“Some attend World Cup matches in person and without a mask, others have been confined to their homes for a month, on site for two months, without being able to set foot outside,” writes a Guangdong resident on the social network. Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
“Who stole my life? I will not comment,” he adds, amid grumbling at the Chinese regime’s relentless approach to limiting the spread of Covid cases.
China, where Covid was detected at the end of 2019, is the last major economy in the world still trying to stem the spread of the coronavirus, by confining cities or entire neighborhoods and imposing screening tests on millions of people.
However, the number of daily cases reached 29,157 on Wednesday, which is low compared to other countries but close to the national record set in April.
As of Tuesday, more than a quarter of the Chinese population had been placed in some form of confinement on Tuesday, according to analysts at the Nomura Institute, which contrasts with the crowds at the World Cup.
“The World Cup allows most Chinese people to see the reality abroad, to worry regarding the motherland’s economy and their own youth,” wrote another Weibo user from Shaanxi province. .
An open letter asking if China is “on the same planet” as Qatar was posted on the WeChat messaging app on Tuesday, before being censored and removed from the platform.
World Cup matches are broadcast in China on the state network CCTV, the same one that bombards Chinese people with negative information regarding the chaos and the many deaths caused by Covid in the United States.
“Nigeria’s anti-epidemic policy has clear results…why don’t we learn from Nigeria and just look at US data,” the open letter questioned.
Public anger over these restrictions has recently resulted in rare protests.
On Wednesday, violent protests erupted around the world’s largest iPhone factory, owned by Taiwanese subcontractor Foxconn.
Workers got into altercations with people in white full body suits and riot police over Covid restrictions.
