China is censoring comments by the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday after he publicly criticized the zero COVID policy advocated by communist leaders.
If restrictions linked to COVID-19 are lifted all over the world, the Asian country, struggling with an epidemic outbreak, continues to impose confinements and quarantines as soon as a few cases appear.
Coupled with the near-closure of borders and reduced international air connectivity, this policy is causing growing exasperation in China.
In particular in Shanghai (East), whose 25 million inhabitants, confined since the beginning of April, complain of supply problems and fear of being sent to quarantine centers with random comfort.
In this context, the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, considered on Tuesday, in remarks unusually critical of China, that the zero Covid policy was “not sustainable”.
“Switching to a different strategy is very important,” he stressed.
With zero COVID strongly championed by the most senior communist leaders, including President Xi Jinping, censors quickly stepped in to counter the spread of such remarks.
On the Weibo microblogging site, the hashtags #Tedros and #OMS no longer yield any results on Wednesday.
As for users of the ultra-popular social network WeChat, they cannot republish or transfer an article from the official UN account, published on the platform and which mentions the WHO boss’s criticisms.
Discussing the subject online with one of his contacts or sending screenshots of articles or tweets mentioning these remarks on his WeChat wall remains possible.
“I humbly ask: will our government listen to the recommendations of the Director General of the WHO?” writes a Weibo user.
For its part, the Chinese press remains silent.
The former editor-in-chief of the nationalist tabloid Global Times, Hu Xijin, very influential on the internet, however considers the criticisms of the WHO “unimportant”.
“If they say the Chinese method is not sustainable, they should come up with one that is more effective and sustainable. But they don’t give any!” he writes to his 24 million followers on Weibo.
“WHO will not take any responsibility if China relaxes (its health policy) and a lot of people die.”
Abandoning zero Covid could lead to 1.6 million deaths in the country, according to a study by researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai, published in the journal “Nature” on Tuesday.