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China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

261 points by haunter 4y ago

thendrill 4y ago
Why?
- MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
  Seeing unmasked masses in the stadiums at Quatar may have contributed to recent riots in China against the zero-covid restrictions, putting into question the official narrative of the chinese government of "protecting its people against a deadly threat". Also people burned to death in an apartment complex with the doors welded shut due to lockdown.
- albertopv 4y ago
  Chinese people would see no one with masks, so they could question their government policy.
  - DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
    While I’ve no doubt of the post’s veracity, your comment isn’t accurate. Mask wearing isn’t common in a lot of China specifically because of their zero covid policy. Either there’s no positive tests in your area so there’s no reason to wear masks, or there are positive tests and everyone’s locked inside their homes. It varies though. I watch a lot of Chinese city walking videos and for example in Beijing lots of people (inexplicably given the above) wear masks, whereas in smaller cities like Guiyang almost nobody is.
    - bananapear 4y ago
      Might not be 100% accurate but the BBC are reporting that it is due to the lack of mask wearing
      - aperson_hello 4y ago
        I suspect it's lazy reporting on the BBC's part. Mask-wearing has been the trigger point for so long in the west that's it's the default explanation. Whereas in China, the trigger point is still assembly (which is where the west was 2 years ago). What Chinese leadership knows is that masks are nigh-on worthless for Omicron (I've seen numbers as low as 30% efficacy for N95 and basically no efficacy for cloth and surgical vs omicron) and that the only way to control it (without high prior infection rates and/or better vaccines - neither of which they have) is physical separation. Another issue is that Omicron isn't actually much less severe than previous strains on its own - it's just that in most areas there are effective vaccines and basically everyone has gotten covid before, so it's effectively less severe. But at the same time, it's way more transmissible than previous variants (like ~10x so). So China's put itself in a bad situation. If it lets loose, Covid goes wild and their healthcare system is crushed because there's basically no immunity against the world's most transmissible virus. Everyone will get it pretty much at the exact same time and 10-20m people will die with little to no healthcare within the span of a month or so. Or they keep locking down in perpetuity until something changes (they get a better vaccine? they do a controlled burn? the virus gets a lot weaker? revolution?).
        DaedPsyker 4y ago
        Why would they be cutting the up-close footage of people in the crowds not wearing masks if it was just about assembly? You can still see that crowds are not being spaced out from normal angles of the match, they would still know that restrictions aren't in place for those abroad.
    - brnt 4y ago
      I can only offer conjecture, but: maybe stadium visits are different from daily outdoors life, in the eyes of China's government? Also in some countries in Europe such events are still an exception to the generally no-mask-required policies.
    - albertopv 4y ago
      Maybe it's about public crowds, the point is chinese people could question their government policies. It's all about power, nothing else.
- simple-thoughts 4y ago
  CCP maintains legitimacy by performing better than the international community at governance. CCP can’t use international vaccines as it would make their claims of technical superiority appear false. CCP can’t try “living with the virus” policies as their subjects believe the outside world is in chaos due to those policies. World Cup shows the truth, that the barbarians are having fun and living life due to better policies and vaccines.
  - _vbnz 4y ago
    It's bizarre they're still pushing zero-covid so much, even without vaccines, Covid is dangerous but it's not apocalyptic.
    - 9991 4y ago
      Dangerous to the population isn’t the question. Is it dangerous to the government, or rather the government’s image?
    - xwolfi 4y ago
      There are two forces colliding here in China. On one hand people are absolutely fed up with barriers everywhere, nose tests, mandatory masks and being locked down at home. On the other hand, 3 years of constant propaganda made them utterly terrified of Covid: if restriction stop tmr, they will crash the economy by doing nothing at all anymore for fear of getting the virus. It s easy for you to say it s not apocalyptic when people all around you got it and survived, it s harder when your whole country is filled with cops in hazmat suit spraying every square centimeter with smelly chemicals...
      - zpeti 4y ago
        As they say, you reap what you sow (the CCP, must be terrible for a chinese citizen).
      - luckylion 4y ago
        I'm in Germany, and even here there are still significant amounts of people who are overly terrified. I've always thought that we (and China even more so) need some public reason for "it's over now". I had hoped vaccines would do that ("yes, it was terrifying, but we have vaccines now, it's safe, you can come back out"), but that wasn't super successful (+ all the people who are now afraid of the vaccines, sigh). It should work in China though, shouldn't it? Having a large announcement how the great Chinese scientists have discovered the anti-covid-thingy that you just take for 7 days after you've been vaccinated and it makes it much less dangerous etc etc. It allows the government to change their policy without admitting errors ("we no longer need to be zero covid now that we have this new invention") and it also gives people an out that keeps their worldview (that was formed by propaganda) intact but transitions them back to something more normal. Like in a war when some behaviors got enforced and normalized ("no lights in the dark, the bombers will see it") that become unnecessary once the war is over.
