“Why travel home and quarantine for 14 days? Staying in Suzhou gets you paid,” proclaims one banner discouraging workers from inter-province travel in southern China. Another reads, “Run around this year, grow grass on your grave next year.”
Across China, as the country prepares to celebrate Chinese New Year, local governments are publicly discouraging movement in an effort to prevent the spread of Covid-19. These prominent propaganda banners carry echoes of those seen at the very beginning of the global outbreak, which was first reported in Hubei Province’s capital city of Wuhan in December 2019. The city locked itself down for 76 days as infected individuals were relocated to makeshift hospitals and intensive care units were filled to capacity.
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