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Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

293 points by hongsy 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hongsy 4y ago
What really grates at people’s nerves? Uncertainty. Not knowing when you will end up testing positive and be whisked off by one of the commissar’s white costumed goon squads in the middle of the night. If you don’t agree, that’s when they typically come, like the NKVD secret police back in the Soviet Union. And not knowing what will happen to your children, your elderly parents and your pets if / when that day comes. https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/tragedy-and-hope-in-shanghai?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&s=r https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/tragedy-and-hope-in-sha...
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  I don’t think it is ok to compare covid quarantines to concentration camps.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    That is not a comparison, it is a description and an identification (a "classification", in ML terms).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
      When people hear "concentration camp," they think about the Nazi camps during WWII where people were gassed, starved or worked to death. They don't think of a large makeshift hospital that you go to for 10 days, in which you're given 3 hot meals a day, and in which you spend your time lying in bed, trying to fight off boredom by scrolling your smartphone. This sort of hyperbolic language is silly, and is disrespectful to the memory of people who perished in actual concentration camps.
      - mdp2021 4y ago
        Diogenes, while I agree that «hyperbolic language is silly» and occasionally «disrespectful», if we let "history", the non progressive instances of history, eat up our language then we would lose something extremely precious. «"When people hear they think"» is an enemy of language and more. If you wanted to interpret «"occasionally"» in the first sentence of this post as "seldom", because "when people hear they think", instead of "according to occasion", which is what was meant, then that very sentence would be disrespectful. But you should know this was not what was intended. You know how it works with servers: strict in the output, tolerant in the intake.
        DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
        The term "concentration camp" is almost entirely associated with the Holocaust. The people using that term to describe makeshift hospitals want their listeners/readers to draw that connection.
        mdp2021 4y ago
        > The term... is almost entirely associated By whom? Who tells you the speaker considers their association(s) relevant? They are not entitled to assume those associations outside their own mind (and even inside it, that does not seem proper mental hygiene nor proper process). > The people using that term False. /Some/ people - irregardless of the number - use language that way. Other people do not, and hold that treatment of language in contempt: they do not care about "familiar" language in which a clan of two or two billion decide that they will interpret some term in some way specific to them. (What does 'familiar' mean just a few terms earlier?)
        DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
        > By whom? By people who speak the English language. The reason why people are calling makeshift hospitals "concentration camps" is precisely because they want their listeners/readers to think about Nazi concentration camps, and to recoil in horror. If you look at the specific blog we're talking about, they use terms like "deportation," which are likewise meant to make people think of the Holocaust. This is a common rhetorical tactic, and it's not limited to the term "concentration camps." During the pandemic, opponents of vaccine passes and testing requirements have frequently compared these measures to measures taken by the Nazis. As for your talk of "clans" and such, I'm a bit puzzled as to what you're talking about. Language is a means of communication, and it's clear that this blog is trying to communicate the message that sending people who test positive to makeshift hospitals in like the Nazis deporting millions of people to concentration camps.
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  Very interesting. Not doubting the severity of the situation, but I'm curious where you get this info – you seem to have knowledge of the inside baseball (like emergency meetings held by CCP admins) and I don't know how to trust that it's accurate.
  - leohonexus 4y ago
    A lot of it is public information though, if you know where to look.
  - woutr_be 4y ago
    Out of experience in Hong Kong, this is exactly what happened. People weren't afraid of testing positive, they were afraid of being taken away to a poorly maintained quarantine facility for two weeks. Even your close contacts would be quarantined for two weeks, making it so that many people (unsurprisingly) lied about who they met, or where they went. For people, who live paycheck to paycheck, this would essentially destroy their livelihoods. They would be out of money (since they won't get paid for weeks), could potentially not feed their families, and are at risk of losing their jobs.
    - kenneth 4y ago
      Indeed, that was exactly the issue in Hong Kong and when the likelihood of having this happen in HK with the mandatory tests and rising cases started to skyrocket, that's when I left to go take refugee outside the madness. Ironically, I promptly got covid in Europe and it was no big deal. The disease itself is no big deal, the real risk is authoritarian governments who have gone mental. All of my friends who have gotten covid in HK are keeping it very secret, which explains how we only have a bit over 1M reported cases, vs. likely 4M+ cases in 3 months (out of a population of 7M). And we have it easy in HK. What's happening in Shanghai is far scarier. They're literally going around forcibly imprisoning people and starving them, and killing their pets arbitrarily. In HK they only tried to kill people's hamsters, but at least didn't go for our dogs. If they had gone for my boy, that's when I'd turn full revolutionary.
      - 4y ago
- kkfx 4y ago
  People have more pressing issue I imaging: food shortage is not a matter of incertitude, it's already there, lack of space is another. If you have enough propaganda to put some people, who happen to live in very comfortable homes, with gardens etc, food coming from the outside as anything else and they still get payed as usual probably only few will revolt. That's indeed the Great Reset/World Economic Forum model https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... only they imaging to been able to substitute large homes with garden with a Virtual Revolution alike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Revolution capsule homes with metaverse-alike seats. A modern version of the classic panem et circense. IMVHO China want to change it's demography quickly so they have to manage some justified enormous amount of "elderly" deaths to lower their mean population age. They need more young and they can't even nourish actual adults. A pandemic as excuse, with proper "cures" (not to cure but to kill), pushing people to suicide, ... is a mildly effective technique. In the meantime they can test countless of things and nearly no one will spot them. Some might see this as a so extreme theory that follow some flat-earth believers, and that's exactly why it might be a "good" one: the classic Goebbels "kill 100 children and the entire world will be against you, kill 100M and no one will believe, almost anyone will remain silent or even criticize those who speak". I suggest a small reasoning in the end: - did we agree that Earth is overpopulated? - did we agree that IPCC/GIEC reports on climate might be realistic enough to be called true? - did we agree that any human being rightly want to live better and so no demand of real, tangible "food rationing, lifestyle changes" can happen and be effective without some enormously real or mocked emergency (cfr. the classic Capitalism and Freedom)? That what you think it can be done from here to 2030, a VERY short period of time in social changes terms, to completely transform the society? In the past we used wars, but with nukes it's not much a good idea AND wars tend to kill more young that old people...
