Protests Stretch China’s Censorship to Its Limits
Days later, videos of chants and confrontations are still visible on the Chinese internet. It’s a sign of how a groundswell outmatched the world’s best internet control system.
In one video, a man sarcastically sings a patriotic song. In another, a group of protesters hold up blank pieces of paper and chant in unison. In a third clip, a group of mourners light candles around a vigil to those who died in a fire while in lockdown in western China.
Signs of organized dissent are relatively rare in China; so is their survival in the country’s digital space. China’s censorship apparatus — the most sophisticated of its kind in the world — has hunted down and deleted countless posts on social media showing the eruption of protests and anger at the government.