notlukesky 4y ago
If true this would not be a surprise as overlays of sports events is quite common now: https://p11.tv/digital-overlay-advertising-at-real-madrid-home-matches-with-img-and-project11/ https://p11.tv/digital-overlay-advertising-at-real-madrid-ho... The best one of sports overlays is from The Running Man: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093894/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093894/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc8kTma-36c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc8kTma-36c
Tchakra 4y ago
Or it could be that Chinese audiences & tastes aren't so big on watching cheering crowds. I am rather sceptical of this being evidence of censorship. Maybe, I could be swayed if it can be shown this is a clear break from tradition of showing crowds that started since the recent protests in china.
- easytiger 4y ago
  - Tchakra 4y ago
    Not sure any part of my comment history suggest shill or CCP support but ... i guess on this one I am clearly off kilter from consensus.
    - matkoniecz 4y ago
      > I am rather sceptical of this being evidence of censorship. CCP is clearly employing censorship on vast scale, this is not disputable at all. Have you maybe meant "I am rather sceptical of this being evidence of censorship in this specific case."?
  - dang 4y ago
    Posting like this will get you banned here, no matter how right you are or feel you are. You unfortunately have a long history of breaking the site guidelines. We've warned you many times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29153719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29153719 (Nov 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24812992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24812992 (Oct 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24681670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24681670 (Oct 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23523404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23523404 (June 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21132128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21132128 (Oct 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20445657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20445657 (July 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12821183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12821183 (Oct 2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11433610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11433610 (April 2016) Moreover, you're still doing it—I took a quick look through your recent history and saw several posts that were breaking the site guidelines. If you keep this up, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to do that, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on? Posts like this are seriously not ok on this site.
Geee 4y ago
It would show that people in other countries are allowed to gather in sports events. There are currently large protests going on against covid measures, and for freedom in general. This account reports these events from China: https://twitter.com/vivianwubeijing/status/1596948531918430208 https://twitter.com/vivianwubeijing/status/15969485319184302...
- thinkingemote 4y ago
  do we know what the Party line is about this? Do they, for example, blame western propaganda, involvement etc?
  - Fragoel2 4y ago
    A whole lot of covid outbreaks in China have been blamed on "contaminated goods" coming from abroad
    - bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
      Full circle to 2020 when people were avoiding boxes from China like the plague.
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        > like the plague This is the closest to the literal use of this phrase we've had in over a century.
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    We don't really know much at all. Comment from CNBC: "It was not immediately clear whether the protests reached a meaningful scale in a country of 1.4 billion people, or whether a wide demographic participated" I've seen pro government social media commentators say that the second half of the Foxconn worker statement was not reported by western media, but I won't pretend I know one way or the other. Given that just yesterday a Japanese person tried to lecture me about how snorkels might have been banned in swimming pools because someone probably died and that they are probably dangerous, I'd say east Asians anxiety level is different from ours. EDIT: funny to see people to get so upset. But anyone who has spent Covid in east Asia knows that they have had an extremely different approach to the Europeans all over the board and that in a lot of countries over there people are still deeply fearful of Covid. And while Taiwan has been bashing China's approach they still wear their masks everywhere and still have a somewhat lax but existent quarantine procedure. You cannot have a serious conversation about a topic based on the information provided solely from one side no matter how much you distrust the other.
Markoff 4y ago