nathanaldensr 4y ago
Why isn't this being called a humanitarian crisis by our illustrious Western leaders?
- laverya 4y ago
  Because "it's for covid", and our illustrious western leaders are either covid maximalists or focused on Ukraine.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- kube-system 4y ago
  Some in the west certainly have labelled it that. There's quite a number of humanitarian crises going on at the moment, as have been over the past few years (and basically forever). Western leaders don't get up in the morning and recite lists of them.
  - FpUser 4y ago
    >"Western leaders don't get up in the morning and recite lists of them." Well they should as they've caused quite a share of those crises.
- StopDarkPattern 4y ago
- duxup 4y ago
  > an event or events that threaten the health, safety or wellbeing of a large group of people In a despotic country that could be a constant thing.
- robonerd 4y ago
  My guess is there's too much money on the table for those in the western establishment (corporate media and government) to call a spade a spade. If official criticism of China becomes too strong then the public might start asking for the sort of economic sanctions that would hurt western business interests as well. Basically, a manifestation of that old theory about international trade preempting wars.
blisterpeanuts 4y ago
I wonder whether the Shanghai situation will be what finally catalyzes real political reform. The people have put up with a lot from this regime over the years. Shanghai has historically been where anti-government movements get going. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the next few months.
- kalleboo 4y ago
  I dunno, one of the stronger sentiments seems to be "the Shanghai government is fucking this up, we need the central government to take over and fix this".
  - ninjin 4y ago
    I have heard this line a fair few times as well (not taking a stance in terms of whether it is factually true or not) and it is in my experience fairly common among supporters of authoritarian systems. Given that the leadership is largely (if not entirely) infallible, clearly it was the execution of their orders that was flawed and the fix should be to give them further power and prune some underlings. Rinse, repeat, and the system survives. Look at a TV “audience” with Putin and you will see the very same pattern.
    - ImaCake 4y ago
      Same thing in Nazi Germany. The Fuhrer was considered to be above party politics and the anti-semitic actions of the nazi state. Of course he wasn’t, but its a tried and true tactic I guess.
  - user_named 4y ago
    Shanghai gov did fuck up. Now Beijing gov is fucking up.
    - kalleboo 4y ago
      Yeah the outcome of Beijing will be more important than Shanghai
nielsole 4y ago
How did this article get the view "behind the curtain"? Conference calls of the Beijing network surveillance office are hardly public knowledge? Together with the imprecise writing ("All the alerts went red") the articles claims are hard to take at face value.
- ncann 4y ago
  That's the part that stood out to me, doesn't seem plausible that a random account on substack knows so much about behind the scene stuffs. Even things like the 400m number (or any number in there actually), where did those numbers come from? I don't even know what the original platform of the video was, which I assumed was not Youtube?
  - alanwong 4y ago
    It's largely translated from a Chinese social media post [1] that's been floating around without clear attribution. [1] https://twitter.com/syhily/status/1517868079648104449 https://twitter.com/syhily/status/1517868079648104449
    - AustrianChina 4y ago
      Yes, this is the source.
      - yorwba 4y ago
        I think it's better to treat that post as part of the protest (someone supporting the message of the video imagining how it spreads far and wide) than as a reliable source on things like traffic figures (which, realistically, even the authorities can't know because of all the different copies floating around).
supperburg 4y ago
perihelions 4y ago
The secret police apparently got to the author of the video: - "“However, I don’t wish this video to be distributed in the directions I don’t want,” he added. “I hope everyone stops sharing, or please asking people you know to stop sharing.”" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/22/sound-of-april-chinese-netizens-get-creative-to-keep-censored-film-in-circulation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/22/sound-of-april...
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  "Hello, friend. Please do not share this [linked] video. Pass on the message to everyone you know. Thanks"
- Nition 4y ago
  Reminds me a little of You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images supported on your platform.[0] [0] http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net
  - alanh 4y ago
    How so? Do you think that message was coerced?
    - Gareth321 4y ago
      No. The common theory is that TrueCrypt was compromised by a three letter agency and the creator was not content to let people use compromised encryption. So he ended the product and could plausibly tell everyone that the software was no longer secure, since it wasn't receiving updates. We now know that the FBI/CIA/etc have broad authority to do things like: * Install back doors into any software present in America. * Summarily search and collect any data on any US server. * Prevent the vendors speaking about any of it. This case is a little murkier because TrueCrypt was open source. The common retort is: "clearly anyone would see if it were compromised." Unfortunately there aren't a lot of people in the world capable of understanding the maths involved in complicated encryption algorithms. Especially not as they relate to novel implementations TrueCrypt was using, like the lauded hidden OS feature. It is equally likely that some agency were able to break the encryption using some kind of exploit, and compelled TrueCrypt to never change their algorithm. Or perhaps the download websites were being actively monitored for downloads, and those IPs were being heavily scrutinised and cross-referenced. It's also possibly none of these. I found an old Reddit thread with some interesting details (link dead): https://www.reddit.com/r/techsnap/comments/4cgked/paul_le_roux_author_of_truecrypt_was_an/ https://www.reddit.com/r/techsnap/comments/4cgked/paul_le_ro... One could write an exciting mini-series over this. The successor is generally considered VeraCrypt, though it is not clear how secure it is: https://www.veracrypt.fr/code/VeraCrypt/ https://www.veracrypt.fr/code/VeraCrypt/
usernomdeguerre 4y ago
One aspect of this that i'm hoping a more informed person can comment on: Are the news reports of anger by shanghai residents directed against the national or provincial(?) government? From what I previously read Shanghai was discussed as a factional stronghold not wholly subservient to the national government (to Xi). That being the case i've been curious if these draconian measures have been imposed from the national level meant to weaken that faction's provincial support? Given the numbers of deaths being so low and not having read about overwhelmed hospitals, these almost seem like own-goals by the chinese government? But a factional dispute would explain it, in my mind. Does anyone have any better data?
