The World Cup comes at an awkward time for Beijing’s censorship apparatus, amid rare anti-government protests that challenge Chinese President Xi Jinping’s coronavirus policies.
China is battling a major wave of new coronavirus cases, driven in part by highly contagious variants and low rates of natural immunity. In an ongoing effort to stamp out the virus entirely, an approach largely abandoned elsewhere, China continues to close its borders and enforce mask mandates, lockdowns and other increasingly unpopular restrictions.
Chinese officials “are telling people that outside of China people are dying massively, they can’t handle the virus” and “that what we are doing is the only correct way,” Qiang said. So when people see a different reality on display at the World Cup and compare it with their own situation, perhaps under lockdown, it can sow discontent, he said.On Chinese social media, side-by-side footage comparing World Cup coverage has circulated widely, fueling frustration and speculation.
“I literally just spent the past two hours watching parallel feeds of the Brazil-Switzerland game and there were FORTY-TWO times where CCTV avoided showing crowd/fan close-ups,”Neither CCTV nor Chinese officials have spoken publicly about the coverage. CCTV did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Last year, China blocked access to current and archived Boston Celtics games after a player accused the Chinese government with “cultural genocide” in Tibet. The year before, the NBA issued a public apology to China after a Houston Rockets player spoke in favor of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests and Beijing banned streams of the team’s games in response.
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