Is China building so many centralized quarantine facilities because they are planning to allow more people in from overseas?
These look a lot to me like detention centres (they are as quarantine centres) and the immigration centres that Australia had in late 40s and early 50s during the early wave of post-WW2 migrants. The wag in me thinks that they might be preparing for inward immigration to cater to the future demand for labor. That's probably not as silly as it sounds. China will struggle to find people to look after its increasingly large population of oldies. The problem is where would these come from? Southeast Asian nationals who have supplied the Middle East, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore won't be a future supply source (they are now, though: there is a large population of illegal Indonesian and other migrant works in China). One commentator a year or two ago suggested Africa, but that is hardly going to fly with typical Chinese prejudice towards dark skinned people. Of course, they are building these a little early and given the quality of some of these thrown up camps they are not likely to be standing in 20-30 years when China's pop has shrunk markedly and the scarcity of aged carers will be become very challenging. Hmmm, interesting.