Shanghai reports high value despite lockdown
In the Chinese metropolis, the authorities cannot get the virus under control. It is now also spreading in Beijing. A deleted video also caused resentment in China.
A man carries an oxygen cylinder through the streets of Shanghai.
Photo: Keystone
Despite all the strict measures, the number of corona deaths in Shanghai is increasing rapidly: On Sunday, the authorities in the economic metropolis reported 39 new deaths, significantly more than the previous record number of twelve deaths the day before. In Beijing, too, the authorities there are now alarmed about the growing number of infections.
Shanghai has been largely sealed off since the beginning of April, and most of the approximately 25 million residents are hardly allowed to leave their homes. The administration hardly succeeds in cushioning the consequences for those trapped: the city has trouble supplying its residents with fresh food or having them receive medical care because the health services are primarily needed for corona tests and treatments. The annoyance of those affected is growing rapidly.
Video calls censors on the plan
A six-minute video in the Chinese online networks about the effects of the ongoing corona lockdown on Shanghai residents called the Chinese censorship into action at the weekend. However, the censors had trouble deleting the video because internet users kept uploading it to different cloud servers.
In the video, simple black-and-white aerial photographs of deserted Shanghai are initially accompanied by press releases in which the authorities assured at the beginning of the Corona outbreak in March that they rejected a lockdown in the metropolis because of the economic effects.
Audio recordings follow of complaints from a man whose ailing father is not being treated in a hospital, from a woman who is not allowed to return home after chemotherapy in the hospital or from a mother asking her neighbors for antipyretics for her baby in the middle of the night begs
When the video actually disappeared from all online platforms in China on Saturday afternoon, many Internet users reacted with incomprehension and outrage. «The video only shows bare facts. There is nothing provocative,” criticized one of them. “The content is not new – but the fact that even that is being censored worries me,” wrote another.
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