What's the impact of the Shanghai lockdown?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What will the social and economic costs be of China's full-scale lockdown of Shanghai? David Aaronovitch examines the problems with the country's vaccination programme.
Joining David in the briefing room are:
Robin Brant, BBC Correspondent based in Shanghai Vincent Ni, China Affairs correspondent for The Guardian Professor Nancy Qian, Northwestern University Dr Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China in the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House George Magnus, economist and research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre.
Producers: Rosamund Jones, Kirsteen Knight and Ben Carter Production Co-ordinator: Siobhan Reed Studio Manager: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.6 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Ronevich. |
| 0:10.3 | The briefing room is the place in the metaverse between whose walls in 28 minutes |
| 0:14.5 | you and I get to try and understand a big issue with the help of the top experts on the subject. |
| 0:20.6 | This week, why is the city of Shanghai locked down? |
| 0:24.6 | And what could that mean for us? |
| 0:28.6 | The Omicron variant of COVID-19 has been leading humanity a merry dance. |
| 0:34.6 | Here in Europe, we're in the living with it phase. |
| 0:38.7 | But in China, things are very different. |
| 0:42.4 | The mega city of Shanghai has now been in complete lockdown for a month |
| 0:46.5 | with no obvious end in sight. |
| 0:50.2 | Why has this happened? |
| 0:52.1 | And what does it mean for the rest of China and indeed the rest of the world? |
| 0:57.6 | Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 1:03.2 | First though, what are things like in Shanghai? |
| 1:06.8 | BBC correspondent Robin Brandt is locked down in the city. |
| 1:10.7 | Robin Brandt, tell me firstly about Shanghai. |
| 1:13.7 | How big a city is it and what kind of city is it? |
| 1:16.4 | It is vast. |
| 1:17.6 | Almost 25 million people live here. |
| 1:21.4 | It's China's financial capital. |
| 1:24.2 | In some ways, it's a cultural capital. |
... |
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