As more cases of COVID-19 are being discovered in Beijing and parts of northeastern China, prompting lockdowns, some college students in the city of Dalian are complaining that they are being prohibited from leaving campus.
Dalian, a port city located in Liaoning Province, witnessed a surge of infection cases in recent days. On Dec. 21, municipal authorities announced that local health facilities should be placed under a “warlike state” to stem the spread of COVID-19, as the city has continued to find new locally transmitted cases since Dec. 15.
On Dec. 22, Dalian authorities launched testing for all city residents.
Dalian health officials also enacted strict measures for college students. According to a letter sent by Dalian Maritime University to all students and teachers on Dec. 26, all college students in Dalian are forbidden from leaving the city until the local outbreak ends, and all local colleges are asked to do “seal-off management.” The letter was posted on the school’s Weixin social media account.
The Dalian Maritime University on Dec. 27 published another letter on Weixin addressed to students’ parents, explaining that because the local outbreak remains “severe,” preventing students from leaving the school is necessary to reduce people’s movements.
Other local colleges also gave similar orders to their students, including Dalian University of Foreign Languages, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, and the Dalian University of Technology.
A student at the Dalian Maritime University who declined to give his name told the Chinese-language Epoch Times that he canceled his flight home because students weren't allowed to leave campus.
He said he didn’t think school officials would listen to students’ concerns about the new quarantine policy, although he expressed hope that the local outbreak would soon be over, so that they could go home to enjoy the New Year holiday with their families.
A student named Li Ling (a pseudonym) at the Dalian University of Technology said that school officials hadn't kept their promises to students about how the COVID-19 outbreak would be handled.
For instance, Li said students lined up at school to get tested for the disease on Dec. 26 because they were told that students could go home on Dec. 28 if their test results came back negative. However, after about two hours, the testing was called off by local government officials.
Li said that she didn’t know when they would be able to go home and expressed concern that students would have to pay for canceled bus or flight tickets that they had booked to return home.
According to Li, there were shouts of “I want to go home” from windows of the school dormitory late on Dec. 24.
She questioned why schools decided to keep students on campus, as they could easily report their whereabouts if they were to leave.
“I believe if the Dalian government continues to insist on not allowing students to leave, students could become restless. They could even join together to resist,” Li said.
Beijing also saw a burgeoning outbreak.
On Dec. 26, the Shunyi district of Beijing was placed under “warlike mode” after authorities confirmed two new locally transmitted cases, according to Chinese state-run media. The cases prompted authorities to mandate testing for 800,000 locals in the district. As of midnight on Dec. 26, Chinese state-run media Xinhua reported that about 120,000 people had been tested.
New cases were also confirmed on Dec. 27.
Meanwhile, workers at the Aobei Science Park in Beijing’s Haidian district, where Fu worked, discovered on Dec. 23 that they were barred from leaving their workplace. People complained on Chinese social media Weibo that all workers were asked to take nucleic acid tests for COVID-19, and could be quarantined inside for a long time.