I find much more interesting how Twitter is now flooded with accounts which are suddenly posting NSFW escort tweets containing Chinese city names in Chinese characters and one account is able to post 3000 tweets in 24 hours to flood search results with nonsense. https://twitter.com/dong_mengyu/status/1596749168462401536 https://twitter.com/dong_mengyu/status/1596749168462401536
- perihelions 4y ago
  That's a state-sponsored attack. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/27/twitter-china-spam-protests/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/27/twitter...
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Attack? The Chinese communist government is merely exercising their freedom of speech. /s
- kibwen 4y ago
  No surprise, the new CEO fired the team responsible for detecting and taking down bot accounts. Previously these teams were taking down 500,000 bot accounts every day, which suggests that Twitter might be accumulating 3.5M bot accounts every week.
  - sidibe 4y ago
    I'm sure something of the sort would have happened without him. But he's not the type to do anything in response to this or confront CCP with the regular praise he heaps on them. He even said Taiwan should be part of China like HK.
  - wikfwikf 4y ago
    That seems like an over-estimate. Presumably if you stop taking bots down, they do not re-appear as fast?
    - 4y ago
bananapear 4y ago
What is the CCP’s exit strategy? Could they feasibly claim to have eradicated covid?
- substation13 4y ago
  I see two options: 1. Figure out a working vaccine of their own (or maybe just license and rebrand a western one) 2. Become increasingly authoritarian - like a high-tech North Korea
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    China already has several highly effective vaccines. The problem is that a significant fraction of elderly people don't want to get vaccinated. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore had the exact same problem with vaccine hesitancy among the elderly. It's a cultural thing.
    - yreg 4y ago
      Then the option would be to make the vaccination mandatory. CCP doesn't like to do unpopular things, but the lockdowns are not popular either.
      - rhaway84773 4y ago
        China also requires everyone to have an app which gives you a color coded status based on the results of COVID tests taken by you and by those in your family and neighborhood, which defines what activities you’re allowed to engage in and what areas you’re allowed to access. Basing that off vaccination status would be far more palatable and would be far less disruptive.
        yreg 4y ago
        Vaccination offers good protection against death / serious illness, but isn't that great against catching the virus and being able to infect someone else. Their motivation is to prevent an outbreak. (Which is perhaps impossible long term).
hanoz 4y ago
What is going on with China's continuing zero-covid policy? Either it's the most expensive face saving exercise the world has ever seen, or they know something about it that we don't.
- yreg 4y ago
  The problem is that once they lift it up / fail to contain an outbreak, it will be a devastating one since their population isn't immunized.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    I'm stumped they didn't consider buying other vaccines. Maybe they don't want to be reliant on the west. They're indeed doing a mistake keep the lock strategy...
    - Sakos 4y ago
      I think it's a combination of not enough Western production, no possibility of acquiring a local production license like India and the hit to their public image if they admit their vaccine isn't good enough. The current largest producer of mRNA vaccines is India, AFAIK, and most of that goes to India and the EU.
    - GameOfFrowns 4y ago
      You'd think that with China's cavalier attitude towards intellectual property and trade secrets they would just copy one of the more effective mRNA vaccines and distribute it under the current Sinovax label.
      - chii 4y ago
        i do wonder how easy/hard it really is to reverse engineer a vaccine - and if it went wrong, some heads will roll. It's not like software piracy, where a perfect copy could be made.
        4y ago
Sol- 4y ago
A common story you hear is that Chinese vaccines are less effective and that they also do not want to rely on Western vaccines in turn. What I don't quite understand is why they couldn't just create some joint venture with a Western pharma company and then supply a rebranded version of the mRNA vaccines to their population. I would think they have the propaganda tools at hand to make such a move palatable even to the more nationalist citizenry? Surely this would be preferable to the costly shutdowns. Probably I'm also unaware of the constraints the Chinese leadership is operating under. I tend to think they have the power to make anything happen with their unlimited propaganda and censorship tools, but perhaps that is not the case and selling a foreign vaccine domestically is harder than I thought.
- jihadjihad 4y ago
  I came across a recommendation for The Economist's podcast The Prince here on HN, and can say it's a great primer on the modern calculus of Chinese leadership.
- gnfargbl 4y ago
  > What I don't quite understand is why they couldn't just create some joint venture with a Western pharma company and then supply a rebranded version of the mRNA vaccines to their population. I get the impression that Western companies have become a bit wary of those "joint ventures," following incidents like the ARM / Softbank / ARM China saga. Moderna specifically refused to share their mRNA IP with China: https://archive.ph/hxWuT https://archive.ph/hxWuT
- TwoFerMaggie 4y ago
