China’s state television CCTV is censoring images from the stands at World Cup matches after the sight of thousands of fans without masks heightened popular discontent over the ‘zero covid’ strategy.
In a comparison made by the Lusa agency during this weekend’s France v Denmark match between the CCTV broadcast and that of a foreign broadcaster, it seems that the Chinese state body replaces images of supporters in the stands with images of players or the technical team, with a delay of about 30 seconds🇧🇷
For example, during the broadcast last Thursday of the match between Portugal and Ghana, camera surveillance showed the Portuguese national team singing the national anthem twice, also with the aim of replacing the images of supporters in the stands.
The opening ceremony of the World Cup in Qatar, attended by millions of Chinese, highlighted the contrast between China, which is maintaining its Covid-19 “zero cases” strategy, 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 in absolute silence,” Jessica, a Chinese flight attendant living in China’s capital, described in a widely circulated commentary on the social network WeChat. “I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well, looking out at a wonderful world that I can’t interact with,” he added. “Then what is the purpose of life?”
This led to the theme #SeráQueAmosNoMesmoPlaneta, in Chinese social networks.
Many Chinese, hitherto limited to information bound by official bodies, who continue to describe the outside world as “devastated by the virus” in opposition to a safe China, were baffled by the lack of social distancing rules and fans without masks. .
This comes at a time when COVID-19 outbreaks have led to the imposition of new highly restrictive lockdowns in Beijing, Guangzhou and dozens of other smaller cities in China. Covid-19’s “zero cases” strategy includes lockdowns of entire cities, constant mass testing, and isolating 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 Beijing residents left their condominiums, effectively breaking the epidemic prevention measures in place in China, as demonstrations spread across several cities in the Asian country against the imposition of quarantine measures. In some cases, protesters launched slogans 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 central city of Zhengzhou, violence between workers and security forces also broke out last week at a Foxconn factory, the group that assembles North American Apple’s iPhones.
Source: DN
