ChinAI #181: The “blood transfusion” work for Shanghai
Greetings from a world where…
“The supply is sufficient,” Liu Qiang said. “The key is distribution.”
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Feature Translation: Who is doing the “blood transfusion” work for Shanghai
In classic “these are my readers” fashion, the top choice from last week’s Around the Horn was a CAICT white paper. The CSET translation team, led by Ben Murphy, is going to do the full translation of that white paper, so this week’s feature translation is the #2 vote-getter: an article by Caijing E-Law (财经E法) on the people who are making sure people under lockdown in Shanghai are getting essential materials.
Du Chao has been driving a big truck for a logistics company in Shandong for 11 years. While delivering vegetables on the 5-6 hour drive from Linyi, Shandong to Shanghai, he likes to listen to rock music by the bands Blank Panther (黑豹) and Tang Dynasty (唐朝).
At 3:00 a.m. on April 1, he and three colleagues couldn’t enter Shanghai to make a delivery because they didn’t have a pass. Before taking the trip, they heard that drivers returning from Shanghai would need to quarantine for 2 weeks. Also, on the way, Du Chao’s colleague had received a call from a coworker who had delivered goods but was now trapped in Shanghai’s Jiading District and didn’t know how long it would be until he could leave.
Du Chao and his team were lucky. Their company got them a pass around 9am, they delivered the vegetables to a logistics base in Jiading District, and got out of there as fast as they could.
Not everyone was as fortunate. The article details scenes of drivers stuck in lockdown unable to return home, living in their trucks eating canned food and bread, making fires in the wasteland by the roadside.
Zhong Hainan, a 26-year-old former soldier who now works for the Ele.me delivery platform, has not had much rest since April 2.
Schedule for the past few days: deliver goods from 10am in the morning to 3am the next morning. He can make about 20 deliveries of emergency materials per day to the elderly, sick, and disabled. When going long distances, he’ll get stopped every 3-5km to verify his covid test status. One 60-km-long delivery of three jars of baby formula took over three hours and required passing through 14 inspections along the way.
The broader context: more demand for orders under lockdown, significantly fewer delivery workers. Under normal conditions, there are an estimated 80,000 delivery workers in Shanghai. According to data given at a Shanghai press conference on April 6th, only 11,000 delivery orders go out on a typical lockdown day.
Three factors: 1) Some delivery drivers are also under lockdown and can’t go to work; 2) Average size of orders have also gone up under lockdown, so that increases delivery times; 3) a wave of resignations: “Delivery workers from multiple platforms said that since late March, affected by the pressure of the covid situation, their colleagues have all collectively left their jobs. For example, at the site of a platform in Pingliang Road, Yangpu District, there were originally more than 300 delivery staff, but since late March, more than 40 have left their jobs, making the already stretched capacity even worse.”
Sun Wen, a resident of a district on Yanggao South Road, thinks the power of the neighborhood committee is limited.
In many neighborhoods, proactive people have organized themselves and initiated community group-buying purchases. The group leader is usually either elected by residents or volunteers themselves to initiate things. Each day, they’ll send out the group purchase info and residents can fill out a small form or relay their needs in the group. Once their order meets the requirements for bulk purchase (usually at about 30 people), the purchase will be initiated and folks will get the materials in 2-3 days. “Residents must unite,” said Sun Wen. "People in the community are starting to get acquainted with each other,” she continued. “In the past, young people went to work and old people were at home, and no one knew each other. Now through online channels, many people can know who their neighbors in the building are.”
“This kind of familiarity can accomplish a lot,” Sun Wen concluded: “I hope this kind of familiarity does not only exist under the pandemic.”
FULL TRANSLATION: Who is doing the “blood transfusion” work for Shanghai
ChinAI Links (Four to Forward)
Should-read: The Chinese Way of Innovation
For Foreign Affairs, Matt Sheehan, a Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, makes an important intervention into debates over how the U.S. should approach technological competition with China. He also reviews how China has encouraged technological innovation through three key steps: state intervention to create a protected market, maintaining international linkages, and massive investments.
Should-read: China’s most chaotic social network survived Beijing’s censors — until now
For Rest of World, Viola Zhou examines the pressures of censorship on Douban’s free-internet idealism. If you ranked different Chinese social media platform on the ratio of their significance to level of awareness about them among people who only read English-language content about China, Douban would come out a clear number one. We’ve previously covered Douban in ChinAI #153 and ChinAI #157.
*I would take note with this headline, though. This piece’s headline could have been used for any story about Douban for the last two years and yet pockets of freewheeling thought persist, which the article’s text notes.
Should-read: The Long-Term Stay Rates of International STEM PhD Graduates
In a CSET issue brief, Jack Corrigan, James Dunham, and Remco Zwetsloot explore the long-term stay rates of international students who earn STEM PhDs from U.S. universities. One finding: “In February 2017, approximately 90 percent of Chinese nationals and 87 percent of Indian nationals who completed STEM PhD programs in the United States between 2000 and 2015 were still living in the country, compared to 66 percent of graduates from other countries.”
Should-read: China Digital Times translations on Shanghai lockdowns
China Digital Times has been doing some essential translation work on topics related to this week’s issue. Here’s one post, by Cindy Carter, that translates portions of now-censored WeChat articles and netizen responses to viral videos about the travails of long-distance truck drivers as they navigate lockdowns and supply shortages.
Thank you for reading and engaging.
These are Jeff Ding's (sometimes) weekly translations of Chinese-language musings on AI and related topics. Jeff is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, sponsored by Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
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