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As Beijing scrambles for a cogent narrative in the wake of the abrupt reversal of its venerable zero-Covid policy, censors in China’s state media are straining and working overtime.
The government’s propaganda machine lauded zero-Covid for years as evidence of the supremacy of the Communist Party’s totalitarian leadership and the intelligence of strong President Xi Jinping.
But now that its normal spokespeople are no longer available, they are spinning the decision to do away with severe travel restrictions, quarantines, and emergency lockdowns as a success even as cases surge.
According to Kecheng Fang, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, “State media has not developed a grand narrative to fully legitimise the rapid and extreme transformation.”
“They got caught off guard.”
The propaganda apparatus may not have received sufficient instructions from the party on how to frame the situation, he told AFP, as seen by the “inconsistent messaging.”
“A gripping battle”
Some media channels have hinted that not everything is OK, with reports this week from the state news agency Xinhua and the state broadcaster CCTV advising consumers to take Covid medications “rationally” and stressing government efforts to ensure supplies.
Government-run media, however, has refrained from covering the departure wave’s darker side in an effort to assuage public concerns about the pathogen’s potency and portray the change in strategy as a reasonable, well-planned, and successful withdrawal.
According to an editorial published last week in the party-run People’s Daily newspaper, “Looking back on the last three years, we have conducted a stirring war against the pandemic and gone through a hard historical test.”
Zero-Covid, according to the report, “demonstrated the superiority of China’s communist system,” and it added that “optimising” the policy now will assist it to adapt to new viral variations while “putting the lives and health of the people and masses first.”
In addition, there has been reluctance to deal with the growing number of Covid cases.
A party-run tabloid claimed an official estimate of 500,000 new cases daily in the eastern city of Qingdao on Friday. According to an AFP check of the piece, the statistic had been removed by Saturday.
Although Xi’s recent flurry of diplomatic meetings has dominated the news, he has not yet made any public remarks regarding the failure of what was once a trademark initiative.
“Severe chill”
Chinese social media, where censors routinely remove politically sensitive content, has been rife with a similar sense of unease.
A review by AFP journalists revealed that by Friday afternoon, several posts on the well-known Weibo site that claimed to chronicle Covid-related deaths appeared to have been deleted.
Several blanked-out images purportedly shot at crematoriums were among them, as was a message from an account purporting to be that of the mother of a two-year-old daughter who passed away after getting the virus.
According to censorship watchdog GreatFire.org, posts about drug shortages and incidents of price gouging were also removed.
Social media users have also expressed their rage or sarcasm in response to the supposed taboo around Covid deaths.
Many criticised a state-affiliated local news source after it said Wu Guanying, the creator of the Olympic mascots for the 2008 Beijing Games, had passed away at the age of 67 from a “severe cold.”
Is it now unlawful to mention “Covid”? one commenter questioned, comparing the phrase to China’s totalitarian neighbour North Korea.
As of Friday afternoon, there were still numerous critical posts online that criticised the administration for what they saw to be its lack of an escape strategy.
“Did they genuinely think lockdowns would eradicate the virus?” one, read.
Three years have passed, and they never created a backup plan in case it became uncontrollable?
The associate professor Fang predicted that Chinese authorities would “finally find a way to portray everything as a win, maybe once the virus situation stabilises.”
In reference to a revised government definition of virus deaths that eliminates many fatalities, he continued, “The unique way of calculating Covid deaths is already providing a basis for that.”
According to statistics from the National Health Commission, there were no new cases of the virus-related deaths in China on Saturday.
Weibo hashtag referring to how the nation classifies Covid deaths (counting only those who pass away from respiratory failure after testing positive) was taken down.
