Chinese television, when broadcasting World Cup games, no longer features maskless spectators in its images, after these images caused outrage among citizens tired of the restrictions against Covid-19.
China is the last major world economy that continues to apply a tough strategy against the coronavirus, called “zero covid”, which involves confinement of entire neighborhoods and cities, quarantine periods and mass testing.
The Chinese are less and less accepting of these measures, and there have been several protests in recent days.
To prevent Chinese viewers from seeing the public in stadiums without masks, the sports channel CCTV systematically replaced, in the retransmission of the match between Japan and Costa Rica, the images in which people sitting very close to each other appeared, with pictures of players or photos from the public made far enough away that the faces could not be distinguished, according to the AFP.
On the internet, however, it is possible to see the transmission without censorship, even on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Tens of millions of residents in major cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing are under some form of lockdown.
In recent days, an open letter was widely shared on the WeChat messaging network that questioned whether China is “on the same planet” as Qatar and criticized the Chinese government’s health policy. A letter that, however, ended up being censored by the authorities.
This Sunday (27), hundreds of people demonstrated, mainly in Beijing and Shanghai, against the policy to combat Covid-19.
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