Thread by @WilliamYang120

People in #Shanghai are flooding social media with content documenting the widespread backlash towards the city's strict lockdown. Censors have been unable to keep up. My latest with insights from @tingguowrites, @Dali_Yang and @EricLiu_USA: dw.com/en/coronavirus…

Under China's strict "zero-COVID" policy, most of Shanghai's population of 26 million remains under a strict lockdown, with people depending on government deliveries of food and supplies.

As residents express their discontent with the government, more and more images and videos of Shanghai's lockdown are making it past Chinese censors, depicting the frustration of people who have been confined to their homes for weeks.

Families have been separated after testing positive, and essential medical treatment has been delayed. On Tuesday, around 20% of the city's residents outside of strict quarantine zones were permitted to leave their homes for a brief time.

Videos from last week show neighborhoods filled with the noise of residents protesting by banging pots and pans out their windows, demanding authorities provide more food and supplies, other show men yelling "give me back my freedom."

"What we see online is a very small amount of the information available, and the fact is most people are not speaking out as much as they probably would like to," said @Dali_Yang.

However, Shanghai residents have been devising more ways to share their experiences during the city's lockdown.

A recent montage of audio recordings that went viral called "Voices of April" includes residents' demands for basic necessities, crying babies separated from their parents, and people pleading for hospitals to treat their dying family members.

Despite efforts to remove the six-minute audio montage from the Chinese internet, Chinese netizens and members of the diaspora community found ways to preserve the montage on western social media platforms.

"Since Shanghai has a larger population than other cities, when netizens began to spread 'Voices of April,' the force was unstoppable," said @EricLiu_USA.

"If a place has a higher social media penetration rate, it will also have a larger population online. In smaller places in China, even when something is happening, ...

... relevant information might often be removed before it is shared with the outside world, but in Shanghai, it will be harder to censor sensitive information online immediately," he told DW.

Liu added that the online discontent expressed by Shanghai residents has created a lot of pressure on China's censorship regime.

"If only 200,000 people were expressing their opinions online, the content operators can easily censor those content," he said. "But when there are 25 million people, the censorship regime will be overwhelmed."

Ting Guo a Chinese studies scholar at the University of Toronto, told DW that Shanghai has "all the resources and talents so it didn't come as a surprise to see the kind of expression online."

"The exhibition or demonstration of such creativity isn't unique to Shanghai. Over the years, in other parts of China, not just large cities, we always see a very creative and courageous demonstration of ideas and some other forms of activism," she added.

However, since the lockdown began last month, Shanghai residents have repeatedly expressed astonishment that they are experiencing the kind of harsh lockdown previously imposed on smaller cities in China.

"I thought the situation of starvation due to the lack of food and supplies wouldn't happen in major cities like Shanghai, Beijing, or Guangzhou, but the situation in Shanghai over the last few weeks proves that it is not too different from the rest of China," said ...

a Shanghai resident, who requested anonymity over fear of reprisal.

Dr. Yang said that residents of Shanghai and its surrounding areas usually have a sense of superiority compared to other provinces.

"But in a time of crisis, it's not Shanghai that determines the future of China, but it's the rest of China that determines the future of Shanghai.

There are people who did think at the beginning of the outbreak that maybe Shanghai could try a different path for managing COVID, but that's clearly not the case," he added.

Guo from the University of Toronto, who is also a Shanghai native, says the shock towards what's happening in Shanghai comes from the illusion that the city is exceptional.

"People in Shanghai think they have a higher level of autonomy, without realizing that the relative level of autonomy that Shanghai has enjoyed is also a result of central policy," she said.

"The autonomy could be taken away at any moment. On a normal day, people in Shanghai are sipping coffee in the hipster part of the town, and they might have the illusion that they are in any large city in the world. That exception is always an illusion," she added.