As soon as Jie Zhongfeng learned about her roommate who recently returned to China contracting Covid-19, she booked a flight from Moscow to Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East and paid another 300 yuan (about $42) to schedule a bus ride to the Chinese border city of Suifenhe.
Dressed in full-body protective suit, masks and gloves, Jie did not eat or drink for more than 20 hours during her journey for fear of infection.
“After my roommate was confirmed to be infected, I became so scared. I decided to come back to China at once… I only felt safe after I crossed the border into China,” said Jie, a 54-year-old who sold shoes for more than 15 years in one of the wholesale markets in eastern Moscow’s Lyublino district. Jie wanted to return home because if she had already been infected, she believed she could receive better medical treatment in China because she wouldn’t have trouble communicating with the doctors.
She was among the more than 2,000 Chinese nationals who crossed the land border checkpoint at Suifenhe before it was shut on 7 April.
The influx of Chinese nationals returning from Moscow has turned the sleepy border town, which has a population of 70,000, into China’s new Covid-19 hotspot.
According to a statement from the Chinese consulate in Vladivostok on Thursday, a total of 346 Chinese nationals returning from Moscow through Suifenhe contracted Covid-19. The total number of imported cases in China stood at 1,534 as of Thursday, figures from China’s National Health Commission showed.
In response, local authorities in Suifenhe introduced strict lockdown measures, shutting down all residential communities in the city, allowing only one person from each household to go out and buy basic necessities once every three days.
At the same time, similar to the response in Wuhan, medical teams from other Chinese cities were sent to offer assistance. China’s state press has called the effort “a battle to defend Suifenhe”.
After Jie crossed the border at Suifenhe, she was given a Covid-19 test at the arrival hall. Her test came back negative the next morning and she was sent to a designated hotel in the city of Mudanjiang, about 90 miles (140km) to the west, for a 14-day mandatory quarantine.
“I’m not allowed to leave my hotel room. I’m only allowed to open the door when they deliver food to me,” she said.
While Jie crossed the border at Suifenhe before its closure, at least 330 Chinese nationals were stranded on the other side.
An inconvenient hotspot
China and Russia have both boasted of their “strategic partnership” amid growing tensions with the west, but the exodus of Chinese nationals has strained relations along the border.
Earlier this month local authorities in Primorsky Krai, the region bordering China, said they planned to send 330 stranded Chinese nationals back to China. But after the Chinese consulate in Vladivostock issued a statement calling the announcement “inaccurate” and said the border would remain closed Primorsky Krai officials removed the announcement from their website. Still, the local governor has called for a halt on Chinese nationals travelling from Moscow to Vladivostok.
“The shutdown of borders between the two countries has demonstrated the awkward situation China faces when dealing with an ally like Russia,” said Wu Qiang, an independent scholar formerly at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.
“The decision to close the borders came from Beijing’s concerns over growing domestic complaints that Russia had become the top source of imported Covid-19 cases in China,” Wu said.
On Thursday, the Kremlin said that during a phone call with Chinese president Xi Jinping, Russian president Vladimir Putin praised “consistent and effective actions” of the Chinese “which allowed the epidemiological situation in the country to stabilise”.
Scholars say Beijing likely does not want to emphasise that a growing number of imported Covid-19 cases are coming from one of its most closest partners and both sides appear willing to downplay the unease at the border.
“This is an unpleasant situation. It’s a nuisance of course. But I don’t see any rupture of bilateral relations coming from this particular situation,” said Artyom Lukin, an international relations scholar at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia.
“I might sound cynical. But these are just ordinary people. They’re not like the daughter of (Chinese technology giant) Huawei’s founder. They’re mostly traders and students. Cynically speaking, the Russia-China strategic partnership can easily sacrifice the interests of a few hundred ordinary people.”
‘I’ll definitely try to come back to Moscow’Jie left Moscow in a rush without moving the shoes, worth more than a million yuan (about $141,000), from her stall in the market to safer storage facilities.
“If I had more time, I would definitely move the shoes to safer places. But my life and health were more important,” she said.
Since she left Jie has had to pay about 300,000 rubles (about $4,040) in rent each month for her apartment and her stall at the market.
“I don’t know when they’ll open the market again. But if I’m healthy when they reopen, I’ll definitely try to come back to Moscow. If the virus doesn’t kill us, we all have to make money to live our lives,” she said.