Shanghai's Brutal Lockdown: A Moral Outrage

A chilling video records trapped high-rise apartment residents in Shanghai, China, screaming at night amid that megacity's lockdown, which began on March 28, with nearly 300,000 COVID-19 cases in the city. Health authorities announced today that three people had died. There are voices, including among some Christians, who hail the supposed efficiency and dynamism of Chinese authoritarianism in contrast to Western democratic chaos. But the draconian COVID lockdowns in Shanghai and other major Chinese cities question the competence of China's overlords and point to a fatal vulnerability common to autocracies.