Putting People First

China goes all out to secure people’s livelihoods in the wake of COVID-19 hardships

- Hu Fan

There was no sense of panic when Xinfadi, Beijing’s premier whole-sale market for fruits, vegetables, meat and seafood, which supplies 70 percent of the vegetables for the city’s more than 20 million residents, was shut down on June 13. Cases of COVID-19 infections were the cause for the unprecedented move and they came almost two months after Beijing’s last reported cases. Though some communities saw isolated incidents of empty vegetable shelves in supermarkets in the first two days after the suspension of the market, no shortage of vegetable supplies or drastic rise of vegetable prices were seen in the city in the following days.

At a press briefing held on June 15, Wang Hongcun, spokesperson of the Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau, revealed how the city managed to safeguard its “vegetable baskets.” According to Wang, after the wholesale market was shut down, additional temporary distribution sites were set up to partly replace the market, while other smaller wholesalers and major supermarket chains increased their vegetables stocks.

Communication went into overdrive as 494 vegetable distributors of wholesale markets coordinated with dealers in secondary markets, and vegetable suppliers and super markets/restaurants revised logistics so that supplies could be quickly found whenever there was a shortage. In addition, a quick response mechanism was established to identify a shortage of supply in neighborhoods, with dedicated vehicles on standby.