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Well Beijing has taken over Shanghai. The number of deaths is miss reported. (If someone has heart disease and dies of covid it’s reported as heart disease, this keeps their numbers Low and explains why America gets 22k deaths from seasonal flu and China gets 50 despite having 4-5 times the population.) And hospitals aren’t coping, and office blocks are being turned into quarantine facilities that lack basic things like showers. Even the actual quarantine facilities are being used despite not being completed. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CcJFpN3pEN3/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= https://www.instagram.com/reel/CcJFpN3pEN3/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M... https://www.whatsonweibo.com/aerial-view-photos-of-shanghai-office-spaces-turned-into-covid-19-quarantine-site/ https://www.whatsonweibo.com/aerial-view-photos-of-shanghai-...
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > Are the news reports of anger by shanghai residents directed against the national or provincial(?) government? To the terminology question, Shanghai is a city (市) and not a province (省). However, it is one of four cities that have a special status formally equal to that of provinces. (Imagine if New York City was torn out of the several states it's technically in and made into its own state.) Practically, Shanghai is more important than some of the less significant provinces. To the substance of the question, whether blame falls on the government of China or more specifically on the government of Shanghai, my view is limited. But I can report that one resident of Shanghai, a longtime friend of mine, is pretty vocal about blaming the Shanghai government.
kim_bauer 4y ago
- treeman79 4y ago
  - kim_bauer 4y ago
  - robonerd 4y ago
    Or he's just acting in the interests of American corporations who in turn have financial interests in China. Not so much an organized conspiracy, but rather an emergent behavior from a system of common incentives. Like Chomsky describes in Manufacturing Consent.
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      > an emergent behavior from a system of common incentives Who runs the world?! The incentives.
  - mjevans 4y ago
    Correct idea, wrong party. It's the ADs that are the poison. All of that ad money from Chinese companies and related entities; it sure would be a shame if (News station) got blacklisted as an AD network partner.
kim_bauer 4y ago
udev 4y ago
One thing that I observe about how China deals with COVID: leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people. Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people. They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration. They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship (hunger, lack of medication, being separated from children in hospital, being separated from sick parents, etc). Of course none of that is true. For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions. We have to compensate for human imperfection, the same way a good engineer takes into consideration the imperfection of the materials, imperfection of signals, numerical imperfections in algorithms, etc. I am curious when China will adjust their model/plan for COVID to consider the vast amount of counter-evidence that is accumulating.
- karpierz 4y ago
  I doubt their model is that people are perfect. I think their model assumes that if they set strong enough incentives, the human-error will only be a second order effect and can be safely ignored. I don't know how well they've estimated the political price for some of these incentives, and whether they have the political capital to expend to maintain this lockdown for much longer.
  - Salgat 4y ago
    Their model is that you are assumed to be right, and when you're not, you save face by still acting like you're right. They're in too deep and they can't admit their policy is wrong since it admits that the west's approach is superior.
- Victerius 4y ago
  I like to use an analogy where every country is represented by a couple of people in a bar. China is the group who plans their consumptions two months in advance and sticks to its plan. America is the group that gets into a brawl in one moment, and in the next, builds a functional rocket in the parking lot.
taylorhou 4y ago
#shanghaistrong
langsoul-com 4y ago
Numbers from China always seem outrageous, 400 million views? It's lik there's too many zeroes added.
- robonerd 4y ago
  It's a big country.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    That's like a third of the population of China. To put that in perspective, the fastest video on Youtube to reach 500M was Adele's Hello in 34 days, and that was the entire global internet.
user_named 4y ago
I can confirm that this was being shared Friday and Saturday and a lot of people cross posted screenshots of deleted videos to their Instagram stories.
user_named 4y ago
#shanghai404 on Instagram
user_named 4y ago
I can also add that because of this, people in other cities do not see the wechat moments posts of people in Shanghai. May have been relaxed by now but has been the case.
fma 4y ago
So...how can we trust the writings of the author? Can the data be validated elsewhere? A video posted 8PM with ...11PM it has 30 million views...midnight 100 million, 1:05AM, 300 million. There were 200 million WeChat users up between 12AM and 1:05AM who viewed it? And with all those views - the Chinese government did not hold a conference call till 12:30PM? 12 hours later? I'm no dictator, but I would have circuit breakers much earlier than at 400 million, and if things go 'red' I wouldn't wait till after lunch the next day to convene a meeting. But, that's just me.
- AustrianChina 4y ago
  Thanks for catching this typo. It should read 12:30 am.
- earthbee 4y ago
  They did take it down, and people reuploaded it, flipped or rotated or with minor edits, and those got deleted too, and more people uploaded it, and those got deleted, and even more reuploaded it
  - powerapple 4y ago
    I assume the 400M view is with the original, rather than adding up all views from different uploads.
- spiralx 4y ago
  > So... how can we trust the writings of the author? Are you saying you're sceptical of something published by Austrian China: View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective? Austrian economists are well-known for their firm evidence-based reasoning, right? :)
wodenokoto 4y ago
> At this time the public opinion control system warning was triggered, and manual intervention began. ... manual intervention could not keep up with the speed of retweeting and posting. All available staff were called up to support the suppression effort. How does the authors know all this? This sounds like super detailed insider information.
- visarga 4y ago
  After this I bet they will create mechanisms to automatically ban videos if they didn't already have one.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  >> At this time the public opinion control system warning was triggered, and manual intervention began. ... manual intervention could not keep up with the speed of retweeting and posting. All available staff were called up to support the suppression effort. > How does the authors know all this? This sounds like super detailed insider information. My guess is it's made up: it reads like sci-fi (take an idea, and hang some plausible-sounding narrative on it), and I doubt someone actually privy to the inner workings of the Chinese censorship apparatus probably not say "retweeting." Also: >> View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective This (and a few other things) give me the impression of someone who thinks their ideology lets them see through walls, so to speak.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- robocat 4y ago
