Chinese football fans have been streamed a censored feed of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar as politicians desperately try to stop images of large, unmasked crowds reaching the local population as protests rage against harsh Covid measures.
FIFA has tightly controlled the vision showed from the World Cup and every nation gets the same feed – except China.
A comparison of footage from the Cup shows that the China Central Television (CCTV) broadcasting company has been intercepting vision from the tournament and doctoring crowd shots by using a 30-second delay.
Vision showing maskless fans has been removed because while most of the world has moved on from pandemic lockdown measures, China still faces harsh restrictions under its Covid Zero policy.
Some regions of the People’s Republic of China are still in lockdown, Chinese residents have been forced to take Covid tests every day, and large street protests have erupted with demonstrators calling for politicians to resign.
The protests have intensified since a fatal fire at a Urumqi unit complex in the western Xinjiang region killed 10 people two days ago. The building was under lockdown despite being classed as low risk for Covid.
Covid Zero, the strict policy enacted by China president Xi Jinping, has been widely criticised with a record number of cases nationwide, as the virus surges.
Civil disobedience has increased across the country, including passive protests and outright opposition to the Communist Party, Jinping and the controversial policy.