"Two protesters told Reuters that callers identifying themselves as #Beijing police officers asked them to report to a police station on Tuesday with written accounts of their activities on Sunday night." #chinaprotestcbc.ca/news/world/chi…
A student also said they were asked by their college if they had been in an area where a protest happened and to provide a written account.
"We are all desperately deleting our chat history," said another person who witnessed the Beijing protest and declined to be identified.
"In Hangzhou, the capital of the eastern Zhejiang province, videos on social media that Reuters could not independently verify showed hundreds of police occupying a large square on Monday night, preventing people from congregating."
"One video showed police, surrounded by a small crowd of people holding smartphones, making an arrest while others tried to pull back the person being detained.
Hangzhou police did not immediately comment."
"In Shanghai and Beijing, police were patrolling areas where some groups on the Telegram messaging service had suggested people gather again. The police presence on Monday night ensured no gatherings took place."
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Big scoop from @lizalinwsj: "#China’s internet watchdog instructed tech companies to expand censorship of protests and moved to curb access to virtual private networks this week." wsj.com/articles/china…
"The Cyberspace Administration of China issued guidance to companies on Tuesday, including Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese owner of short video apps TikTok and Douyin, ...
... asking them to add more staff to internet censorship teams, according to people familiar with the matter."
My latest for @dw_hotspotasia: Authorities in cities across #China are using sophisticated surveillance methods to dampen anti-lockdown demonstrations, according to lawyers and protesters. dw.com/en/china-fight…
Several sources told DW that police in large cities like Shanghai have been randomly checking people's phones on the street or on subways. Police have demanded people provide personal information and immediately remove apps like Telegram, Twitter, or Instagram.
Others have said they were called by police and had their phones searched by authorities.
"Police warned me not to use Telegram and asked me to stop sharing information about the pandemic through the software," says one protester surnamed Lin.
From @WSJ: "Twitter is banned in #China, but it is proving a critical platform for getting videos and images of protests occurring across the nation out to the rest of the world." wsj.com/articles/twitt…
One Twitter user who lives outside China and goes by the name of Li Laoshi, @whyyoutouzhele said he has been receiving more than a dozen messages per second with protest material at some points since public unrest erupted—the same number he used to get a day—...
... so that he could repost them publicly. “My daily routine is: wake up, post online, and feed my cat,” he said.
Voices from #China by @guardiannews: “In China, it’s near impossible [to be unified] because social divides are too great. People want different things. [However], they all want accountability.” theguardian.com/world/2022/nov…
“I think we are not suffering the most so there have not been large protests. Here the lockdowns have been shorter and inflation is lower. [The situation] is unimaginable in some other parts of China.”
“I think the zero-Covid policy cannot go on no matter how heavily [the government] tread upon us. It’s bound to fail sooner or later. The economy is crumbling. People want to live. I think [these protests] may fizzle out but then there will be something else.”
“With that recent experience fresh in mind, NATO foreign ministers at a meeting in Bucharest have engaged in their most concerted effort yet to grapple with the #China challenge, despite their preoccupation with the war in #Ukraine.” nytimes.com/2022/11/30/wor…
@SecBlinken said Wednesday that NATO had agreed to take further concrete steps to address the growing strategic challenge from China, including trying to coordinate export controls on technology and security reviews of Chinese investments.
The secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said that the discussions had a special focus on how to reduce “our dependencies on other authoritarian regimes, not least China, for our supply chains, technology or infrastructure.”
“US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that #China's "repressive" crackdown on protests over Covid lockdowns showed "weakness" by the communist leadership.” ndtv.com/india-news/ant…
"In any country where we see that happening and then we see the government take massive repressive action to stop it, that's not a sign of strength, that's a sign of weakness," said Blinken, who was in Romania for NATO meetings.
Blinken said that China's zero-Covid policy, the initial trigger for the protests, was "not something that we would do," adding the United States has focused instead on vaccines, testing and treatment.