  > All available staff were called up to support the suppression effort. The orders already issuing from the telescreen, recalling them to their posts, were hardly necessary. Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound−tracks, photographs all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere. The work was overwhelming, all the more so because the processes that it involved could not be called by their true names. Everyone in the Records Department worked eighteen hours in the twenty−four, with two three−hour snatches of sleep. - excerpt from 1984 https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021h.html#ch17 https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021h.html#ch17
SixDouble5321 4y ago
My western biased understanding of China has me convinced this is at least mostly true. I am confused, though, about the calculation of what percentage of Chinese netizens saw the video.
- powerapple 4y ago
  Base on my experience, everyone on my social network have watched it, including myself.
throwaway4good 4y ago
For context - Shanghai is reporting around 50 COVID deaths per day at the moment: https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3175393/shanghai-adds-51-new-deaths-covid-19-takes-total-toll-138 https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3175393... Shanghai adds 51 new deaths from Covid-19, takes total toll to 138 amid rise in symptomatic cases City reports rise in new symptomatic cases to 2,472, while total new infections amounted to 19,455 in the previous 24 hours, a slight decline Local health authorities in Beijing say the virus has been spreading undetected in the city for about a week
tempestn 4y ago
Does anyone understand why China is willing to implement these extremely draconian lockdown measures, but not to mandate vaccination? As I understand it the main reason why the virus is still so dangerous there is due to the low vaccination rate among the elderly population. I'm not saying I personally support forced vaccination, but I'm surprised that the CCP doesn't, given they're willing to forcibly detain people who test positive.
- hollerith 4y ago
  Peter Zeihan says that they never secured a supply of mRNA vaccine. Instead, (partly because of national pride) they created their own non-mRNA vaccine, which does not work as well.
  - MagnumOpus 4y ago
    I don't know who Peter Zeihan is or what authority he claims, but you probably should stop listening to him if he spouts idiocy like this. The BioNTech vaccince - an mRNA vaccine - has been produced and shipped not just by Pfizer in the US but also by Fosun Shanghai, since all the way back in December 2020. If you know anyone in HK for instance, chances are high that they were vaccinated with Fosun mRNA vaccine. This is not a secret or anything...
    - kenneth 4y ago
      For all intents and purposes, HK is not China. BioNTech shots were only available in HK, and not in mainland China, and data from HK's recent outbreak shows very clearly the Sinovac vaccine is an order of magnitude less effective than the BioNTech vaccine, at best.
- jorblumesea 4y ago
  Home made vaccine isn't as effective against variants as thought, so mandatory vaccinations would expose its ineffectiveness. Importing Western made mrna vax (Moderna, Pfizer) runs contrary to years of CCP propaganda where China has outsmarted capitalist Western ideas. China's response has been nationalist in nature, a "China strong, rally around the CCP" world where they painted themselves as the only ones in the world who had it figured out. Xi is also up for a historic 3rd term after removing most of the checks on his power. The thrust of his campaign has been give more power to Xi, because authoritarianism solves your problems. Anything that runs contrary to these narratives is not going to happen, even if it benefits the nation.
anovikov 4y ago
It is astounding to see that people don't revolt. Just get to the streets and kill everyone in uniform from whatever service they are, burn police stations and resume normal life. What will authorities do? Send the army into a 20M city?
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > and resume normal life Others would call this idea "«astounding»".
- kenneth 4y ago
  They tried that in 1989. Might want to look up what happened in Tiananmen Square.
  - prartichoke 4y ago
    Except those were peaceful protests
Shadonototra 4y ago
it reminds me of the hollywood-esque videos we seen from ukraine, same team?
rishabhd 4y ago
Getting Akira vibes from that Video.
- usrn 4y ago
  That's a great anime. I'd highly recommend it even if you're not an anime fan.
fqye 4y ago
Typing this from shanghai now. It is crazy that CCP is again on the course of self destruction. Maybe this sort of self destruction is inevitable for every single major power. It is just a matter if one can correct the wrong and change course before it is too late. USA ditched Trump by election. Putin is doing shit to Russia. It is happening in China now. Chinese people can put up with CCP because we have been through too much disasters. A stable and somehow rational one-party rule is NOT so bad as long as stability is maintained and people's private space is respected to an acceptable level. Shanghai is right now at the edge of breaking this unwritten agreement between CCP and the people. If this goes on for a few more weeks, there will be social unrest. I am not optimistic about it.
lifeplusplus 4y ago
what does china govt know that rest of the world doesn't know about current spread of virus...??? Such extreme measures make me think we are missing something
- Markoff 4y ago
  it's about losing face and showing the control, we are not missing anything, old population in China ain't vaccinated because they don't wanna show support for western vaccines and Chinese vaccines are inefficient and they wanna show all these lockdowns work and they are not for nothing, basically just obedience test Honestly I don't understand them, they could easily sell their COVID zero strategy as big success since they waited out much more dangerous variants until this common cold aka Omicron and they should now let it roam across China freely without any restrictions, though even with fatality rate comparable with flu it will surely kill a huge number of Chinese just because of sheer population. It would still not contradict narrative that previous variants were very dangerous and required harsh measures. Or maybe I'm looking at it from wrong angle and this is really not about COVID at all, it's just convenient way to keep people locked NoKo style with all these health apps, but once you lift restrictions you lose control over people under pretense of fight against deadly disease (which is really on par with common cold/flu).
- usrn 4y ago
  I think they might just be running out of food.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thorin 4y ago
Honestly, this video is sad, but it's incredibly tame compared to criticisms of western Governments you see every day online. China even with their firewall can't stop people sharing this kind of thing widely. Everyone knows all their "official" figures around Covid are made up. I think they are backing the wrong horse on this occasion and their strategy could backfire bigtime. I don't think the other countries will have much sympathy if there is widespread hunger and unrest in China. Will be interesting to see what happens.
_23sd 4y ago
Just a note, the English subtitling in the video embedded in this post is pretty inaccurate in places. Not in a malicious way, I think the translator just isn't very skilled at English. If you haven't seen the video before I would suggest this version which should be easier to understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38_thLXNHY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38_thLXNHY8

