Chinese web users get creative to dodge COVID censorship

Truth has a way of surfacing, eventually.

Truth has a way of surfacing, eventually.

The above is true, especially when freedom of the press is allowed. Authoritarian regimes control media and information and have agencies that hire people to use western free press to spread pro-regime propaganda and attack democratic states that are viewed by the regime as enemy, the regime's propaganda agencies know one of the most effective ways to negatively affect democratic states is to get people in democracies to fight against each other. China, like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other authoritarian regimes has agencies heavily censoring information within China or in the other authoritarian states and also pouring fuel and fanning flames in democracies viewed as adversarial by the CCP. Some working for or perhaps volunteering for authoritarian states use western media to attack western media. These state's useful agent's claim they know what the truth is, and because some democratic states have pushed lies maintain those states cannot be trusted, while the agents blindly follow and parrot the regime's messages, sometimes wack fabrications and disinformation.

In a similar attempt, netizens rallied to push Orwell's fiction "1984" to the top...

Sorry, but 1984 isn't fiction in their society.

I'm totally against the current policy," he said, arguing that the lockdown has caused unnecessary deaths by cutting access to regular medical care.

Very true. Mama can vouch for that.

The 20th Party Congress is scheduled for October 2022. We will see how events play out in China in the lead up to this Congress. Maybe enough official opposition will gel to give Baby Ping Ping the boot and China will have a new General Secretary and President? Or maybe by then people will be in the streets demanding change? Maybe both? Hard to say. Something is going to pop in China sooner or later. There are just too many problems going unaddressed. We live in interesting times.

China maintains a tight grip over the internet, with legions of censors scrubbing out posts that cast the Communist Party's policies in a negative light.

 “Man is born free, yet everywhere in chains”

Rosseau

Could change but there is always the fall back, ,let’s start a war”. Nothing like focus to push other problems aside.

Yup. Big upheaval in China is not something any of us should be wishing for. It adds a lot of unpredictability and risk both inside and outside China. I hope they get better and do better, sooner rather than later. There is no reason China couldn't be a much bigger force for good in this world, but not with that government.

One problem with authoritarian rule is that advise is not freely given. The regime rules with an iron fist and is reluctant to change course.

It has become impossible to defend the actions of the Chinese government during the outbreaks, the zero COVID policy in times where variants are prevalent is completely outdated and counterproductive, and no amount of censorship can hide this anymore. Chinese people can see how other countries like New Zealand switched to other forms of control that do not depend on crushing the local economy and making a mess of the public health services and still get better results than what can be seen in China.

The CCP is probably in emergency mode, paying extra hours to censors and agents to hide the opinion of the public while pushing obvious disinformation all around.

The "hardship, discontent and anger" they have endured in lockdown have "far outweighed the fear" of punishment for posting sensitive content, (The Truth)

Top Chinese leaders vowed at a meeting on Thursday to stick "unwaveringly" to zero-COVID and "resolutely fight against all words and deeds that distort, question or reject our nation's disease control policies".

resolutely fight against anything that questions, show the truth and/or the policies are more harmful than good for the people suffering under the imprisonment of lockdown.

State media has played up the positives and "sidelined private difficulties", said a Beijing-based journalism professor who requested anonymity.

The State media has played up the positives (mostly lies) and "sidelined private difficulties", (know as the truth)

"two Shanghais", where official portrayals (lies and misinformation) contrast sharply with (the truth) what people view online,

Voices of April was shared over 400M times inside China. Censorship failed.

BTW, examples in video of every thing mentioned in the article are easily found on non-Chinese video sites. I've been posting links here to China Fact Chasers videos, which are provided by Chinese people inside China to some family and friends outside China (people who lived in the real China for over 10 yrs each) in order to get around censorship.

Of course, the CCP-Chinese govt lodges complaints to the platforms against these videos and has them de-monetized. Showing the real Chinese, good and bad, is there goal, with a little humor for some of the ludicrous actions over really dumb things.

Just like the West. You might scoff, but look at the reaction to Elon Musk buying twitter because gasp he might allow free speech! 

