Nuked The Chinese government is tracking down people on social platforms like Twitter and WeChat who share what officials consider to be negative information. The regulation of protest and dissent is not new in China, but people who have shared information about the virus describe relatively tame social media interactions.
The hashtag’I want freedom of speech’ spread on Chinese social media site Weibo in the hours after Li wenliang’s death. The hashtag racked up 2 million posts that were removed by the following day.
A Chinese man vacationing in California told vice that he was trying to share information about the coronavirus with family in Wuhan on WeChat. He says the Chinese government pushed friends in China to ask about his whereabouts in the US. Vice says the crackdowns are starting to focus on individual and sometimes totally benign posts rather than just larger mass movements.
The officials told him his tweet was an attack on the Chinese government. His phone was confiscated, and he was forced to sign a statement saying he would not repeat the so-called threat.
More than 2,600 people have died after contracting the new coronavirus. It’s sickened more than 79,000 people since it was first detected in December. The Chinese government has been criticized for its mishandling of the outbreak.
