Essay prompt: Elites have survived COVID-19 better than the poor. Consider how the relations of elites and poors to urban space have influenced this outcome.

Introduction: when urban discontent gets universalized

Roughly two years after the Western world’s first major lockdowns, Covid precautions seem to be sinking into (or being willfully buried in) the sand in countries like the US and UK. Mostly maskless, urban scenes have returned to a new urban normal. Not so in China. As of writing, it seems like Shanghai's intense zero-Covid policy lockdown is finally facing the possibility of easing (Brant, 2022a), but not without increased anxiety about further lockdowns in other parts of the country, notably Beijing (Wang, Mozur and Qian, 2022). Unsurprisingly, “In the five weeks [of Shanghai’s] lockdown…it’s Shanghai’s most vulnerable who suffered the most” (Brant, 2022a). While this statement was made mainly in reference to the elderly who have been subjected to particularly harsh covid regulations, it also stands as accurate for the urban vulnerable—those with precarious (or no) housing, those who are impoverished, those who were delivery people who got what food was available to those kept at home. Sometimes, they are all the same person: BBC reported on the experiences of a homeless deliveryman—one of a 20,000 workforce—that kept Shanghai supplied during the five-week lockdown (Wang, 2022).

It is true that elites have survived COVID-19 better than the poor the world over (Oxfam, 2022). This includes China; this includes Shanghai. Nevertheless, it is worth evaluating the role that (im)mobility (understood in the physical sense, not the social) played on each group’s survival strategies. When statecraft locks down entire cities, without exception, then both the urban poor and the urban elite are, to a certain extent, all in it together. To caveat: ‘all in it together’ it is a platitudinous phrase, and circumstances vary significantly between the elite and the poor, but “the ‘being-togetherness’ of life in urban space has to be recognised, demanding attendance to the politics of living together” (Amin, 2006: 1012). The recent example of food and goods shortages and the subsequent dependency on delivery service people reverberated up the socio-economic ladder (Kuang, 2022). The ensuing discontent this late in Covid’s tenancy brings forward an important question: what is the threshold that urban elite must find themselves affected so that there is a possibility of them becoming politically activated? While the elite survive better, that does not equate to satisfaction with the ruling powers. Disruption and discontent often get played out in the urban arena.

Elites and (im)mobility in urban space during Covid: narrowing the gap of social conditions

Much of the impression one gets about how elites relate to urban space revolves around how they are able to opt out of it. Gated communities serve segregating purposes: “In private communities, gating arranged by insiders keeps others out; in public housing, gates are controlled by outsiders to gain protection for themselves from those inside. In locking themselves in, the privileged lock undesirables out” (Dinzey-Flores, 2013: 10). The city as a fragmented and segregated space is heavily reviewed in the literature (Graham and Marvin, 2001, Caldeira, 1996; Balbo, 1993). This fragmentation leads to “residents’ everyday interactions with people from other social groups diminish[ing] substantially, and public encounters primarily occur inside of protected and relatively homogenous groups” (Caldeira 1996: 324). In cities with the kind of density that makes it unavoidable for elites to separate themselves from the poor, “superiors can and will share physical space with inferiors without sharing social space” (Hossain and Moore, 2005: 91). During Covid lockdowns, elites and the poor shared neither, but they did share something in common: social conditions.

The lockdown affected all groups to the extent that even billionaires could not avoid the negative effects. In one viral post, “a screenshot of a WeChat message in which [billionarie] Kathy Xu asked to join trading groups for bread and milk went viral on Chinese social media” (Kuang, 2022). You cannot buy your way out of discomfort if there is nothing to buy. “On the rare occasions that [the city] does come together, such as during a catastrophe or a major event, a certain sense of place shared by the many is undoubtedly released, but soon the everyday steps in to demand multiplicity” (Amin, 2006: 1021). During the five-week lockdown, there was not only a shared sense of place but a shared sense of social strife that affected everyone up and down the socio-economic ladder. One thousand people were forced to leave Beicai by night (Brant 2022b), an area skirting Pudong—one of Shanghai’s wealthiest areas—for disinfectant efforts. On the other side of the coin, in what could be perceived as an ironic reversal, residents including privileged foreign nationals were physically gated into their residences to prevent them from leaving the premises, inciting feelings of panic and helplessness (Sands, 2022). Earlier in the pandemic, what Garces (2020) termed ‘immunological elites' were willing to “embrace salvific quarantine measures and often work[ed] online from home, [while] the inhabitants of marginal urban districts are obligated to circulate outside the home, to expose themselves to risk factors” (313). While the latter condition is still evident in the 2022 Shanghai lockdowns, the former is more in contest: elites are not pleased.