  > What I don't quite understand is why they couldn't just create some joint venture with a Western pharma company and then supply a rebranded version of the mRNA vaccines to their population At the start of all this, around 2020, there was a media campaign against mRNA vaccine in China's propaganda, mostly emphasizing its side effects. It fit the nationalistic narrative that "our covid response is superior". The fear mongering worked and now many people are afraid of the side effects of the mRNA vaccine. Not quite easy to walk that back now.
singlewind 4y ago
There were multiple protests happened last week to memory people burnt to death because the inappropriate lock down of building. People release anger against the inhuman lock down policy. The definitely need hide as much evidence as possible.
DriftRegion 4y ago
Yeah. When people in mainland China saw all the unmasked foreigners at The World Cup it spawned a lot of ideation. I'll summarize the ideas I've seen floating around the Chinese internet: - It's a money-making scam by the COVID test manufacturers - It's a money-making scam by the temporary quarantine center manufacturers - It's a failure of bureaucracy ”层层加码” - It's a ploy to increase the depth of state surveillance - It's a ploy to lock people at home and increase the birth rate - It's a ploy to keep the poor poor to ensure that they keep working hard - It's to mitigate war with the United States. Apparently the Geneva convention has a clause against going to war with a nation stricken by a pandemic.
- DriftRegion 4y ago
  Here's a recent commentary from a WeChat group (translated via deepl): > The current situation is that Western water forces, through insidious and poisonous means such as the Internet, have created a very dangerous atmosphere of public opinion and incited the people to rebellion. If we are deceived and held hostage by these rumors, what China will end up with will only be a disaster. We have to believe that the country, more than anyone else, wants an early end to the epidemic, and more than anyone else, wants an early end to this costly and socially expensive epidemic prevention activity, so that society can return to normal and the economy can recover as soon as possible. We believe that the Party and the government will be able to lead the people of China to work together to overcome the epidemic! China will win! [fist][fist][fist] > 当前形势是西方水军通过网络等阴险毒辣的方式，已经营造了一个非常危险的舆论氛围，煽动民众叛乱，如果我们被这些流言所蒙骗和裹挟，最后中国迎来的只会是灾难。我们要相信，国家比任何人都希望疫情早日结束，也比任何人都希望早日结束这种耗资巨大、社会成本巨大的防疫活动，让社会恢复正常，经济早日复苏。相信党和政府，定能领导全国人民，同心协力，战胜疫情！中国必胜！[拳头][拳头][拳头]
  - throwoutway 4y ago
    “Wants an early end”? That must be propaganda because it should be obvious to a lay person that it started in late 2019. China government has been trying for 3 years to “have an early end”
    - yreg 4y ago
      Wait until you read to "We believe that the Party and the government will be able to lead the people of China to work together to overcome the epidemic! China will win! [fist][fist][fist]".
WiSaGaN 4y ago
This is such a ridiculous claim and also extremely easy to debunk if you have any friends in China they will show you immediately this is false. Yet not a single one comment mentions it. Goes to show the level of discourse happen in the west about anything china related.
- spoiler 4y ago
  There are multiple examples from different Tweet authors confirming that crowds aren't being shown. Can you post anything (other than unfunded claims) to refute these? Edit: my comment can come of as aggressive, but I'm genuinely curious, didn't mean to attack you
  - WiSaGaN 4y ago
    I just went back to the first full match broadcasted by CCTV, and made screenshots just for you: https://ibb.co/2MJrnWk https://ibb.co/2MJrnWk https://ibb.co/c3Zcq3S https://ibb.co/c3Zcq3S Initially they claim all fans are blurred. Now they claim close-ups are not shown. I am pretty sure that they will claim it's specific matches that don't have close-ups later.
    - simongray 4y ago
      I wonder why you picked the first match as proof...? The first few matches were broadcast uncensored which caused a ruckus on Weibo leading to the current state of censorship. That's how the story goes, at least. Can you make similar screenshots of the latest match?
      - WiSaGaN 4y ago
        Less than 24 hours ago: Canada vs Croatia: https://ibb.co/7nfdhFg https://ibb.co/7nfdhFg
  - danskeren 4y ago
    According to China Insights' latest video then they attempted to blur the audience outside the live broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFA_c9PjBEI?t=1038 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFA_c9PjBEI?t=1038. The video has been age-restricted so if you don't have an account then can see it here: https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=zFA_c9PjBEI https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=zFA_c9PjBEI at timestamp 17:18.
c120 4y ago
Anyone know any link to CCTV live urls so we could check for outselves the next game?
35amxn35 4y ago
Lol @ anyone thinking this is about a virus/vaccines at all. This is the perfect excuse to control social movement, dissent and to ensure their population is so afraid and broken that they can't possibly amass a sufficiently large mass to put the CCP in danger. Essentially, the objective is to guarantee the current govt and Xi Jinping is here to stay. I'm positively suprised at the current protests. Considering what they're risking, it means that they are extremely fed up.
KoftaBob 4y ago
It seems the simplest and most likely explanation is that they're using "Covid Zero" restrictions as an excuse to control the movement of citizens, which they want to do in order to suppress protests related to economic downturn, real estate market troubles, etc.

