China Covid Protesters Become Targets of Beijing’s Surveillance State | Hacker News Reader

China Covid Protesters Become Targets of Beijing’s Surveillance State

wsj.com

6 pointsbryan07 comments

The COVID protests happening in China have already happened all over the West and they're far from over. It's interesting to note how the MSM acted in one case vs how it's acting now.

Protests in the west are relatively common and considered part of civic duty. Protests in China are a much different matter!

You have West's Covid protests and there's China Covid protests. Yet, somehow, they get treated completely different by MSM. Covid protests in Canada, Australia, Germany etc were brutally repressed by the regime and painted accordingly in the regime's press.

I am genuinely curious about your point of view. Of course there are some similarities, but clearly there are many striking differences between the protests in China vs "the west". From the US the biggest differences I notice are:

1. In the US: Lockdowns were very controversial, and public protest were considered an appropriate civic response to challenge the government. In China this appears to be very different. Complaining about the govt. via protests is illegal and you could go to prison for an extended time even for peaceful actions.

2. Protests are freely documented in the press and on social media. In China images of protests are censored. And people who spread information on such protests can again face serious consequences from the state.

3. In the US lockdown was largely voluntary. Worst case might be fines for businesses that defied them. In China people are physically locked in their homes and forced to PCR test. Even complaining about this be considered illegal.

So yes while there are some similarities, there are also incredible differences from my point of view.

I'm talking about how the media presented the Covid protests in the West vs how they are presenting the Covid protests in China. Even the sentiment here on HN was perfectly aligned with the MSM, but that's not a surprise anymore: "Western anti-lockdown protesters are fascists and conspiracy theorists; Chinese anti-lockdown protesters, on the other hand, are ordinary people who are just fighting the power".

The hypocrisy and double standards of the media and politicians baffles me. Even on HN there seems to be a short span of memory, like better we forget what was said and done in that period.

Ok thanks for the clarification, I think I understand your point now. Lockdown protesters in the west were often portrayed by more liberal media as anti-science, while that same media portrays Chinese protesters as brave freedom fighters.

From a high-level this point makes sense, but I don’t think you can compare them too closely because of dramatic differences I mentioned above.

What's happening in China in regards to Covid lockdowns and restrictions seems to be on a whole other level even by taking into consideration that we don't start at the same level on a liberty and freedom scale. To me it's a mystery how they still put up with that nonsense and we're almost in 2023. Either their society is completely fragmented and divided, the grip of the Chinese government is so much tighter than I've imagined, or a very large majority has no issue with the current state of things.

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