https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/world/asia/china-covid-propaganda.html

[...]

Since Shanghai’s lockdown began, residents there have railed against the harsh measures, which have led to food shortages, delayed medical care, shoddy quarantine conditions and even physical fencing around residents’ homes. Officials have responded with their usual playbook, censoring critical posts, inundating state media with positive stories and blaming foreign forces for fanning false ones. But far from stemming the anger, they have fueled it.

Residents have compiled footage from their daily lives, showing rotting food or shouting matches with local officials, rebutting the authorities’ story of a tidy, cheery outbreak response. They have banded together to repost deleted content with a speed and savvy that for a time overwhelmed censors’ ability to keep up. Even some members of the political and academic elite have suggested that the government’s propaganda about Shanghai is hurting its credibility.

The failure of the typical tools of narrative control speaks in part to Shanghai’s status as a financial capital, home to many internet-savvy elites. But it also underscores the urgent nature of the complaints. These are not the abstract political critiques or one-off news stories that the propaganda machine has grown adept at stifling or spinning. They are born of life-or-death scenarios, with an immediacy not easily excised by censors.

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Nor is the immediacy easily excised by Usenet apologists for the PRC regime, however hard they try...