261 points by haunter 4y ago

thendrill 4y ago

Why?

MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
Seeing unmasked masses in the stadiums at Quatar may have contributed to recent riots in China against the zero-covid restrictions, putting into question the official narrative of the chinese government of "protecting its people against a deadly threat". Also people burned to death in an apartment complex with the doors welded shut due to lockdown.
albertopv 4y ago
Chinese people would see no one with masks, so they could question their government policy.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  While I’ve no doubt of the post’s veracity, your comment isn’t accurate. Mask wearing isn’t common in a lot of China specifically because of their zero covid policy. Either there’s no positive tests in your area so there’s no reason to wear masks, or there are positive tests and everyone’s locked inside their homes. It varies though. I watch a lot of Chinese city walking videos and for example in Beijing lots of people (inexplicably given the above) wear masks, whereas in smaller cities like Guiyang almost nobody is.
  - bananapear 4y ago
    Might not be 100% accurate but the BBC are reporting that it is due to the lack of mask wearing
    - aperson_hello 4y ago
      I suspect it's lazy reporting on the BBC's part. Mask-wearing has been the trigger point for so long in the west that's it's the default explanation. Whereas in China, the trigger point is still assembly (which is where the west was 2 years ago). What Chinese leadership knows is that masks are nigh-on worthless for Omicron (I've seen numbers as low as 30% efficacy for N95 and basically no efficacy for cloth and surgical vs omicron) and that the only way to control it (without high prior infection rates and/or better vaccines - neither of which they have) is physical separation. Another issue is that Omicron isn't actually much less severe than previous strains on its own - it's just that in most areas there are effective vaccines and basically everyone has gotten covid before, so it's effectively less severe. But at the same time, it's way more transmissible than previous variants (like ~10x so). So China's put itself in a bad situation. If it lets loose, Covid goes wild and their healthcare system is crushed because there's basically no immunity against the world's most transmissible virus. Everyone will get it pretty much at the exact same time and 10-20m people will die with little to no healthcare within the span of a month or so. Or they keep locking down in perpetuity until something changes (they get a better vaccine? they do a controlled burn? the virus gets a lot weaker? revolution?).
      - DaedPsyker 4y ago
        Why would they be cutting the up-close footage of people in the crowds not wearing masks if it was just about assembly? You can still see that crowds are not being spaced out from normal angles of the match, they would still know that restrictions aren't in place for those abroad.
  - brnt 4y ago
    I can only offer conjecture, but: maybe stadium visits are different from daily outdoors life, in the eyes of China's government? Also in some countries in Europe such events are still an exception to the generally no-mask-required policies.
  - albertopv 4y ago
    Maybe it's about public crowds, the point is chinese people could question their government policies. It's all about power, nothing else.
simple-thoughts 4y ago
CCP maintains legitimacy by performing better than the international community at governance. CCP can’t use international vaccines as it would make their claims of technical superiority appear false. CCP can’t try “living with the virus” policies as their subjects believe the outside world is in chaos due to those policies. World Cup shows the truth, that the barbarians are having fun and living life due to better policies and vaccines.
- _vbnz 4y ago
  It's bizarre they're still pushing zero-covid so much, even without vaccines, Covid is dangerous but it's not apocalyptic.
  - 9991 4y ago
    Dangerous to the population isn’t the question. Is it dangerous to the government, or rather the government’s image?
  - xwolfi 4y ago
    There are two forces colliding here in China. On one hand people are absolutely fed up with barriers everywhere, nose tests, mandatory masks and being locked down at home. On the other hand, 3 years of constant propaganda made them utterly terrified of Covid: if restriction stop tmr, they will crash the economy by doing nothing at all anymore for fear of getting the virus. It s easy for you to say it s not apocalyptic when people all around you got it and survived, it s harder when your whole country is filled with cops in hazmat suit spraying every square centimeter with smelly chemicals...
    - zpeti 4y ago
      As they say, you reap what you sow (the CCP, must be terrible for a chinese citizen).
    - luckylion 4y ago
      I'm in Germany, and even here there are still significant amounts of people who are overly terrified. I've always thought that we (and China even more so) need some public reason for "it's over now". I had hoped vaccines would do that ("yes, it was terrifying, but we have vaccines now, it's safe, you can come back out"), but that wasn't super successful (+ all the people who are now afraid of the vaccines, sigh). It should work in China though, shouldn't it? Having a large announcement how the great Chinese scientists have discovered the anti-covid-thingy that you just take for 7 days after you've been vaccinated and it makes it much less dangerous etc etc. It allows the government to change their policy without admitting errors ("we no longer need to be zero covid now that we have this new invention") and it also gives people an out that keeps their worldview (that was formed by propaganda) intact but transitions them back to something more normal. Like in a war when some behaviors got enforced and normalized ("no lights in the dark, the bombers will see it") that become unnecessary once the war is over.

