Police in China check the cellphones of citizens, inspect whether foreign social media applications (social media) such as Instagram, Twitter, and the encrypted messaging application Telegram are found.
According to reports from The Wall Street Journal and CNBC, police carried out the raid by stopping people at a transportation hub in Shanghai. William Yang, East Asia correspondent for German news agency DW News, reported similar incidents in Beijing and Hangzhou.
Sources in #Shanghai are now telling me that police are now stopping people and checking their phones to see if there are any apps like Telegram, Instagram, and Twitter that have been used a lot to share updates of the protests with the outside world. #China
—William Yang (@WilliamYang120) November 28, 2022
According to reports from TechCrunch and The Washington Post, Chinese netizens access services banned in the country such as Twitter, Telegram, and Instagram through VPN connections.
Quoted from The Verge, the use of foreign social media and instant messaging applications is intended to communicate and organize protests against the zero-COVID (zero-COVID) policy in China.
While most of the world is learning to live with the coronavirus, China is implementing a zero-COVID policy by sticking to strict lockdowns and quarantines, limiting citizens' mobility, and forcing businesses to close if new cases emerge.
The protests against China's zero COVID policy spread rapidly throughout the country and became a major challenge to the central government in Beijing. Security forces were quickly deployed to quell the action.
However, the frustration of the citizens appeared to have been so great that they took to the streets and loudly protested the policy, resulting in the largest mass protests China had experienced in decades. Some of the protesters even loudly demanded President Xi Jinping to step down.