The Communist regime in China has faced two pandemics since the end of 2019 – the outbreak of Covid and simmering labour unrest. Expectedly, it subdued the coverage of both, with brute force and authoritative censorship. No media, mainstream or social, was allowed to independently carry news about the country’s Covid situation or workers going on strike. Pieces of information yet leaked and were picked up by leading news outlets or individuals that put them in the public domain. This analysis is based on such reports, that otherwise are not visible in China and the cyberspace controlled by its cyber army.
COVID OUTBREAK
The new COVID-19 wave that hit China in the end of 2022 saw suspension or closure of the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s policies on the pandemic outbreak. It was in addition to hundreds other draconian measures that the Chinese regime employed to curb the information flow in cyber space. The ruling Communist Party largely relied on the medical community to justify its tough lockdowns, quarantine measures and mass testing, almost all of which it abruptly abandoned later, leading to a surge in new cases. No private flow of information on rampant cases was allowed. Subsequently, no exact record, except that promulgated by the Xi Jinping regime, is available. It is despite that some countries have refused to allow travelers from China for lack of proper medical records and the World Health Organization has expressed serious concerns on the lack of data on Covid infections and casualties in China.
New Cases
Official claim: By the end of January, the National Health Commission, the official name of the Health Ministry of China, reported 10,681 new domestic cases, bringing the country’s total number of confirmed cases to 482,057. Three new deaths were also reported over the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 5,267.
Independent findings: In contrast to Chinese Communist Party-run institutions, international health monitors have lifted the curtains on CPC cover-up.
(Source: Our World in Data)
(Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/)
The numbers put forth by the Chinese regime are a fraction of those announced by the US, which has put its death toll at more than 1 million among some 101 million cases.
Restrictions on Giving Correct Picture of the China Pandemic
The once-cacophonous media and social media in China are now dominated by pro-government voices that report to the authorities on people whose views they deem insufficiently nationalistic. In the name of protecting public health, a number of health experts and government critics have been silenced.
Between January 2020 and June 2021, the Twitter account Speech Freedom CN recorded at least 663 arrests for Covid-19-related speech. The trend, without veracity of exact numbers, has continued without a pause till early March 2023.
In March, retired professor Chen Zhaozhi was put on trial on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for posting on social media, “The Wuhan pneumonia is not a Chinese virus, but Chinese Communist Party virus.”
Professor Zhaozhi remains behind bars till date, despite his health deteriorating due to hypertension, Alzheimer’s, and a heart stroke.
His Twitter page also remains unattended since his arrest, and despite widespread support for his Covid commentary and courage, the Chinese authorities have been unfazed.
The popular Sina Weibo social media platform said it had addressed 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, scholars and medical workers, and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts till end of January alone.
(Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-08/china-suspends-social-media-accounts-of-covid-policy-critics/101835328)
In August 2022, a Beijing court sentenced activists Chen Mei and Cai Wei to 15 months in prison after convicting them of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” They both were arrested for posting “critical” comments on China’s Covid management.
Source: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/22/silenced-china-archivists)
Wei and Mei were founders of group Terminus 2049, a crowd-sourced project started in April 2018, that sought to archive materials censored on Chinese media outlets and social media platforms.
They are now being held in Beijing’s Chaoyang Detention Center.
At the same time, citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was imprisoned and she became seriously ill following a hunger strike. Her letter from prison was carried by Demoratic World portal on January 5, 2023.
(Link: https://www.dw.com/en/china-zhang-zhans-prison-letter-offers-hope-and-fear/a-64291913)
Link to Zhan’s YoutTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhsJ-K4cUwQ
A verified Twitter user zeynep tufekci @zeynep and a self-acclaimed critic of Chinese regime wrote about some more detained activists and journalists in November 2021, but her tweet has been removed, following a complaint from Chinese administration.
Vaccination failure and more arrests
In 2021, authorities launched a nationwide vaccination campaign. The Chinese government insisted that the scheme has been voluntary, but many activists complained online about local authorities’ abusive tactics to drive up vaccination rates. In some cases, the police have been alleged to physically restrain people to forcibly inoculate them; in others, authorities announced that they would suspend government benefits for anyone who refused vaccination or conditioned school enrolment on the vaccination of the student’s entire family. Vaccine safety activist He Fangmei, taken into custody by Henan authorities in October 2020, remains forcibly disappeared till the writing of this report.