notlukesky 4y ago

If true this would not be a surprise as overlays of sports events is quite common now: https://p11.tv/digital-overlay-advertising-at-real-madrid-home-matches-with-img-and-project11/ https://p11.tv/digital-overlay-advertising-at-real-madrid-ho... The best one of sports overlays is from The Running Man: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093894/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093894/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc8kTma-36c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc8kTma-36c

Tchakra 4y ago

Or it could be that Chinese audiences & tastes aren't so big on watching cheering crowds. I am rather sceptical of this being evidence of censorship. Maybe, I could be swayed if it can be shown this is a clear break from tradition of showing crowds that started since the recent protests in china.

easytiger 4y ago
- Tchakra 4y ago
  Not sure any part of my comment history suggest shill or CCP support but ... i guess on this one I am clearly off kilter from consensus.
  - matkoniecz 4y ago
    > I am rather sceptical of this being evidence of censorship. CCP is clearly employing censorship on vast scale, this is not disputable at all. Have you maybe meant "I am rather sceptical of this being evidence of censorship in this specific case."?
- dang 4y ago
  Posting like this will get you banned here, no matter how right you are or feel you are. You unfortunately have a long history of breaking the site guidelines. We've warned you many times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29153719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29153719 (Nov 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24812992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24812992 (Oct 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24681670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24681670 (Oct 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23523404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23523404 (June 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21132128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21132128 (Oct 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20445657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20445657 (July 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12821183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12821183 (Oct 2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11433610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11433610 (April 2016) Moreover, you're still doing it—I took a quick look through your recent history and saw several posts that were breaking the site guidelines. If you keep this up, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to do that, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on? Posts like this are seriously not ok on this site.

Geee 4y ago

It would show that people in other countries are allowed to gather in sports events. There are currently large protests going on against covid measures, and for freedom in general. This account reports these events from China: https://twitter.com/vivianwubeijing/status/1596948531918430208 https://twitter.com/vivianwubeijing/status/15969485319184302...

thinkingemote 4y ago
do we know what the Party line is about this? Do they, for example, blame western propaganda, involvement etc?
- Fragoel2 4y ago
  A whole lot of covid outbreaks in China have been blamed on "contaminated goods" coming from abroad
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
    Full circle to 2020 when people were avoiding boxes from China like the plague.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      > like the plague This is the closest to the literal use of this phrase we've had in over a century.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  We don't really know much at all. Comment from CNBC: "It was not immediately clear whether the protests reached a meaningful scale in a country of 1.4 billion people, or whether a wide demographic participated" I've seen pro government social media commentators say that the second half of the Foxconn worker statement was not reported by western media, but I won't pretend I know one way or the other. Given that just yesterday a Japanese person tried to lecture me about how snorkels might have been banned in swimming pools because someone probably died and that they are probably dangerous, I'd say east Asians anxiety level is different from ours. EDIT: funny to see people to get so upset. But anyone who has spent Covid in east Asia knows that they have had an extremely different approach to the Europeans all over the board and that in a lot of countries over there people are still deeply fearful of Covid. And while Taiwan has been bashing China's approach they still wear their masks everywhere and still have a somewhat lax but existent quarantine procedure. You cannot have a serious conversation about a topic based on the information provided solely from one side no matter how much you distrust the other.

Markoff 4y ago

I find much more interesting how Twitter is now flooded with accounts which are suddenly posting NSFW escort tweets containing Chinese city names in Chinese characters and one account is able to post 3000 tweets in 24 hours to flood search results with nonsense. https://twitter.com/dong_mengyu/status/1596749168462401536 https://twitter.com/dong_mengyu/status/1596749168462401536

perihelions 4y ago
That's a state-sponsored attack. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/27/twitter-china-spam-protests/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/27/twitter...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Attack? The Chinese communist government is merely exercising their freedom of speech. /s
kibwen 4y ago
No surprise, the new CEO fired the team responsible for detecting and taking down bot accounts. Previously these teams were taking down 500,000 bot accounts every day, which suggests that Twitter might be accumulating 3.5M bot accounts every week.
- sidibe 4y ago
  I'm sure something of the sort would have happened without him. But he's not the type to do anything in response to this or confront CCP with the regular praise he heaps on them. He even said Taiwan should be part of China like HK.
- wikfwikf 4y ago
  That seems like an over-estimate. Presumably if you stop taking bots down, they do not re-appear as fast?
  - 4y ago

bananapear 4y ago

What is the CCP’s exit strategy? Could they feasibly claim to have eradicated covid?

