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China’s ‘COVID Zero’ Mentality Leads to Halloween Lockdown for 34,000 Shanghai Disneygoers After Single Contact Trace

Neil Campbell
Neil lives in Canada and writes about society and politics.
Published: November 2, 2021
The Chinese Communist Party locked down 34,000 Shanghai Disneyland attendees because of one contact tracing case
This photo taken on Oct. 31, 2021 shows Communist Party enforcement mass testing attendees of Shanghai Disneyland after a snap lockdown was issued because one person was contact traced to a positive COVID-19 test who visited the park the day prior. (Image: -/AFP via Getty Images)

The Chinese Communist Party’s “zero tolerance” policy towards Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) resulted in 34,000 attendees of the Shanghai Disneyland Theme Park enduring a snap lockdown imposed by central authorities on Halloween. 

Reports in western media outlets such as The Guardian say that all was well at the theme park until Disney suddenly broadcast via Weibo that the facility had closed and all rides were shut down. No new entries were permitted, and nobody was allowed to leave until all 34,000 visitors had submitted to a nucleic acid test. 

Party authorities sealed the gates to the parks and shuttered train services. Video captured from state propaganda outlet CCTV published by Beijing-friendly South China Morning Post shows state health workers dressed in full PPE bodysuits scurrying through the crowds as nucleic acid testing stations were deployed. 

Citizens were shown trapped behind checkpoints as their centrally-administered contact tracing, testing status, and vaccine passport apps were scanned, young children cried, and fireworks were deployed for entertainment.

One netizen was reported as stating, “I never thought that the longest queue in Disneyland would be for a nucleic acid test.”

“Late in the night more than 200 buses took people home for two days of self-isolation and further testing. Another 100,000 people who visited the park on the weekend will also be tested,” said The Guardian.

Bloomberg said guests were detained until at least midnight, while a Disney spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal the final guest was detained until a more modest 10:30 p.m. 

The cause, according to media reports, was a single positive test registered to a woman  contact traced as having visited the park the day before. However, reporting from Bloomberg disputes whether the woman even visited Shanghai Disneyland, “The shutdown of one of Walt Disney Co.’s most lucrative parks came after a positive case in a woman who traveled to Shanghai from nearby Hangzhou over the weekend. While officials are yet to confirm whether she visited Disneyland, her infection sparked an aggressive contact tracing effort across China, which eventually ensnared the park-goers, their families and Disneyland staff.”

WSJ’s reporting says the woman didn’t even test positive, but merely was a “close contact of a confirmed case.” She was contacted by Party officials while travelling by train, arrested and detained in a quarantine facility. 

“She tested positive in Hangzhou early Sunday, according to information released on government social media accounts,” said the Journal.

More extreme 

The regime’s extreme approach towards handling the pandemic appears to have reached a new height. Epoch Times reported on Nov. 1 that CCTV had broadcast the words of a Beijing lawyer who opined that people who don’t comply with the Party’s COVID mandates could face the death penalty. 

Zhao Zong, a Beijing-based lawyer, told the central television station that “violating the epidemic prevention regulations constitutes a punishable crime that could warrant the death penalty.”

Narratives published in Chinese state media are both strictly and centrally controlled as a method of relaying to the public unofficial directives and orders from government officials.

The outlet reported two trains on the way to Beijing the same day had been sequestered by Party health enforcement, resulting in all passengers being arrested and sent to quarantine camps, “One train was the G14 carrying 212 people from Shanghai. Halfway through its journey, the Beijing Railway Bureau ordered the train to stop at Jinan West Station in Shandong Province.” 

“Everyone on board was removed immediately and transferred to an isolation site for centralized quarantine and medical observation.”

“Later that afternoon, the G108 train carrying 134 people from Jiaxing to Beijing South Station was also stopped by the Beijing Railway Bureau. Everyone on board was also quarantined. Initial COVID-19 testing of all 346 passengers and crew from both trains were all negative for COVID-19,” said the outlet.

Monkey-see, monkey-do

For residents of North America, these situations may sound like exaggerated tall tales spun from a dystopian sci-fi novel or movie. However, since the pandemic began, many of the governments in the previously-free world have taken to emulating the CCP’s “Wuhan Model,” which was allegedly so effective at stopping the outbreak in its tracks during the earliest days of the pandemic.

In January, attorney Michael Senger was joined by retired Brigadier General Robert Spalding and other professionals in an open letter to the FBI and DOJ, as well as intelligence and security agencies in Canada, Germany, the UK, and Australia sounding the alarm on and calling for an investigation into the trend of Communist Party emulation. 

The letter, titled The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Lockdown Fraud, boasts an extensive 255 citations and chronicles how the World Health Organization followed the CCP’s lead to bring the rest of the world in line with Beijing’s operational methodology for managing its populace.

Some real world manifestations of the phenomenon are found in the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria, who have been some of the most heavy-handed users of lockdowns and other measures in the English-speaking world.

NSW’s former Premier Gladys Berejiklian was forced to resign at the beginning of October after a formal investigation into her five-year-long secret relationship with former federal MP Daryl Maguire was announced. Maguire was embroiled in a scandal involving a serious conflict of interest with Chinese entities in 2018. Berejiklian was aware of the problem and yet lied about her knowledge and role during a 2020 public inquiry.

After Berejiklian was succeeded by Dominic Perrottet, freedoms and normal NSW society returned somewhat.

Likewise, Victoria’s Premier Dan Andrews was a signatory to the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative debt trap infrastructure project. In March, Andrews allegedly fell down a flight of stairs at his home while preparing for work, resulting in a broken spine and ribs.

While Andrews was recovering in hospital, the federal government intervened and cancelled his agreements with Beijing.

In a similar scenario, Vietnam was frequently lauded by western establishment media as a role model for dealing with COVID-19 during the early days of the pandemic. However, it turns out the country’s Communist Party did nothing special and simply used the tactic of sequestering citizens in state-sanctioned quarantine facilities en masse.

For Americans and Canadians, government-sponsored quarantine facilities have already been deployed in Washington State and Winnipeg since at least November of 2020.