China has turned online censorship into a domestic industry, employing two million apparatchiks to suppress dissent. Yet Shanghai’s dystopian Zero-Covid lockdown policy is testing the ‘Great Firewall’ to its limits. Wired has more.
If you search the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo for “Shanghai lockdown” (“上海封城”), you’ll find plenty of videos of deserted streets and emergency workers delivering food. There are fewer signs of the collective outrage, anger, and desperation that has gripped the city’s 26 million residents, who have been confined to their homes since April 5th and are struggling to get hold of food and medicine. You probably won’t find, for instance, a shocking video of pandemic workers clubbing a pet corgi to death after its owners were taken away to be quarantined, although there are references to the infamous incident, which became a symbol of the harsh lockdown conditions.
The situation became desperate as supplies of food ran short days after the lockdown was enforced, and some people were denied access to medical care. In response, residents are dodging China’s notorious online censorship system to document their experiences and vent their anger on sites that include Twitter-equivalent Weibo, the ubiquitous messaging app WeChat, and the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin.
China has one of the world’s most advanced internet filtering and censorship apparatuses, known as the Great Firewall. Back in 2013, state media said around 2 million people were employed to track content posted online, and Yaqiu Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, says censorship has become stricter since then. But the Shanghai lockdown is demonstrating the cat-and-mouse dynamics that are central to social media censorship, even in a country that devotes huge resources to wiping the internet clean from dissent.
“No censorship apparatus is airtight,” says Guobin Yang, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies contemporary China. “Social media censorship in China still relies a lot on human labour. It’s entirely possible that not all censors were motivated to keep up with their job at full speed.”
One video that went viral on Chinese social media, despite censorship efforts to stop it, was entitled the “Voices of April” and was originally posted by a user calling themselves Strawberry Fields Forever. The video combines aerial shots of Shanghai with audio recordings claiming to be made by distressed residents. A man pleads for his sick father to be allowed to go into a hospital; children in quarantine centres cry after being separated from their parents; residents shout from their compounds for the Government to provide them with supplies.
“It went so viral that the censors had trouble censoring it,” says the cofounder of Great Fire, an organisation that tracks censored posts on Chinese social media platforms, who asked to use the pseudonym Charlie Smith. He suggests the video, which was taken down and uploaded several times by different users, could have been viewed millions of times. “The Chinese understand there’s a limit to free expression,” Smith says, especially when it comes to politics. But he believes the Shanghai lockdown goes beyond the usual political debate because so many people are personally affected. That means people are willing to push the limits of free expression they would normally accept, he adds.
Worth reading in full.
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“That is my take, but make up your own minds by reading the full piece.”
It is behind a paywall.
https://12ft.io often gets you past some paywalls. Works well on Telegraph articles.
Thank you.
By the second paragraph, they are telling us….
“As Tate, who denies the allegations, waits to find out what will happen next, the misogynistic philosophy he has built is still thriving among social media followers. In the real world the effect has been significant.”
They can’t help themselves, and this is certainly not objective. Misogyny is defined as a hatred of women. Tate doesn’t hate women. He has a traditional view of how the sex roles are or should be played out in society. From what I’ve seen his focus is mostly on the man, and taking responsibility for their actions, and playing the provider and protector in relationships. Its a bit old fashioned if you like your men soft and weepy, but it isn’t what ts played to be. That so many leftie educators should want to spend time on making sure that young boys aren’t responsible, self reliant, ambitious or competitive, but rather compliant, and passive says a lot more about them that it does about Tate, imo.
Just expanding the point a little. I think Tate is what we used to call a ‘highly eligible bachelor’. He probably meets a far higher proportion of women, who see their opportunities in, shall we say ‘gold-digging’. Its the same for the wives of professional footballers. Are they complaining about their partners misogynism while they are spending £100k a week, driving Ferrari’s, and up to their firm buttocks in Gucci. It was a similar argument of feminism about the ‘Male Patriarchy’ because a handful of super successful and competitive men have vast wealth, then try to apply that rhetoric to the typical male in a typical marriage with a typical woman.
I know nothing about Tate but my gut tells me that his enemies are my enemies.
As for “man up” and “be a man” I think the behaviours those phrases are aimed at emphasising are generally helpful but it’s unfortunate they are sex-specific. I’m a man so it doesn’t hit me in the way it might hit a woman but to me they say “be stoical in the face of adversity and take responsibility for your own actions”. Possibly at some point in the past the general perception was that those were more typically male behaviours and that may or may not be true. I wonder if we should try to out that behind us and agree that those qualities are generally positive. Btw I’m not denying that males and female females might on average have different tendencies. I tend to think that people should think of themselves as individuals and not worry about their sex, and be strong in themselves, whatever that brings for them.
”Man-up’ a problem phrase? good grief; it is like a 1984 manipulation of language, I wish some of our politicians (male/female/in between) would ‘man up’ and get a few things sorted out.
Not a problem phrase for me – but I suppose it might be for women who could interpret it as implying that those qualities were exclusively or predominantly male. But I tend to think we should not get hung up on such things. But I can’t presume to speak for women.
Why is this unfortunate, ie, why shouldn’t woman be able to man up? The phrase is historical and ultimatively comes from the fact that men were expected to be soldiers/ fighters and women weren’t. How can the fact that this used to be the case possibly negatively affect someone? Any attempt to create or enforce politically correct language is evil.
Yes, indeed – I agree.
Tate has been a psy-op. Stop glorifying him. And don’t underestimate the enemy.
I’m curious as to why you say that. Care to explain further..?
Is that the best you’ve got.? Downvote me because I asked for an expanded answer.? Come on, engage in the discussion. We might learn something from each other…
Don’t know Tate, don’t really care either, but an online (non-Google) search of ‘who is Andrew Tate’ gives you pages and pages of MSM vitriol about him. He’s obviously hit a non-narrative nerve: perhaps one reason they’re so narked is that his classically patriarchal misogyny (where women can actually call themselves women) is getting more attention than wokerati transgender misogyny (where women can’t). That, and encouraging boys to be boys. Allegedly.
classically patriarchal misogyny
Or so. Judging from comments in the Weekly Sceptic podcast (I hate real-time media because I can read much faster than people usually speek), the guy is an ex-kickboxer- turned-pimp with an internet presence for self-marketing. Guaranteed to drive certain people up the wall in anger but otherwise, not exactly a savoury or much important character.
Entirely agree he’s probably a loathsome individual with possible criminal intent, I was just making an – admittedly tangential – point about how MSM rage about his misogyny (it seems to be the point du jour in a lot of headlines) yet are fully embracing of wokerati misogyny. Nuff said: he’s not worth the attention.
Neither, actually, and I’d quite like it if the entire internet stopped trying so hard to make me care about him.
“Some pupils are giving up on studying for exams”. How many more young people are giving up studying for exams or in the worst cases giving up on life because they have been brainwashed by Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion etc. to believe that climate change means that they have no future. Surely these unfortunate victims need a bit of sympathetic “re-education”, or at least being presented with alternative points of view so they can make up their own minds. The same applies to gender confused teenagers who are being brainwashed into taking damaging puberty blockers by woke doctors or groups such as Mermaids.
It’s funny how right on people only call it brainwashing when it involves opinions they don’t agree with, otherwise it’s education or empowerment.
The law states that teachers must not promote partisan political views and should offer a balanced overview of opposing views when political issues are taught
Is the law being followed in schools?
https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2022/02/17/political-impartiality-guidance-for-schools-what-you-need-to-know/