The "free speech" many are concerned about are open calls to violence against minority groups, the poor, the homeless, public officials charged with managing things like voting and homelessness, elected representatives at all levels of government or even calls to overthrow the government itself, along with the platforms use to organize such violence. There is also concern that civil discourse will be lost and the platform will descend into verbal violence. The world is losing the ability to discuss things calmly. It is not a good trend and there are good reasons to be concerned as Mr. Musk is well known for picking fights and making degrading comments on the internet. He is a classic example of much that is bad with platforms like Twitter, and now he wants to own it in the name of "free speech". He has a lot of money and things the basic norms of civil discourse do not apply to him.

resolutely fight against anything that questions, show the truth and/or the policies are more harmful than good for the people suffering under the imprisonment of lockdown

Add to this the fact that Xi Jinping's arch enemy within the CCP is the Shanghai based faction of the party led by Jiang Zemin (the other factions opposed to Xi are the Communist Youth League faction and the PLA). The Shanghai faction has been fighting Xi since before he was appointed / elected CCP General Secretary and PRC President in 2012. Bo Xilai led the faction at the time and tried to force Xi and his allies out of the party through an internal party coup. Another high party member warned Xi and the coup failed. That is why Bo Xilai and his wife are in prison along with several other high party officials. The PLA attempted a coup in late 2017 that also failed. Four top generals went to trial, three went to prison for life and the fourth supposedly committed suicide.

With the 20th Party Congress coming up in October there is renewed pressure for Xi to step down, and no doubt plotting going on among his enemies to force him out if he won't leave on his own. The Shanghai faction is not happy with how Xi is handling the pandemic. It is doing grave harm to their financial interests. That is the back story to keep in mind when you read these official statements.

Stuck at home, many of the city's 25 million residents have taken to social media to vent fury over food shortages and spartan quarantine conditions.

This reaction has already been seen in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, for example.

The difference is, China has kept up its zero covid policy and as a result, its infections and covid related deaths rate is lower than those three countries.

the zero COVID policy in times where variants are prevalent is completely outdated and counterproductive, 

If outdated means that China's rates of infections are lower than countries such as the US, which is not using a zero covid policy, then that can only be described as productive---saving lives in what it is all about. I doubt anyone has a valid argument with that.

The difference is, China has kept up its zero covid policy and as a result, its infections and covid related deaths rate is lower than those three countries.

The death rate of China is not lower than in Australia or New Zealand, the Chinese just undercount the number of deaths and this is openly accepted by the Chinese authorities. If the New Zealand and Australian deaths are counted in the same way (about 5% of their currently reported numbers) they have a lower rate.

If outdated means that China's rates of infections are lower than countries such as the US, which is not using a zero covid policy, then that can only be described as productive

Outdated means incapable of preventing disasters like in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and having higher rates of both infections and deaths compared with other countries that do not follow a zero covid policy, and therefore do not cause the secondary deaths attributable to the policy and not the pandemic in the first place (such as people that can't access medical services because of the policy).

If countries like Australia and New Zealand can have lower death rates and still protect the working condition of the public health services and their economy that means their model is much better.

The death rate of China is not lower than in Australia or New Zealand, the Chinese just undercount the number of deaths and this is openly accepted by the Chinese authorities. 

Let's see a source.

Because my source, the BBC, openly publishes data showing China has lower infection and related deaths rates than Australia and New Zealand.

If countries like Australia and New Zealand can have lower death rates and still protect the working condition of the public health services and their economy that means their model is much better.

If only they could.

But factually they don't, as shown above.

And by Australia and New Zealand's own governments.

The "hardship, discontent and anger" they have endured in lockdown have "far outweighed the fear" of punishment for posting sensitive content, she told AFP.

The same was said for Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

It has been so long since China style of authoritarian oppression became insufficient to control the pandemic that it feels like ancient history. The people were probably as tired of the oppression as they are now, but at least they had the excuse that it worked. Now it must be really frustrating to have their rights trampled and their business and jobs destroyed and still see worse results than other countries that were in worse situation.

One thing is to conform with results, now they are being forced to conform and get nothing. It is understandable that people rebel, at least on the web.