Masked police officers and a health professional stand at a screening checkpoint on a highway toll ... [+] station on the outskirts of Shanghai, China, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

Chinas government is now ramping up efforts to punish locals for spreading rumors and harshly criticizing the government about the fast spreading coronavirus.

As death tolls rise and new cases level-off due to a new way of counting infected persons, Chinese leadership is now working overtime on two fronts: fighting the Wuhan virus outbreak on one; convincing people to that the economy is nearing all- system-go.

Beijing decided this week to clamp down on virus rumors being spread via social media and messaging apps like WeChat, the South China Morning Post reported this evening in Hong Kong.

According to the daily, a set of guidelines was issued on Monday by Chinas judicial and law enforcement agencies where they named 10 categories of new criminal charges to brought against people deemed jeopardizing disease control, undermining social stability by spreading fear about the disease, and criticizing the Communist Partys handling of the novel coronavirus, officially named Covid-19 by the World Health Organization on Tuesday.

Parents and relatives of Pakistani students studying in Wuhan protest to demand their government ... [+] evacuate family members from China. Scenes like this has the WHO worried people will become anti-China. (Photo by AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images)

Senior officials from the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Justice said the measures were needed to cope with the crisis.

Some 1,117 people have died, mostly all of them in the Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak. China has confirmed over 45,000 cases.

China: Investors Ignoring The Noise

For the past two weeks, investors were waiting for the virus to surpass the SARS death toll of 775. Once breached, people wanted to see the number of new cases falling before declaring a bottom. That breach occurred over the weekend, but the number of new cases keeps rising, with no end in sight. The base case scenario sees a decline in new cases at some point between February 14 and the end of March.

This week, authorities in China said they would only list a new case if the person was proven to be infected with the virus rather than having checked in for displaying symptoms.

Markets in China have been boosted by the central bank over the last five days, and by news that companies were back to business in provinces other than Hubei.

President Xi Jinping has since been seen donning a surgical mask in Beijing, warning that the virus was very serious and advising everyone to remain vigilant. There are quarantine orders and travel restrictions still in place nationwide.

Xisaid today that progress was being made in bringingthe outbreakunder control and that the focus now should be on returning to work.

Getting the economic engines firing again is imperative. Although information out of China is not easy to come by, there is a sense that people there have been afraid about sharing their concerns on social media. Now that risk is real, with criminal implications for doing so if too critical of the government.

WeChat users will have to get more creative. Or just stop talking about it altogether. Those who cheer the success of the government are likely to be viewed skeptically now that Beijing has essentially put a gag order on covid-19.

For the market, those who believe Chinas coronavirus numbers are the same as those who trust Chinas GDP numbers. Those who dont trust Chinas GDP numbers, dont trust the coronavirus numbers either.

China investors are obviously in the trust camp and have been there all week. Once again, China is beating the S&P 500.

Over the last five days, the Xtrackers China A-Shares ETF (green) has outperformed the MSCI China ... [+] and the S&P 500 (blue) despite an ever-increasing death toll caused by Covid-19.

Storm Not Over

Hong Kong surpassed Singapore on Wednesday as the No. 2 hot spot for the virus off mainland China. Borders with the mainland have been sealed. Singapore also banned flights from China.

Covid-19 is a still being called a virus of unknown origin. The general consensus is that it came from bats and infected humans either through a bat bite, or via human consumption. Another idea is that the virus escaped a research lab in Wuhan. China has been silent on its origins, and is now silencing any chit-chat about it on mainland social media.

If the outbreak is not contained, