Anger Over Covid Lockdowns Mounts in Shanghai

Discontent is deepening across Shanghai, China’s largest and wealthiest city, now several weeks into a rigid lockdown aimed at crushing a Covid outbreak that is straining the nerves and affecting livelihoods of its 25 million residents and eroding the public’s trust in authorities.

The effects that have played out in recent weeks—food shortages, lack of access to medical care, overcrowded quarantine centers and infants separated from their parents—have frayed nerves across a city that has long prided itself as a pragmatic financial hub at the forefront of China’s decadeslong shift to a market economy.