Much of the literature on forced mobility pertains to the less privileged in urban society: migrants (Huang, Dijst and van Weesep, 2017) and the urban poor in slums (Dürr, 2012). When it comes to mobility discourse for elites, they are depicted as ‘globally mobile’, ‘fast subjects’ (Beaverstock, Hubbard and Rennie-Short, 2004: 405) in their ability to zip across borderlines with first-class air travel to second, third, fourth homes in other countries. They are exempt from immobility. Simultaneously though, the elite have continued hold over prominent city spaces: consider Mayfair and Chelsea in London, the Lower East Side in New York City, Pudong in Shanghai (ibid)—these places are viewed as continuously under the domain of the elite. They have a sense of permanence in the urban landscape. Thus, the elite are also exempt from mobility. What the evidence during the Shanghai lockdowns (among other worldwide lockdowns) challenge in existing literature is that Covid’s state-led control over (im)mobility is not only reserved for the urban poor (Sethi and Creutzig, 2021: 4). What remains to be seen is the political consequences of having the city’s elite subject to this kind of treatment when they once may have been used to being the exception. While earlier in the pandemic in China, there was public support for zero-Covid policies and broad adherence, those sentiments have waned (Oi, 2022). The ramifications of ‘trapping’ elites have not been thoroughly explored, and Shanghai—as China’s most prosperous city—offers an opportunity for investigation. However, one emerging result we can already see is surging emigration inquiries from the wealthy in Shanghai looking to leave after experiencing the lockdown (Yu, 2022): mobility activated as consequence. Undeniably, however, the elites’ survival during their immobility depended greatly on the mobility of the urban poor.

Urban poor and mobility in urban space during Covid: exceptions, for better or for worse

Rising income inequality has been a part of urban China’s story since the 80s (Cao and Nee, 2005: 464). Rising right alongside it, housing inequality has become an urban stressor for many inhabitants. From hukou regulations that are stacked against urban migrants to a market that is increasingly difficult to break into, informal housing has become a de facto reality of urban China —Shanghai especially (Fang, Liu and Chen, 2019: esp. 4). These often-cramped housing conditions in a crisis lead to “a myriad of public health factors like lack of clean drinking water, sanitation facilities, food insecurity and lack of immunisation expose residents…to significant risk” (Wasdani and Prasad, cited in Sethi and Creutzig, 2021: 1). In addition to residing in precarious housing, urban migrants are also “regarded with even greater suspicion as potential carriers of the virus. In this sense, the pandemic magnifies the idea of migration and migrants as a threat to human security” (Bakewell, 2021: iii). This notion is complicated by urban dependency on the poor to fulfill many frontline services. Notably, delivery drivers in Shanghai’s case.

Just like how it hit Shanghai in March of 2022, across the world in Ecuador, “when Covid-19 infections swept across Guayaquil…in March 2020, the poorest and wealthiest zones in the metropolitan area were the first to be hit” (Garces, 2020: 309). This effect on both the elite and the urban poor demanded a reimagining of citizenship based on class mobility (or lack thereof) (ibid). “the working-class, ethno-racialized poor are encouraged—even required—to circulate under new sanitary emergency strictures” (ibid: 316). Shanghai’s dependency on migrants and the urban poor to fulfill the roles that made it possible for the rest of the city to stay (immobilized) in lockdown goes under-emphasized.

