Chinese censors on Monday removed a social media post that listed more than 150 people who reportedly died in Shanghai due to the coronavirus lockdown, not from the virus itself, but from other medical conditions for which they were unable to obtain treatment or because they committed suicide.
Communist Party agents reportedly removed the Shanghai death list from Chinese social media, but a San Francisco-based blockchain-protected cloud collaboration service called air table kept a copy out of your reach. The censors had to settle for blocking Chinese searches for the URL of the Airtable copy.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) described the prohibited documentation:
“They did not die of COVID-19, but because of it,” read the introduction to the list on the collaboration platform Airtable, which uses blockchain technology. “They should not be ignored or forgotten.”
The site showed “incomplete figures” of more than 152 people whose deaths were believed to be directly related to the CCP’s zero-COVID policy and the strict lockdowns that have dragged on in Shanghai for weeks.
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Among dozens of others, the list names Qian Wenxiong, a former Hongkou district maternal and child health center official, as the one who committed suicide; Zhou Shengni, a nurse at Dongfang Hospital, who died of an asthma attack; Wei Guiguo, vice president of Netcom Securities, for having died of a brain hemorrhage; and “Captain Zhao,” a security guard at the Changning Hongkang Phase III residential community, for having died from overwork.
Several of the reported suicides on the list involved people jumping to their deaths from Shanghai’s many tall buildings, a phenomenon that has been noted by foreign media. discussed but the Chinese government has assiduously covered it up.
RFA also reported that a Shanghai-based rapper named Fang Lue was pressured to remove a video for his lockdown song, titled “New Slave.”
The song went viral in defiance of a Chinese communist blanket ban on hip-hop music and a more recent rising wave of censorship targeting any reference to locked-up captives as “slaves,” an imperative that even prompted the Chinese government to censor its own national anthem.
“When freedom of thought and will is imprisoned by power… when people who are not sick are locked up at home and treated as if they are sick, but those who are really sick cannot enter a hospital… it sucks; the stench of rotten souls fills the air,” Fang Lue rapped.
Paper offerings used in funerals are placed on the sidewalk near a funeral home in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district on March 17, 2022. On March 16, a funeral industry representative told local media that the The city’s high death toll due to Covid-19 had seen a crisis in the city’s coffin supply, with only 300 remaining and expected to be gone by the weekend. (ISAAC LAWRENCE/AFP via Getty Images)
“I was told that there have been some reposts and appropriations of my song on other social platforms, along with messages that are far from what I wanted, so I removed my public New Slave video on YouTube,” he said, a lot. less challenging, by deleting the video of her.
RFA noted that censorship in Shanghai has become so oppressive that mischievous protesters are getting to the point by brandishing banners adorned with censorship notices rather than protest slogans.
Some brave souls still make references online to Shanghai’s banned dead list, denounce false government propaganda and criticize “zero-Covid” lockdown policies.
Police are cracking down on critics as subversives, as in the case of the internationally praised human rights activist. Liu Feiyuwho spent five years in prison in the 2010s for criticizing the oppression of dissidents, and is now being questioned by Shanghai police for allegedly undermining the zero covid policy.
Residents wearing protective gear and their belongings board a bus during a COVID-19 coronavirus lockdown in Shanghai’s Jing’an district on April 19, 2022. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty)
Fortune on Tuesday they quoted analysts as predicting the wave of coronavirus lockdowns in China would expand further, despite growing outrage in Shanghai, and the impact on global shipping and finance could be even worse than the lockdowns of 2020. , especially if a backlog of stalled orders cripples global supply chains. after the lockdowns are lifted.
“The supply chain situation in Shanghai continues to worsen. The port is running out of capacity for some types of cargo as importers are unable to pick up their goods. Since the outbreak in Guangzhou also caused closures there, the impact on export volumes outside of China will be greater,” CEO Lars Jensen of shipping consultancy Vespucci Maritime warned on Friday.