Zero-Covid policy is criticized in China

• Guangzhou became the center of a widespread Covid outbreak.
• This is leading to necessitating yet another round of lockdown measures.
• Some people criticize the policy of zero-covid.

Online abuse of the government is so frequent in many nations that no one ever blinks an eye. The severely regulated internet in China makes it more difficult.

That doesn’t seem to have stopped Guangzhou residents from venting their annoyance after their city—a 19 million-person powerhouse of global manufacturing—became the center of a widespread Covid outbreak, necessitating yet another round of lockdown measures.

On Monday, a resident wrote on Weibo, China’s restricted version of Twitter, “We had to lock down in April, and then again in November,” before peppering the post with coarse language that included references to officials’ mothers. “Do you really think my rent doesn’t cost money when the government hasn’t provided any subsidies?”

Some people criticized authorities of “spouting rubbish,” but with less polite language, while others left remarks with instructions that roughly translate to “go to hell.”

Such vibrant posts are noteworthy not only because they reflect growing public resentment toward China’s relentless zero-Covid policy, which uses immediate lockdowns, extensive contact tracing, mass testing, and quarantines to eradicate infections as soon as they appear, but also because they are still visible.

The government’s army of censors would often quickly remove such scathing criticisms of government policy, yet these posts have been left up for days. And the reason for that is probably that they are written in a language that few censors would fully comprehend.

These postings are in Cantonese, a language used by tens of millions of people throughout Southern China and one that has its roots in the province of Guangdong, which is located close to Guangzhou. Mandarin speakers may find it challenging to understand, especially when reading it written down. Mandarin is China’s official language and the one the government prefers.

And it appears that this is merely the most recent instance of Chinese citizens using Cantonese—an irreverent language with plenty of room for satire—to voice their discontent with their government unnoticed by the all-seeing censors.

Anti-government protesters frequently used Cantonese wordplay in adjacent Hong Kong in 2019 for both protest chants and to protect themselves from potential surveillance by mainland Chinese authorities.

Cantonese now seems to be giving individuals dissatisfied with China’s rigorous zero-Covid restrictions a channel for more subdued protests.

The Chinese government’s declining tolerance for public criticism, according to Jean-François Dupré, an assistant professor of political science at Université TÉLUQ who has studied the language politics of Hong Kong, has forced its critics to “innovate” in their communication.

Dupré said, “It does seem that dissenters could evade online censorship, at least for some time, by using non-Mandarin forms of communication.

This phenomenon “testifies to the regime’s lack of faith and growing paranoia, as well as the citizens’ continuing eagerness to resist despite the risks and difficulties.”

Fading to silence

The central government has aggressively pushed for Mandarin to be used nationwide in education and daily life, such as in television broadcasts and other media, frequently at the expense of regional languages and dialects, so using Cantonese to criticize the government may seem especially appropriate to some.

In 2010, government officials’ suggestions to increase Mandarin programming on the primarily Cantonese Guangzhou Television channel sparked outrage among locals, who participated in unusually large-scale street protests and physical altercations with police.

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