{"id":48183,"date":"2022-04-30T06:25:13","date_gmt":"2022-04-30T06:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=48183"},"modified":"2022-04-30T06:25:13","modified_gmt":"2022-04-30T06:25:13","slug":"like-wuhan-all-over-again-as-shanghai-protests-china-censors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=48183","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Like Wuhan all over again\u2019: As Shanghai protests, China censors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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April was, by all accounts, a cruel month for the residents of Shanghai.<\/p>\n

As an Omicron-induced outbreak of COVID-19 swept across China\u2019s biggest city, millions of people were confined to their homes.<\/p>\n

In an eerie echo of the lockdown imposed on the central city of Wuhan in 2020 after the virus first emerged, desperate pleas for help went unheard or were snuffed out as authorities committed themselves to stamp out the virus under China\u2019s so-called \u2018zero COVID\u2019 strategy.<\/p>\n

But just as people in Wuhan took to social media to show their anger and dismay<\/a> at the outbreak and the authorities\u2019 harsh response, residents in Shanghai have questioned an approach that has disrupted food supplies, separated families and strained medical resources.<\/p>\n

With much of the rest of the world trying to live with the virus, people in Shanghai took to journals, video, audio, WeChat notes and Weibo posts to vent their frustrations<\/a>\u00a0and ask whether the endless confinement even made sense.<\/p>\n

But in a country where public discourse and social media are strictly controlled, the Chinese government soon decided enough was enough, sparking a cat and mouse game between the censors and the city\u2019s restlessly creative citizens, reminiscent of the government\u2019s earlier battle to control the information pouring out of Wuhan.<\/p>\n

Much of the information removed by the censors spoke of the desperation enveloping Shanghai, including many calls for help from citizens: dialysis patients begging to be admitted to hospitals, families running out of food, and a cancer patient returning from chemotherapy yet being refused entry to her apartment because of the lockdown.<\/p>\n

\"Health<\/img>
Health workers wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) are some of the only people on the streets of\u00a0 Shanghai, which has been under a strict lockdown for most of the month [Hector Retamal\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One post, swiftly removed, offered a glimpse into the dangers faced by those with other diseases who died because their COVID-19 test did not come back negative, and they were refused admission to hospital.<\/p>\n

In another article called \u201cAsking for Help,\u201d a netizen demanding the government pay more attention to the food supply wrote, \u201cin a city with 25 million population, even if the basic needs of 99% of them were met, there would still be 250,000 people whose needs fell through the cracks\u201d. The next day it had disappeared from the internet.<\/p>\n

A sense of despair and anger reigned as the censors frantically continued to delete posts and articles that they feared were a threat to the \u201cstability\u201d so prized by the ruling Communist Party.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe primary goal of CCP censorship is to prevent large-scale collective action,\u201d said Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld, a professor at the University of California \u2013 Los Angeles (UCLA) who studies protest movements and online censorship. \u201cThe censoring is counterproductive if one thinks the goal is to prevent disgruntlement about the lockdown from spreading, but it is productive if it prevents upset individuals from coordinating action outside of their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Stand up\u2019<\/h2>\n

In an attempt to outwit the authorities, some tried to re-post deleted articles or comments using different methods, such as uploading a mirror image of the original photos or translating articles into English to share daring messages across social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cStand up, those who do not want to be slaves\u201d \u2013 the opening line of the Chinese national anthem \u2013 suddenly became a sentence too daring to be seen on social media, making rounds on Weibo, China\u2019s version of Twitter, before the topic was wiped.<\/p>\n