This important job, however, is reinforcing the social and economic divides between delivery drivers — who are overwhelmingly male migrant workers from rural areas — and the urban populations they serve, according to Huang. ‘The pandemic intensified discrimination against drivers,’ said Huang. ‘It’s the nature of food delivery work — drivers need to contact a lot of people, and everyone is afraid of contracting the virus — so drivers are being regarded as virus carriers.’ (Tobin and Zhou, 2022)

Because of the urban poor’s mobility, they are stigmatized to a greater degree. BBC (Wang, 2022) reported on the experiences of Shanghai’s homeless delivery drivers. Anecdotes included how the delivery drivers were locked out of their housing compounds because of fears of their increased exposure; how police kicked them out of makeshift shelters in ATM rooms; how they subsequently became literate in what types of city infrastructures (bridges, typically) served as suitable shelters to avoid harassment from police. “People experiencing homelessness creatively appropriate public transportation infrastructure as living areas to socialize, rest, and manage their visibility” (Parker, 2021: 49). Their mobility also afforded them covert opportunities unavailable (theoretically) to the elite under lockdown. "In the beginning I survived on dry instant noodles. Later a group of delivery riders found a restaurant that opened secretly and now we go there to buy takeaways. The police usually just ignore it. We do need a place to eat, right?” (Ibid). This brand of mobility results in a hybrid dependency: the city depends on these delivery drivers to keep everyone immobile, and the mobile drivers depend on the city infrastructure in their consequent homelessness. The interview concludes with: “I’m just waiting for the lockdown to be lifted. I'll leave then. I don't know how much longer I can hold on for. I'm so done with Shanghai. Once I leave, I'll never come back” (Wang, 2022). On both ends of the social-capital spectrum, mobility is being weaponized to penalize Shanghai and, intentionally or not, send a message to the central government that survival is not satisfying enough to keep the population stationary in the city.

Conclusion: The curiosity of urban discontent and unintentional solidarity

The elite can enact innumerable privileges, comforts, and downright survival tactics that the poor cannot. This paper does not deny that. Rather, it encourages the value of exploring circumstances that bring the urban conditions of the poor and the elite closer together in a way that has the potential to be politically activating. Amin (2006: 1011) says “Any habit of urban solidarity is assailed by incursions of state power and surveillance.” However, in the case of Shanghai, it is precisely the incursion of state power, surveillance, and control over movement that has brought the experiences of elite and poor that much closer together. To a certain extent, the city became un-opt-out-able. The elite cannot buy their way to comfort which leaves them apathetic to the experiences of others when there is nothing to buy; they cannot avoid the inconveniences of the city when they cannot leave the city. Shanghai’s extreme lockdowns have given rise to criticism for Xi Jinping’s zero-covid policy that was not there before (or was, but expressed in much more hushed tones) (Yeung and CNN's Beijing Bureau, 2022; Sands, 2022; Oi, 2022). Instead of resigning ourselves to a totalizing truth that the elite inevitably retain control over their mobility in (or just outside of) a city while the poor inevitably are unagentively shuffled around, this Shanghai example offers a glimpse into how urban events can facilitate a shift in this perception. “From the words of Raymond Williams (1983: 268), it is when ‘inevitabilities are challenged, [that] we begin gathering our resources for a journey of hope’” (Pow, 2015: 480).

To end with a personal anecdote: I attended a Chinese cultural event as I was writing this paper. I had the opportunity to speak with a CEO who had lived in Shanghai for a number of years. We discussed the upcoming Chinese election, set for September, where Xi Jinping is largely anticipated to win an unprecedented (but expected) third term. With delicate footing, this CEO informed me that even though the election would inevitably go in Xi Jinping’s favor, it would likely not be the unquestioned and unanimous sweep that had once been taken for granted. They cited the Shanghai lockdowns as part of the reason. “Because of the lockdowns in Shanghai, and now Beijing, there is concern within the CCP, and within conversations among influential people.” This statement, as hedged as it is, may not seem condemning. But given "that almost a third of the elite are members of the Chinese Communist Party” (Yang, Novokmet and Milanovic, 2019), and within a context read as critical of Xi Jinping, it is significant. Elites survived Covid better, and their urban discontent, complicatedly, matters more. “Are elites not more part of the problem than part of the solution?” (Reis and Moore, 2005: 4). Until and unless a radically different power structure comes to fruition in urban society, narrowing the gap in social conditions between the poor and elite might be the best actionable opportunity to engender solidarity and improve survival for all.

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