Chinese state television CCTV is censoring footage of the stands at World Cup matches, after the sight of thousands of maskless fans has intensified popular discontent with the ‘zero covid’ strategy.
In a comparison carried out by the Lusa agency, during the France-Denmark match this weekend, between the CCTV broadcast and that of a foreign station, it seems that the Chinese state body is replacing the images of fans in the stands by images of players or the technical team, using a delay of about 30 seconds.
During last Thursday’s broadcast of the Portugal-Ghana match on CCTV, for example, the Portuguese team appeared to sing the anthem twice, also with the aim of replacing the images of fans in the stands.
The opening ceremony of the World Cup in Qatar, followed by millions of Chinese, highlighted the contrast between China, which maintains the ‘zero cases’ strategy of covid-19, and the rest of the world, with netizens sarcastically questioning whether they are living on another planet.
“The World Cup has started and Beijing is absolutely silent,” Jessica, a Chinese flight attendant based in the Chinese capital, described in a widespread comment on the WeChat social network. “I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well, looking at a wonderful world that I can’t interact with,” she added. “What then is the purpose of living?”
This gave rise to the topic #SeráQueAmosNoMesmoPlaneta, on Chinese social networks.
Many Chinese, hitherto limited to limited information by official bodies, who continue to describe the outside world as “virus-ravaged” rather than a safe China, were puzzled by the absence of social distancing rules and maskless fans. .
This comes at a time when Covid-19 outbreaks have forced new, highly restrictive lockdowns to be imposed in Beijing, Guangzhou and dozens of other smaller cities in China. The Covid-19 ‘zero case’ strategy includes the lockdown of entire cities, constant mass testing and the isolation of all positive cases and their direct contacts in designated facilities, often in degrading conditions. China has also kept its borders virtually closed since March 2020.
This weekend, hundreds of groups of residents in Beijing abandoned their condominiums, effectively breaking with the epidemic prevention measures in force in China, while demonstrations spread in several cities of the Asian country, against the imposition of confinement measures. . In some cases, protesters chanted against Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China.
Large-scale protests are extremely rare in the Asian country.
The demonstrations were mostly peaceful. However, in Guangzhou, the largest city in southern China, the Haizhu district has been the scene of violent clashes between migrant workers and security forces. In the city of Zhengzhou, in the center of the country, at a Foxconn factory, the group that assembles the iPhones of the North American Apple, episodes of violence between workers and security forces also broke out last week.
Source: TSF