substation13 4y ago
I see two options: 1. Figure out a working vaccine of their own (or maybe just license and rebrand a western one) 2. Become increasingly authoritarian - like a high-tech North Korea
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  China already has several highly effective vaccines. The problem is that a significant fraction of elderly people don't want to get vaccinated. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore had the exact same problem with vaccine hesitancy among the elderly. It's a cultural thing.
  - yreg 4y ago
    Then the option would be to make the vaccination mandatory. CCP doesn't like to do unpopular things, but the lockdowns are not popular either.
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      China also requires everyone to have an app which gives you a color coded status based on the results of COVID tests taken by you and by those in your family and neighborhood, which defines what activities you’re allowed to engage in and what areas you’re allowed to access. Basing that off vaccination status would be far more palatable and would be far less disruptive.
      - yreg 4y ago
        Vaccination offers good protection against death / serious illness, but isn't that great against catching the virus and being able to infect someone else. Their motivation is to prevent an outbreak. (Which is perhaps impossible long term).

hanoz 4y ago

What is going on with China's continuing zero-covid policy? Either it's the most expensive face saving exercise the world has ever seen, or they know something about it that we don't.

yreg 4y ago
The problem is that once they lift it up / fail to contain an outbreak, it will be a devastating one since their population isn't immunized.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  I'm stumped they didn't consider buying other vaccines. Maybe they don't want to be reliant on the west. They're indeed doing a mistake keep the lock strategy...
  - Sakos 4y ago
    I think it's a combination of not enough Western production, no possibility of acquiring a local production license like India and the hit to their public image if they admit their vaccine isn't good enough. The current largest producer of mRNA vaccines is India, AFAIK, and most of that goes to India and the EU.
  - GameOfFrowns 4y ago
    You'd think that with China's cavalier attitude towards intellectual property and trade secrets they would just copy one of the more effective mRNA vaccines and distribute it under the current Sinovax label.
    - chii 4y ago
      i do wonder how easy/hard it really is to reverse engineer a vaccine - and if it went wrong, some heads will roll. It's not like software piracy, where a perfect copy could be made.
      - 4y ago

Sol- 4y ago

A common story you hear is that Chinese vaccines are less effective and that they also do not want to rely on Western vaccines in turn. What I don't quite understand is why they couldn't just create some joint venture with a Western pharma company and then supply a rebranded version of the mRNA vaccines to their population. I would think they have the propaganda tools at hand to make such a move palatable even to the more nationalist citizenry? Surely this would be preferable to the costly shutdowns. Probably I'm also unaware of the constraints the Chinese leadership is operating under. I tend to think they have the power to make anything happen with their unlimited propaganda and censorship tools, but perhaps that is not the case and selling a foreign vaccine domestically is harder than I thought.

jihadjihad 4y ago
I came across a recommendation for The Economist's podcast The Prince here on HN, and can say it's a great primer on the modern calculus of Chinese leadership.
gnfargbl 4y ago
> What I don't quite understand is why they couldn't just create some joint venture with a Western pharma company and then supply a rebranded version of the mRNA vaccines to their population. I get the impression that Western companies have become a bit wary of those "joint ventures," following incidents like the ARM / Softbank / ARM China saga. Moderna specifically refused to share their mRNA IP with China: https://archive.ph/hxWuT https://archive.ph/hxWuT
TwoFerMaggie 4y ago
> What I don't quite understand is why they couldn't just create some joint venture with a Western pharma company and then supply a rebranded version of the mRNA vaccines to their population At the start of all this, around 2020, there was a media campaign against mRNA vaccine in China's propaganda, mostly emphasizing its side effects. It fit the nationalistic narrative that "our covid response is superior". The fear mongering worked and now many people are afraid of the side effects of the mRNA vaccine. Not quite easy to walk that back now.

singlewind 4y ago

There were multiple protests happened last week to memory people burnt to death because the inappropriate lock down of building. People release anger against the inhuman lock down policy. The definitely need hide as much evidence as possible.

