China’s strict censorship system is fighting the pressure of complaints from Shanghai as residents find creative ways to circumvent bans on words, hashtags and even lyrics from the national anthem.
As the ongoing week-long blockade of the 25-million-strong city caused widespread food shortages, supply failures and fatal health disruptions, the government called on residents to use “positive energy”. Dystopian banners warn people to “keep their mouths shut or face punishment” and drones warn apartment dwellers. But far from inspiring residents to obey, the methods have raised tensions.
At WeChat, groups shared the names and stories of people who died, either with Covid or because the blockade delayed their access to health care. They criticized local authorities and China’s continued commitment to zero Covid proliferation as the world opened, sharing videos of residents detained, evicted from their apartments or treated harshly by pandemic workers.
Many of these publications were quickly deleted, including an article by a leading Chinese health expert, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, who cautiously urged China to step away from its commitment to Zero Covid. The platforms also censored videos of protests and outrage at the separation of Covid-positive children from their parents. Caixin’s investigation into undeclared deaths quickly disappeared.
In a video shared online, pandemic workers appear to have forcibly entered a man’s apartment to demand that he remove a critical post, while others say they were visited by police for their tweets. Weibo censored the term “buying vegetables in Shanghai” because people complained about food shortages (although one resident ironically noted that you can still post about buying cake). Until Sunday, even the first line of China’s national anthem – “Get up! Those people who refuse to be slaves! ” – was banned as a hashtag.
But the volume of banned publications seems to challenge the censorship system and workers.
Last week, a few hours before the dawn of Weibo, criticism of the state poured unusually freely as consumers flooded two of the most popular – and therefore sanctioned – hashtags with complaints. Under the topics “The United States is the country with the largest human rights deficit” and “Shanghai has dealt with several rumors about Covid”, the publications were often sarcastic or satirical, avoiding bans by replacing “China” with “the United States” in their criticism. The publications remained online for hours, leading one to joke that the censors must have escaped the pressure of the ubiquitous Chinese culture “996” overload.
Food shortages are among the factors leading to discontent in Shanghai amid prolonged blockade of Covid. Photo: Chen Si / AP
“People have lost confidence”
Charlie Smith, co-founder of the censorship monitoring site GreatFire.com and who uses the pseudonym, said part of the repulsion may be due to the fact that it comes from Shanghai residents who he says can “afford” [more] open because they are not so attached to Beijing. ” Shanghai, the commercial capital of China, is generally richer than other parts of the country and is home to a large middle class and cohort of Chinese business and academic elites, most of whom have been educated abroad.
“I don’t think what happened in Shanghai will happen in Beijing,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. “People have lost confidence in the government, they are unlikely to believe what the government is telling them, and they will question the propaganda.”
Smith said there have been several recent developments that have strained China’s censorship system.
“We started from [February story of a Chinese woman found chained in a shed], to the war in Ukraine, to Covid in Shanghai in a fairly quick sequence. How far do they allow people to discuss these topics in depth? “
“They can’t completely censor these topics, and then the constant accusation of the United States for everything seems to have broken the camel’s back, so the netizens have turned the table and now the censors are arguing.”
Dong Mengyu, a journalist focused on internet censorship, said the mechanisms of censorship were the same as always, but “the creativity of dissent is a challenge for censors.”
“The extent of the disagreement reminds me of what we saw in the early days of the Wuhan blockade, especially after the death of Dr. Li Wenliang and the censorship of an essay on Dr. Ai Feng,” Dong said. Both were punished for talking about the new virus. After the public outcry after his death, Lee was later officially praised as a hero.
A challenge for Beijing
As a possible sign that they need more tools, several social media platforms announced on Friday that they will soon publish users’ IP addresses to combat “rumors”.
In a post on Friday, still online at the time of publication, a man stole the US human rights hashtag to mock a planned Chinese state media broadcast aimed at “injecting positive energy”, highlighting “good” elements. of blocking. The event was later canceled after a reaction on the Internet.
“The epidemic has made the Chinese see much more clearly,” they wrote. “The Chinese are obedient, but they are not stupid.”
Until Monday, the complaints were still littered with a hashtag about human rights in the United States, as people posted pictures of surveillance cameras installed in women’s dormitories at university dormitories as a “pandemic measure,” in fictitious surveys showing people living harder lives. from anyone in Russia or Ukraine. a dog beaten to death by epidemic officials to remove all residents (excluding pets) from a village northeast of Pudong to disinfect it after a group of cases.
Smith said Chinese authorities feared that simultaneous street protests erupting in various cities would be what Beijing’s rule over the population was challenging. “I’m not sure if they ever thought something like this could happen online, but it’s happening.
Additional reports from Chi Hui Lin
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