Shanghai, 7 Apr 2022 (AFP) – A video of a dog killed during the confinement against covid, songs against the government and clashes with the authorities, are some of the ways that the inhabitants of Shanghai use to take out their anger on social networks. against the coronavirus.
China – committed to its “covid zero” strategy – has seen low death rates since the start of the pandemic, but this has involved border closures, endless quarantines and massive testing.
But with the spread of the omicron variant, Shanghai has just passed 20,000 cases of covid-19 a day.
And the confinement, initially announced as a progressive and localized measure, seems to last forever, while the rest of the world learns to live with the virus.
Many of Shanghai’s 25 million people seem tired of the ruling Communist Party’s speeches, venting on social media about food shortages, restrictions and excesses of care.
In a video, verified by AFP, an employee dressed in a protective suit can be seen beating a dog to death in the middle of the street.
A local media outlet reported on Thursday that the neighborhood association confessed to having disposed of the animal for “fear of infection”, admitting that it was a “thoughtless” act.
The video spread across social media despite strict internet censorship.
– Controlling the Desire for Freedom – In another dystopian-looking viral video, a drone flies over a housing complex at night, broadcasting a message urging residents to “control the desire for freedom of (your) spirit”.
The images, which have not been verified, are presented as a reaction by neighborhood authorities to insults hurled at them by residents from their balconies.
Other viral videos, the location of which has been verified by AFP, show residents struggling with uniformed officers, while others walk through a barricade on a street shouting “we want cheap vegetables”.
The set of these images constitutes a rare public expression of popular revolt and a challenge to the government’s discourse on its strategy to control the pandemic.
But according to Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University in London, the regime is unlikely to change its strategy as it uses its health “win” to legitimize its authority over the country.
“‘Covid zero’ is not just the Party’s policy, it’s (President) Xi Jinping’s policy,” he says.
Official figures show that the vast majority of the more than 100,000 cases reported in Shanghai in recent weeks are asymptomatic.
However, tens of thousands of beds have been set up in quarantine centers to isolate infected people.
Authorities did not relax their rule of separating coronavirus-positive children from their healthy parents until after the release of videos showing rooms full of isolated children.
These images provoked widespread outrage.
For experts, what is happening in Shanghai and the reactions on social media highlight the puzzle at the heart of central government policy.
“In terms of finding a balance between the need to protect health and the need to protect socioeconomic stability, I’m not sure that’s the right approach,” says Yanzhong Huang, a health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, with headquartered in the United States.
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