Interestingly, the current Covid wave in China has reportedly been because of failed containment drives like vaccination.
Overall Picture
Authorities harassed, detained, or prosecuted numerous people for their online posts and private chat messages critical of the government, bringing trumped-up charges of “spreading rumors,” “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” and “insulting the country’s leaders.” A 2021 Wall Street Journal report found that 58 Chinese users were punished with prison sentences between six months and four years since 2017 for their posts on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — all platforms banned in China. The crackdown continues unabated in 2023.
LABOUR UNREST
China, ruled by the Communist Party, is supposed to be a home to all types of labour rights movements. However, contrary to the principles of the ruling party, there has been a widespread violation of labour rights and instead of addressing issues of labourers, the Chinese regime has resorted to suppressing labour strikes and any move to highlight them through media or social media.
A tweet made by a pro-China Twitter handle Zerohedge @zerohedge on March 1 reads like this: Rare earth miners in China fall Thursday as Tesla said it plans to abandon the use of the minerals in its next-generation “magnet” motor due to the health and environmental risks that come with mining: BBG
The handle also has its website zerohedge.com.
The tweet from the handle was viewed by a whopping 99.9K viewers and it was re-tweeted 76 times.
Wildcat Strikes
For years, China’s Constitution guaranteed the right to strike; Deng Xiaoping removed it in 1982, worried that workers would disrupt a growth model that depended on low wages for cheap exports. Since no strikes in China are legally recognized, the illegal variety — wildcat strikes — proliferate. “Wildcat strikes are more costly than regulated strikes,” says Eli Friedman, chair of international and comparative labour studies at Cornell University. “They exact more damage on the employer, and also on the workers, who can’t have a strike fund.”
(Source: https://www.ft.com/content/7567761b-4fcd-4c03-8ccd-a8f97efe50ff)
(A map of recent wildcat strike in various parts of China, Source: China Labour Bulletin. Link: https://maps.clb.org.hk/?i18n_language=en_US&map=1&startDate=2022-09&endDate=2023-03&eventId=&keyword=&addressId=&parentAddressId=&address=&parentAddress=&industry=&parentIndustry=&industryName=)
Issues at Heart of Wildcat Strikes:
Most of the striking workers in China and detained activists have been on maternity leave, medical care, and pensions that lie at the root of the low fertility, patchy healthcare, and old-age poverty that the Communist Party is trying to tackle.
(Source: An analysis by Yuan Yang, former Beijing correspondent of Financial Times, on February (https://www.ft.com/content/7567761b-4fcd-4c03-8ccd-a8f97efe50ff)
It is estimated that there is currently at least one strike involving 1,000 workers every day in the Pearl River Delta alone.
Strikes by Foxconn workers
Continuous strikes by workers at Foxconn iPhone plant has rocked China’s Xi Jinping regime since he ascended to the helm in 2012. Some recent strikes that turned violent and were recorded by individuals were released on social. Some news agencies like Reuters picked up such videos and carried stories.
(https://www.reuters.com/technology/foxconns-zhengzhou-plant-hit-by-fresh-worker-unrest-social-media-livestreams-2022-11-23/)
The same Chinese factory faced massive protests over workers’ mistreatment in first week of February this year.
@chinalabourwatch
Li Qiang, a labor rights activist who runs China Labor Watch (@@chinalaborwatch) records changes taking place in China’s labour landscape. He also runs a website of the same name. Since its establishment in 2000, China Labor Watch has conducted over five hundred of factory investigations in response to complaints from workers. However, the platform has been prevented from publishing its report and its Twitter account has faced regular disruptions.
Censorship and coercive action from the Communist regime nevertheless, the Labor Watch has been able to help thousands of workers get justice by constantly highlighting their plight.
According to its latest findings, the scale of industrial disputes in China has risen to a mammoth height in recent years.
Industrial Disputes
Year No of Disputes
1993 10,000
2008 280,000
2009 317,000
2022 Data Unavailable
Some links highlighting labour unrest and strict Chinese action to prevent reporting them as follows:
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/122005/Sep10_%20Labour_Unrest.pdf
