No more images of spectators in Qatar on Chinese television?
Faced with a 2022 World Cup, without health restrictions (wearing a mask not compulsory, no safety distance, etc.), China is offended.
The country's television has even decided to censor all images of people without masks in the stands, after the broadcast of the matches angered viewers, exasperated by the anti-Covid restrictions, still in place in the country.
China is the last major economy to continue the practice of zero-Covid, with brutal confinements of neighborhoods or entire cities, long quarantines and massive testing campaigns.
These restrictions are increasingly poorly accepted by Chinese and expatriates, and numerous demonstrations have taken place in recent days, particularly in Beijing and Shanghai.
No censorship on Chinese TikTok
To avoid showing Chinese viewers the stadiums full of fans without masks, the CCTV sports channel systematically replaced, in the broadcast of the Japan-Costa Rica match, each image showing people too close by images of the players. or the stadium, or images of crowds taken from far enough away to make it impossible to distinguish faces.
In contrast, the uncensored replay was available on the internet, including on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
This is amazing.
Due to the backlash from Chinese fans seeing unmasked crowds in Qatar, Chinese TV is now replacing live crowds shots during games and instead cutting to close-ups of players and coaches.
pic.twitter.com/vg0qozUawc
— Mark Dreyer (@DreyerChina) November 27, 2022
Tens of millions of people in major cities including Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing were in some form of lockdown as of Sunday.
An open letter questioning China's anti-Covid policy has been buzzing in recent days on the very popular WeChat messenger, before being censored by the authorities.
Inside, we found in particular a sentence in the direction of the World Cup, wondering if China was indeed “on the same planet” as Qatar.
Not obviously.
