How Chinese media have – and haven’t – covered
widespread protests against zero-Covid
State-run media outlets largely ignore nationwide
protests, but continue to push the importance of Covid restrictions
Jonathan
Yerushalmy
Mon 28 Nov
2022 06.31 GMT
Chinese
media have largely ignored widespread protests across the country, with
prominent state newspaper front pages instead choosing to focus on Taiwan’s
local elections, a Chinese-built solar plant in Qatar and the rising number of
Chinese women choosing to get tanned in beauty salons.
Protests
flared across Chinese cities over the weekend, with calls for political
freedoms and an end to Covid lockdowns.
Some
demonstrators have even demanded the resignation of China’s president, Xi
Jinping, in a wave of civil disobedience that has been unprecedented in
mainland China over the past decade.
However,
none of that was evident on the front pages of some of the country’s most
prominent newspapers, or on broadcast channels on Monday. After a night of
unrest, CCTV spent most of the morning covering the announcement of the planned
launch of the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft to China’s space station on Tuesday. The
English language Global Times’ main headline focused on the weekend’s local
elections in Taiwan, while Shanghai media reported on the latest industrial
revenue figures.
The
country’s efforts to contain Covid were, however, heavily featured across the
news, analysis and editorial pages of the country’s papers.
Promises to
fine-tune the zero-Covid strategy to limit the disruption caused by lockdowns
featured in a number of media outlets on Monday, in what some analysts
interpreted as a subtle nod to the protests. Multiple outlets, including
Communist party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, ran editorials urging
“unswerving adherence” to the zero-Covid policies, which they said was the only
correct path.
A front
page story on the Global Times warned of “an extremely challenging winter” as
the country “fine tunes” its Covid measures.
Acknowledging
some problems in China’s response, the report urged readers to think beyond the
two “polarized yet erroneous tendencies” to infection control: “either a
complete lockdown or a ‘lying flat’, meaning no pandemic precautions at all.”
The
outlook, though, remains gloomy, as the paper reports that, “compared with the
past two years, China is facing a much tougher battle against the virus”. The
authors of the article quote an unnamed expert who warns that authorities may
have to take “excessive measures”.
The
supposed need for these measures is demonstrated in a comment piece published
by news agency Xinhua.
“China has
pulled out all the stops to put the people and their lives above everything
else, managing to keep the death rates and the number of serious cases low,”
the opinion article reads.
“Without
those resolute measures, the consequence could be disastrous for a country with
1.4 billion people, including 267 million aged 60 or above and more than 250
million children.”
In what
could be read as a rare criticism of China’s health system, the article quotes
a pharmaceuticals analyst as saying that a full reopening of China may
“threaten a health system that currently has far fewer ICU beds than those of
other developed countries”.
The
catalyst for this weekend’s public anger was a deadly fire in a building in the
western city of Urumqi last week, which was reported to be under Covid
restrictions.
State
newspaper China Daily reported a statement from a government official that
Covid restrictions weren’t, in fact, related to the fire deaths.
While
acknowledging public anger over the fire, the report quoted an unnamed local
official as claiming without evidence that videos circulating online showing
sealed up doors were filmed elsewhere and “put together with footage of the
accident with ill intention”.
Other state
media also covered the decision to lift some Covid restrictions in Urumqi on
Monday, without mentioning public anger over the fire.
Additional
reporting by Chi Hui Lin
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