293 points by hongsy 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

What really grates at people’s nerves? Uncertainty. Not knowing when you will end up testing positive and be whisked off by one of the commissar’s white costumed goon squads in the middle of the night. If you don’t agree, that’s when they typically come, like the NKVD secret police back in the Soviet Union. And not knowing what will happen to your children, your elderly parents and your pets if / when that day comes. https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/tragedy-and-hope-in-shanghai?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&s=r https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/tragedy-and-hope-in-sha...

throwaway4good 4y ago
I don’t think it is ok to compare covid quarantines to concentration camps.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  That is not a comparison, it is a description and an identification (a "classification", in ML terms).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    When people hear "concentration camp," they think about the Nazi camps during WWII where people were gassed, starved or worked to death. They don't think of a large makeshift hospital that you go to for 10 days, in which you're given 3 hot meals a day, and in which you spend your time lying in bed, trying to fight off boredom by scrolling your smartphone. This sort of hyperbolic language is silly, and is disrespectful to the memory of people who perished in actual concentration camps.
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      Diogenes, while I agree that «hyperbolic language is silly» and occasionally «disrespectful», if we let "history", the non progressive instances of history, eat up our language then we would lose something extremely precious. «"When people hear they think"» is an enemy of language and more. If you wanted to interpret «"occasionally"» in the first sentence of this post as "seldom", because "when people hear they think", instead of "according to occasion", which is what was meant, then that very sentence would be disrespectful. But you should know this was not what was intended. You know how it works with servers: strict in the output, tolerant in the intake.
      - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
        The term "concentration camp" is almost entirely associated with the Holocaust. The people using that term to describe makeshift hospitals want their listeners/readers to draw that connection.
        mdp2021 4y ago
        > The term... is almost entirely associated By whom? Who tells you the speaker considers their association(s) relevant? They are not entitled to assume those associations outside their own mind (and even inside it, that does not seem proper mental hygiene nor proper process). > The people using that term False. /Some/ people - irregardless of the number - use language that way. Other people do not, and hold that treatment of language in contempt: they do not care about "familiar" language in which a clan of two or two billion decide that they will interpret some term in some way specific to them. (What does 'familiar' mean just a few terms earlier?)
        DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
        > By whom? By people who speak the English language. The reason why people are calling makeshift hospitals "concentration camps" is precisely because they want their listeners/readers to think about Nazi concentration camps, and to recoil in horror. If you look at the specific blog we're talking about, they use terms like "deportation," which are likewise meant to make people think of the Holocaust. This is a common rhetorical tactic, and it's not limited to the term "concentration camps." During the pandemic, opponents of vaccine passes and testing requirements have frequently compared these measures to measures taken by the Nazis. As for your talk of "clans" and such, I'm a bit puzzled as to what you're talking about. Language is a means of communication, and it's clear that this blog is trying to communicate the message that sending people who test positive to makeshift hospitals in like the Nazis deporting millions of people to concentration camps.
ChadNauseam 4y ago
Very interesting. Not doubting the severity of the situation, but I'm curious where you get this info – you seem to have knowledge of the inside baseball (like emergency meetings held by CCP admins) and I don't know how to trust that it's accurate.
- leohonexus 4y ago
  A lot of it is public information though, if you know where to look.
- woutr_be 4y ago
  Out of experience in Hong Kong, this is exactly what happened. People weren't afraid of testing positive, they were afraid of being taken away to a poorly maintained quarantine facility for two weeks. Even your close contacts would be quarantined for two weeks, making it so that many people (unsurprisingly) lied about who they met, or where they went. For people, who live paycheck to paycheck, this would essentially destroy their livelihoods. They would be out of money (since they won't get paid for weeks), could potentially not feed their families, and are at risk of losing their jobs.
  - kenneth 4y ago
    Indeed, that was exactly the issue in Hong Kong and when the likelihood of having this happen in HK with the mandatory tests and rising cases started to skyrocket, that's when I left to go take refugee outside the madness. Ironically, I promptly got covid in Europe and it was no big deal. The disease itself is no big deal, the real risk is authoritarian governments who have gone mental. All of my friends who have gotten covid in HK are keeping it very secret, which explains how we only have a bit over 1M reported cases, vs. likely 4M+ cases in 3 months (out of a population of 7M). And we have it easy in HK. What's happening in Shanghai is far scarier. They're literally going around forcibly imprisoning people and starving them, and killing their pets arbitrarily. In HK they only tried to kill people's hamsters, but at least didn't go for our dogs. If they had gone for my boy, that's when I'd turn full revolutionary.
    - 4y ago
kkfx 4y ago
People have more pressing issue I imaging: food shortage is not a matter of incertitude, it's already there, lack of space is another. If you have enough propaganda to put some people, who happen to live in very comfortable homes, with gardens etc, food coming from the outside as anything else and they still get payed as usual probably only few will revolt. That's indeed the Great Reset/World Economic Forum model https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... only they imaging to been able to substitute large homes with garden with a Virtual Revolution alike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Revolution capsule homes with metaverse-alike seats. A modern version of the classic panem et circense. IMVHO China want to change it's demography quickly so they have to manage some justified enormous amount of "elderly" deaths to lower their mean population age. They need more young and they can't even nourish actual adults. A pandemic as excuse, with proper "cures" (not to cure but to kill), pushing people to suicide, ... is a mildly effective technique. In the meantime they can test countless of things and nearly no one will spot them. Some might see this as a so extreme theory that follow some flat-earth believers, and that's exactly why it might be a "good" one: the classic Goebbels "kill 100 children and the entire world will be against you, kill 100M and no one will believe, almost anyone will remain silent or even criticize those who speak". I suggest a small reasoning in the end: - did we agree that Earth is overpopulated? - did we agree that IPCC/GIEC reports on climate might be realistic enough to be called true? - did we agree that any human being rightly want to live better and so no demand of real, tangible "food rationing, lifestyle changes" can happen and be effective without some enormously real or mocked emergency (cfr. the classic Capitalism and Freedom)? That what you think it can be done from here to 2030, a VERY short period of time in social changes terms, to completely transform the society? In the past we used wars, but with nukes it's not much a good idea AND wars tend to kill more young that old people...

