Queues in front of the supermarkets, empty shelves, overwhelmed delivery services and people in white body suits everywhere: Scenes are currently playing out in the Chinese capital that were seen in Shanghai in March before the big lockdown.

The trigger for panic buying in Beijing on Sunday evening was the instruction that all three and a half million residents in the capital's largest and richest district, Chaoyang, had to be tested for the corona virus on Monday.

The mass tests are to be repeated on Wednesday and Friday.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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Many residents now fear that so many corona cases will be discovered that a lockdown could be imposed on Beijing.

On Monday, only 29 new infections were reported for the whole of Beijing, 20 of them in Chaoyang, where the embassy district is also located and where many foreigners live.

But it will probably not stay with these numbers: "The virus has been spreading undetected in the city for a week," said the city administration.

The situation is "acute and grim".

On Monday evening, triple mass tests for this week were also announced for the other districts and thus all 21 million residents of Beijing.

confidence shaken

"It looks like the day we've all been waiting for has come," says a young copywriter for FAZ on the phone.

"From what we saw in Shanghai, I guess it was inevitable." The Beijing native, who doesn't want her real name published, has stocked up on food for two weeks.

She hopes the authorities have learned from the mistakes that led to dramatic supply shortages in Shanghai.

She has no illusions about the usefulness of the Corona measures.

"It's not scientific, it's political.

It's about saving face for the government.” For this reason, she hopes that a lockdown in Beijing can be avoided.

A sealed off capital is an oath of disclosure, a devastating political signal,

which the management, in their estimation, will want to avoid.

However, the young woman is not entirely sure.

"After all, we never expected something like this to happen in Shanghai."

A writer known to the FAZ reports on the phone that she and her husband have just bought a freezer to store more groceries.

“Our friends from Shanghai advised us to do this.

They still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder,” says the woman.

The state media tried on Monday to calm things down with reports of full warehouses and extended opening hours of supermarkets.

The nervous reactions in Beijing show how much the lockdown in Shanghai, which has been in place for four weeks, has shaken the population's confidence in the corona measures.

There is no end in sight to the restrictions in Shanghai.

On the contrary.

Most recently, the measures were tightened again after the number of deaths and people seriously ill with Corona had increased significantly.

On Monday it was reported that 51 people had died of or with Corona within one day.

23 other people are said to be in critical condition.

There have not been such numbers in China since the outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan two and a half years ago.