DriftRegion 4y ago

Yeah. When people in mainland China saw all the unmasked foreigners at The World Cup it spawned a lot of ideation. I'll summarize the ideas I've seen floating around the Chinese internet: - It's a money-making scam by the COVID test manufacturers - It's a money-making scam by the temporary quarantine center manufacturers - It's a failure of bureaucracy ”层层加码” - It's a ploy to increase the depth of state surveillance - It's a ploy to lock people at home and increase the birth rate - It's a ploy to keep the poor poor to ensure that they keep working hard - It's to mitigate war with the United States. Apparently the Geneva convention has a clause against going to war with a nation stricken by a pandemic.

DriftRegion 4y ago
Here's a recent commentary from a WeChat group (translated via deepl): > The current situation is that Western water forces, through insidious and poisonous means such as the Internet, have created a very dangerous atmosphere of public opinion and incited the people to rebellion. If we are deceived and held hostage by these rumors, what China will end up with will only be a disaster. We have to believe that the country, more than anyone else, wants an early end to the epidemic, and more than anyone else, wants an early end to this costly and socially expensive epidemic prevention activity, so that society can return to normal and the economy can recover as soon as possible. We believe that the Party and the government will be able to lead the people of China to work together to overcome the epidemic! China will win! [fist][fist][fist] > 当前形势是西方水军通过网络等阴险毒辣的方式，已经营造了一个非常危险的舆论氛围，煽动民众叛乱，如果我们被这些流言所蒙骗和裹挟，最后中国迎来的只会是灾难。我们要相信，国家比任何人都希望疫情早日结束，也比任何人都希望早日结束这种耗资巨大、社会成本巨大的防疫活动，让社会恢复正常，经济早日复苏。相信党和政府，定能领导全国人民，同心协力，战胜疫情！中国必胜！[拳头][拳头][拳头]
- throwoutway 4y ago
  “Wants an early end”? That must be propaganda because it should be obvious to a lay person that it started in late 2019. China government has been trying for 3 years to “have an early end”
  - yreg 4y ago
    Wait until you read to "We believe that the Party and the government will be able to lead the people of China to work together to overcome the epidemic! China will win! [fist][fist][fist]".

WiSaGaN 4y ago

This is such a ridiculous claim and also extremely easy to debunk if you have any friends in China they will show you immediately this is false. Yet not a single one comment mentions it. Goes to show the level of discourse happen in the west about anything china related.

spoiler 4y ago
There are multiple examples from different Tweet authors confirming that crowds aren't being shown. Can you post anything (other than unfunded claims) to refute these? Edit: my comment can come of as aggressive, but I'm genuinely curious, didn't mean to attack you
- WiSaGaN 4y ago
  I just went back to the first full match broadcasted by CCTV, and made screenshots just for you: https://ibb.co/2MJrnWk https://ibb.co/2MJrnWk https://ibb.co/c3Zcq3S https://ibb.co/c3Zcq3S Initially they claim all fans are blurred. Now they claim close-ups are not shown. I am pretty sure that they will claim it's specific matches that don't have close-ups later.
  - simongray 4y ago
    I wonder why you picked the first match as proof...? The first few matches were broadcast uncensored which caused a ruckus on Weibo leading to the current state of censorship. That's how the story goes, at least. Can you make similar screenshots of the latest match?
    - WiSaGaN 4y ago
      Less than 24 hours ago: Canada vs Croatia: https://ibb.co/7nfdhFg https://ibb.co/7nfdhFg
- danskeren 4y ago
  According to China Insights' latest video then they attempted to blur the audience outside the live broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFA_c9PjBEI?t=1038 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFA_c9PjBEI?t=1038. The video has been age-restricted so if you don't have an account then can see it here: https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=zFA_c9PjBEI https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=zFA_c9PjBEI at timestamp 17:18.

c120 4y ago

Anyone know any link to CCTV live urls so we could check for outselves the next game?

35amxn35 4y ago

Lol @ anyone thinking this is about a virus/vaccines at all. This is the perfect excuse to control social movement, dissent and to ensure their population is so afraid and broken that they can't possibly amass a sufficiently large mass to put the CCP in danger. Essentially, the objective is to guarantee the current govt and Xi Jinping is here to stay. I'm positively suprised at the current protests. Considering what they're risking, it means that they are extremely fed up.

KoftaBob 4y ago

It seems the simplest and most likely explanation is that they're using "Covid Zero" restrictions as an excuse to control the movement of citizens, which they want to do in order to suppress protests related to economic downturn, real estate market troubles, etc.