nathanaldensr 4y ago

Why isn't this being called a humanitarian crisis by our illustrious Western leaders?

laverya 4y ago
Because "it's for covid", and our illustrious western leaders are either covid maximalists or focused on Ukraine.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kube-system 4y ago
Some in the west certainly have labelled it that. There's quite a number of humanitarian crises going on at the moment, as have been over the past few years (and basically forever). Western leaders don't get up in the morning and recite lists of them.
- FpUser 4y ago
  >"Western leaders don't get up in the morning and recite lists of them." Well they should as they've caused quite a share of those crises.
StopDarkPattern 4y ago
duxup 4y ago
> an event or events that threaten the health, safety or wellbeing of a large group of people In a despotic country that could be a constant thing.
robonerd 4y ago
My guess is there's too much money on the table for those in the western establishment (corporate media and government) to call a spade a spade. If official criticism of China becomes too strong then the public might start asking for the sort of economic sanctions that would hurt western business interests as well. Basically, a manifestation of that old theory about international trade preempting wars.

blisterpeanuts 4y ago

I wonder whether the Shanghai situation will be what finally catalyzes real political reform. The people have put up with a lot from this regime over the years. Shanghai has historically been where anti-government movements get going. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the next few months.

kalleboo 4y ago
I dunno, one of the stronger sentiments seems to be "the Shanghai government is fucking this up, we need the central government to take over and fix this".
- ninjin 4y ago
  I have heard this line a fair few times as well (not taking a stance in terms of whether it is factually true or not) and it is in my experience fairly common among supporters of authoritarian systems. Given that the leadership is largely (if not entirely) infallible, clearly it was the execution of their orders that was flawed and the fix should be to give them further power and prune some underlings. Rinse, repeat, and the system survives. Look at a TV “audience” with Putin and you will see the very same pattern.
  - ImaCake 4y ago
    Same thing in Nazi Germany. The Fuhrer was considered to be above party politics and the anti-semitic actions of the nazi state. Of course he wasn’t, but its a tried and true tactic I guess.
- user_named 4y ago
  Shanghai gov did fuck up. Now Beijing gov is fucking up.
  - kalleboo 4y ago
    Yeah the outcome of Beijing will be more important than Shanghai

nielsole 4y ago

How did this article get the view "behind the curtain"? Conference calls of the Beijing network surveillance office are hardly public knowledge? Together with the imprecise writing ("All the alerts went red") the articles claims are hard to take at face value.

ncann 4y ago
That's the part that stood out to me, doesn't seem plausible that a random account on substack knows so much about behind the scene stuffs. Even things like the 400m number (or any number in there actually), where did those numbers come from? I don't even know what the original platform of the video was, which I assumed was not Youtube?
- alanwong 4y ago
  It's largely translated from a Chinese social media post [1] that's been floating around without clear attribution. [1] https://twitter.com/syhily/status/1517868079648104449 https://twitter.com/syhily/status/1517868079648104449
  - AustrianChina 4y ago
    Yes, this is the source.
    - yorwba 4y ago
      I think it's better to treat that post as part of the protest (someone supporting the message of the video imagining how it spreads far and wide) than as a reliable source on things like traffic figures (which, realistically, even the authorities can't know because of all the different copies floating around).

supperburg 4y ago

perihelions 4y ago

The secret police apparently got to the author of the video: - "“However, I don’t wish this video to be distributed in the directions I don’t want,” he added. “I hope everyone stops sharing, or please asking people you know to stop sharing.”" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/22/sound-of-april-chinese-netizens-get-creative-to-keep-censored-film-in-circulation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/22/sound-of-april...

MacsHeadroom 4y ago
"Hello, friend. Please do not share this [linked] video. Pass on the message to everyone you know. Thanks"
Nition 4y ago
Reminds me a little of You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images supported on your platform.[0] [0] http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net
- alanh 4y ago
  How so? Do you think that message was coerced?
  - Gareth321 4y ago
    No. The common theory is that TrueCrypt was compromised by a three letter agency and the creator was not content to let people use compromised encryption. So he ended the product and could plausibly tell everyone that the software was no longer secure, since it wasn't receiving updates. We now know that the FBI/CIA/etc have broad authority to do things like: * Install back doors into any software present in America. * Summarily search and collect any data on any US server. * Prevent the vendors speaking about any of it. This case is a little murkier because TrueCrypt was open source. The common retort is: "clearly anyone would see if it were compromised." Unfortunately there aren't a lot of people in the world capable of understanding the maths involved in complicated encryption algorithms. Especially not as they relate to novel implementations TrueCrypt was using, like the lauded hidden OS feature. It is equally likely that some agency were able to break the encryption using some kind of exploit, and compelled TrueCrypt to never change their algorithm. Or perhaps the download websites were being actively monitored for downloads, and those IPs were being heavily scrutinised and cross-referenced. It's also possibly none of these. I found an old Reddit thread with some interesting details (link dead): https://www.reddit.com/r/techsnap/comments/4cgked/paul_le_roux_author_of_truecrypt_was_an/ https://www.reddit.com/r/techsnap/comments/4cgked/paul_le_ro... One could write an exciting mini-series over this. The successor is generally considered VeraCrypt, though it is not clear how secure it is: https://www.veracrypt.fr/code/VeraCrypt/ https://www.veracrypt.fr/code/VeraCrypt/

usernomdeguerre 4y ago

One aspect of this that i'm hoping a more informed person can comment on: Are the news reports of anger by shanghai residents directed against the national or provincial(?) government? From what I previously read Shanghai was discussed as a factional stronghold not wholly subservient to the national government (to Xi). That being the case i've been curious if these draconian measures have been imposed from the national level meant to weaken that faction's provincial support? Given the numbers of deaths being so low and not having read about overwhelmed hospitals, these almost seem like own-goals by the chinese government? But a factional dispute would explain it, in my mind. Does anyone have any better data?

