos and images, and reviewed social media posts that show people leaving, or having already left, multiple locations that have been confirmed as scamming compounds or identified as suspected sites for fraud operations.
“There are no official figures on the total number of scamming compounds in Cambodia, but for an Amnesty International investigation, our team visited 52 of 53 identified scamming compounds in 16 cities … a single scamming compound can employ thousands of workers,” Amnesty International Indonesia spokesperson Haeril Halim told Arab News.
He added that “many human rights violations” were found in the scamming compounds Amnesty investigated, including human trafficking, torture and other ill-treatment, forced labor, child labor, deprivation of liberty and slavery.
The recent releases of foreign nationals came after Chen Zhi, a Chinese-born Cambodian tycoon, was arrested and extradited to China earlier this month.
Chen was sanctioned by the UK and the US in October last year, with the US Department of Treasury accusing him of running “a transnational criminal empire through online investment scams targeting Americans and others worldwide.”
Estimates from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime show that scam victims worldwide lost between $18 billion and $37 billion in 2023.
