{"id":50807,"date":"2022-12-02T14:06:26","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T05:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/dec\/02\/china-brings-in-emergency-level-censorship-over-zero-covid-protests"},"modified":"2022-12-02T14:06:26","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T05:06:26","slug":"china-brings-in-emergency-level-censorship-over-zero-covid-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=50807","title":{"rendered":"China brings in \u2018emergency\u2019 level censorship over zero-Covid protests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Crackdown on virtual private networks, which protesters used to access banned non-Chinese news and social media apps<\/p>\n<p>Chinese authorities have initiated the highest \u201cemergency response\u201d level of censorship, according to leaked directives,<strong> <\/strong>including a crackdown on VPNs and other methods of bypassing online censorship after unprecedented protests demonstrated widespread public frustration with the zero-Covid policy.<\/p>\n<p>The crackdown, including the tracking and questioning of protesters, comes alongside the easing of pandemic restrictions in an apparent carrot-and-stick approach to an outpouring of public grievances. During an extraordinary week in China, protests against zero-Covid restrictions included criticism of the authoritarian rule of Xi Jinping \u2013 which was further highlighted by the death of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/nov\/30\/jiang-zemin-former-chinese-president-dies-at-96\">former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/dec\/02\/china-brings-in-emergency-level-censorship-over-zero-covid-protests\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crackdown on virtual private networks, which protesters used to access banned non-Chinese news and social media appsChinese authorities have initiated the highest \u201cemergency response\u201d level of censorship, according to leaked directives, including a cra&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1648,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,662,1066,42,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-communism","category-coronavirus","category-world-news","category-xi-jinping"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1648"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50808,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50807\/revisions\/50808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}