philliphaydon 4y ago
Well Beijing has taken over Shanghai. The number of deaths is miss reported. (If someone has heart disease and dies of covid it’s reported as heart disease, this keeps their numbers Low and explains why America gets 22k deaths from seasonal flu and China gets 50 despite having 4-5 times the population.) And hospitals aren’t coping, and office blocks are being turned into quarantine facilities that lack basic things like showers. Even the actual quarantine facilities are being used despite not being completed. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CcJFpN3pEN3/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= https://www.instagram.com/reel/CcJFpN3pEN3/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M... https://www.whatsonweibo.com/aerial-view-photos-of-shanghai-office-spaces-turned-into-covid-19-quarantine-site/ https://www.whatsonweibo.com/aerial-view-photos-of-shanghai-...
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> Are the news reports of anger by shanghai residents directed against the national or provincial(?) government? To the terminology question, Shanghai is a city (市) and not a province (省). However, it is one of four cities that have a special status formally equal to that of provinces. (Imagine if New York City was torn out of the several states it's technically in and made into its own state.) Practically, Shanghai is more important than some of the less significant provinces. To the substance of the question, whether blame falls on the government of China or more specifically on the government of Shanghai, my view is limited. But I can report that one resident of Shanghai, a longtime friend of mine, is pretty vocal about blaming the Shanghai government.

kim_bauer 4y ago

treeman79 4y ago
- kim_bauer 4y ago
- robonerd 4y ago
  Or he's just acting in the interests of American corporations who in turn have financial interests in China. Not so much an organized conspiracy, but rather an emergent behavior from a system of common incentives. Like Chomsky describes in Manufacturing Consent.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    > an emergent behavior from a system of common incentives Who runs the world?! The incentives.
- mjevans 4y ago
  Correct idea, wrong party. It's the ADs that are the poison. All of that ad money from Chinese companies and related entities; it sure would be a shame if (News station) got blacklisted as an AD network partner.

kim_bauer 4y ago

udev 4y ago

One thing that I observe about how China deals with COVID: leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people. Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people. They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration. They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship (hunger, lack of medication, being separated from children in hospital, being separated from sick parents, etc). Of course none of that is true. For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions. We have to compensate for human imperfection, the same way a good engineer takes into consideration the imperfection of the materials, imperfection of signals, numerical imperfections in algorithms, etc. I am curious when China will adjust their model/plan for COVID to consider the vast amount of counter-evidence that is accumulating.

karpierz 4y ago
I doubt their model is that people are perfect. I think their model assumes that if they set strong enough incentives, the human-error will only be a second order effect and can be safely ignored. I don't know how well they've estimated the political price for some of these incentives, and whether they have the political capital to expend to maintain this lockdown for much longer.
- Salgat 4y ago
  Their model is that you are assumed to be right, and when you're not, you save face by still acting like you're right. They're in too deep and they can't admit their policy is wrong since it admits that the west's approach is superior.
Victerius 4y ago
I like to use an analogy where every country is represented by a couple of people in a bar. China is the group who plans their consumptions two months in advance and sticks to its plan. America is the group that gets into a brawl in one moment, and in the next, builds a functional rocket in the parking lot.

taylorhou 4y ago

#shanghaistrong

langsoul-com 4y ago

Numbers from China always seem outrageous, 400 million views? It's lik there's too many zeroes added.

robonerd 4y ago
It's a big country.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  That's like a third of the population of China. To put that in perspective, the fastest video on Youtube to reach 500M was Adele's Hello in 34 days, and that was the entire global internet.

user_named 4y ago

I can confirm that this was being shared Friday and Saturday and a lot of people cross posted screenshots of deleted videos to their Instagram stories.

user_named 4y ago

#shanghai404 on Instagram

user_named 4y ago

I can also add that because of this, people in other cities do not see the wechat moments posts of people in Shanghai. May have been relaxed by now but has been the case.

fma 4y ago

So...how can we trust the writings of the author? Can the data be validated elsewhere? A video posted 8PM with ...11PM it has 30 million views...midnight 100 million, 1:05AM, 300 million. There were 200 million WeChat users up between 12AM and 1:05AM who viewed it? And with all those views - the Chinese government did not hold a conference call till 12:30PM? 12 hours later? I'm no dictator, but I would have circuit breakers much earlier than at 400 million, and if things go 'red' I wouldn't wait till after lunch the next day to convene a meeting. But, that's just me.

AustrianChina 4y ago
Thanks for catching this typo. It should read 12:30 am.
earthbee 4y ago
They did take it down, and people reuploaded it, flipped or rotated or with minor edits, and those got deleted too, and more people uploaded it, and those got deleted, and even more reuploaded it
- powerapple 4y ago
  I assume the 400M view is with the original, rather than adding up all views from different uploads.
spiralx 4y ago
> So... how can we trust the writings of the author? Are you saying you're sceptical of something published by Austrian China: View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective? Austrian economists are well-known for their firm evidence-based reasoning, right? :)

wodenokoto 4y ago

> At this time the public opinion control system warning was triggered, and manual intervention began. ... manual intervention could not keep up with the speed of retweeting and posting. All available staff were called up to support the suppression effort. How does the authors know all this? This sounds like super detailed insider information.

visarga 4y ago
After this I bet they will create mechanisms to automatically ban videos if they didn't already have one.
tablespoon 4y ago
>> At this time the public opinion control system warning was triggered, and manual intervention began. ... manual intervention could not keep up with the speed of retweeting and posting. All available staff were called up to support the suppression effort. > How does the authors know all this? This sounds like super detailed insider information. My guess is it's made up: it reads like sci-fi (take an idea, and hang some plausible-sounding narrative on it), and I doubt someone actually privy to the inner workings of the Chinese censorship apparatus probably not say "retweeting." Also: >> View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective This (and a few other things) give me the impression of someone who thinks their ideology lets them see through walls, so to speak.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
robocat 4y ago
> All available staff were called up to support the suppression effort. The orders already issuing from the telescreen, recalling them to their posts, were hardly necessary. Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound−tracks, photographs all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere. The work was overwhelming, all the more so because the processes that it involved could not be called by their true names. Everyone in the Records Department worked eighteen hours in the twenty−four, with two three−hour snatches of sleep. - excerpt from 1984 https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021h.html#ch17 https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021h.html#ch17

