China censors online posts reflecting people’s battle with Covid-19, government policy
China censors posts reflecting people's battle with Covid-19 on social media.
On New Year's Eve, many people in China uploaded reflection posts on social media talking about their battle with Covid-19 and criticising the zero-Covid policy imposed by the government for around three years.This month, China removed centralised quarantine for those infected with the virus, mass testing, and lockdowns, which were earlier very strictly imposed to eliminate all possibilities of outbreaks of Covid-19.
The sudden removal of curbs after so long has led to the massive spread of coronavirus in China, hitting the country's economic progress, and raising international concernamong various countries which took the drastic step of imposing restrictions on travellers from China.
Thousands of citizens on Saturday slammed the sudden disappearance of a viral video on China's Twitter-like Weibo which was created by local outlet Netease News collating Chinese people's real-life stories in 2022.
ALSO READ| Beijing slams Covid curbs on Chinese travellers as 'discriminatory'
Many stories in the video narrated the difficulties faced by the citizens due to the strict implementation of the zero-COVID policy. One hashtag related to the video received 4 million hits on Weibo before it was wiped out of all platforms by Saturday noon.
New hashtags were then created by social media users to ensure that comments kept pouring in. "What a perverse world, you can only sing the praises of the fake but you cannot show real life," wrote one user, as he added a screenshot of no results displayed when the hashtags are searched.
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The removal of hashtags and the video was believed to be an act of censorship by many citizens, which further reflected that the government in China still perceives the narrative around how it handled coronavirus as a politically sensitive issue.
Many people on Weibo stated how the new rise in infections has left them with no celebratory mood on New Year's Eve.
"This virus should just go and die, can not believe this year I can not even find a healthy friend that can go out with me and celebrate the passage into the New Year,” said one user of Weibo in eastern Shandong province.
WATCH | WHO calls up China to step up Covid response, urges to share more Covid data too
Other citizens hoped that the new year would bring back the pre-pandemic life in China. "I lived and worked under COVID throughout 2022... I hope 2023 is when everything can go back to what it was before 2020," one user from Jiangsu stated.
Even as the health authorities claimed that the zero-Covid policy was removed due to the "weakening" of the Omicron variant, the country was reopened just a few days after it witnessed the biggest protest ever since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
(With inputs from agencies)