SixDouble5321 4y ago

My western biased understanding of China has me convinced this is at least mostly true. I am confused, though, about the calculation of what percentage of Chinese netizens saw the video.

powerapple 4y ago
Base on my experience, everyone on my social network have watched it, including myself.

throwaway4good 4y ago

For context - Shanghai is reporting around 50 COVID deaths per day at the moment: https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3175393/shanghai-adds-51-new-deaths-covid-19-takes-total-toll-138 https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3175393... Shanghai adds 51 new deaths from Covid-19, takes total toll to 138 amid rise in symptomatic cases City reports rise in new symptomatic cases to 2,472, while total new infections amounted to 19,455 in the previous 24 hours, a slight decline Local health authorities in Beijing say the virus has been spreading undetected in the city for about a week

tempestn 4y ago

Does anyone understand why China is willing to implement these extremely draconian lockdown measures, but not to mandate vaccination? As I understand it the main reason why the virus is still so dangerous there is due to the low vaccination rate among the elderly population. I'm not saying I personally support forced vaccination, but I'm surprised that the CCP doesn't, given they're willing to forcibly detain people who test positive.

hollerith 4y ago
Peter Zeihan says that they never secured a supply of mRNA vaccine. Instead, (partly because of national pride) they created their own non-mRNA vaccine, which does not work as well.
- MagnumOpus 4y ago
  I don't know who Peter Zeihan is or what authority he claims, but you probably should stop listening to him if he spouts idiocy like this. The BioNTech vaccince - an mRNA vaccine - has been produced and shipped not just by Pfizer in the US but also by Fosun Shanghai, since all the way back in December 2020. If you know anyone in HK for instance, chances are high that they were vaccinated with Fosun mRNA vaccine. This is not a secret or anything...
  - kenneth 4y ago
    For all intents and purposes, HK is not China. BioNTech shots were only available in HK, and not in mainland China, and data from HK's recent outbreak shows very clearly the Sinovac vaccine is an order of magnitude less effective than the BioNTech vaccine, at best.
jorblumesea 4y ago
Home made vaccine isn't as effective against variants as thought, so mandatory vaccinations would expose its ineffectiveness. Importing Western made mrna vax (Moderna, Pfizer) runs contrary to years of CCP propaganda where China has outsmarted capitalist Western ideas. China's response has been nationalist in nature, a "China strong, rally around the CCP" world where they painted themselves as the only ones in the world who had it figured out. Xi is also up for a historic 3rd term after removing most of the checks on his power. The thrust of his campaign has been give more power to Xi, because authoritarianism solves your problems. Anything that runs contrary to these narratives is not going to happen, even if it benefits the nation.

anovikov 4y ago

It is astounding to see that people don't revolt. Just get to the streets and kill everyone in uniform from whatever service they are, burn police stations and resume normal life. What will authorities do? Send the army into a 20M city?

mdp2021 4y ago
> and resume normal life Others would call this idea "«astounding»".
kenneth 4y ago
They tried that in 1989. Might want to look up what happened in Tiananmen Square.
- prartichoke 4y ago
  Except those were peaceful protests

Shadonototra 4y ago

it reminds me of the hollywood-esque videos we seen from ukraine, same team?

rishabhd 4y ago

Getting Akira vibes from that Video.

usrn 4y ago
That's a great anime. I'd highly recommend it even if you're not an anime fan.

fqye 4y ago

Typing this from shanghai now. It is crazy that CCP is again on the course of self destruction. Maybe this sort of self destruction is inevitable for every single major power. It is just a matter if one can correct the wrong and change course before it is too late. USA ditched Trump by election. Putin is doing shit to Russia. It is happening in China now. Chinese people can put up with CCP because we have been through too much disasters. A stable and somehow rational one-party rule is NOT so bad as long as stability is maintained and people's private space is respected to an acceptable level. Shanghai is right now at the edge of breaking this unwritten agreement between CCP and the people. If this goes on for a few more weeks, there will be social unrest. I am not optimistic about it.

lifeplusplus 4y ago

what does china govt know that rest of the world doesn't know about current spread of virus...??? Such extreme measures make me think we are missing something

Markoff 4y ago
it's about losing face and showing the control, we are not missing anything, old population in China ain't vaccinated because they don't wanna show support for western vaccines and Chinese vaccines are inefficient and they wanna show all these lockdowns work and they are not for nothing, basically just obedience test Honestly I don't understand them, they could easily sell their COVID zero strategy as big success since they waited out much more dangerous variants until this common cold aka Omicron and they should now let it roam across China freely without any restrictions, though even with fatality rate comparable with flu it will surely kill a huge number of Chinese just because of sheer population. It would still not contradict narrative that previous variants were very dangerous and required harsh measures. Or maybe I'm looking at it from wrong angle and this is really not about COVID at all, it's just convenient way to keep people locked NoKo style with all these health apps, but once you lift restrictions you lose control over people under pretense of fight against deadly disease (which is really on par with common cold/flu).
usrn 4y ago
I think they might just be running out of food.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thorin 4y ago

Honestly, this video is sad, but it's incredibly tame compared to criticisms of western Governments you see every day online. China even with their firewall can't stop people sharing this kind of thing widely. Everyone knows all their "official" figures around Covid are made up. I think they are backing the wrong horse on this occasion and their strategy could backfire bigtime. I don't think the other countries will have much sympathy if there is widespread hunger and unrest in China. Will be interesting to see what happens.

_23sd 4y ago

Just a note, the English subtitling in the video embedded in this post is pretty inaccurate in places. Not in a malicious way, I think the translator just isn't very skilled at English. If you haven't seen the video before I would suggest this version which should be easier to understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38_thLXNHY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38_thLXNHY8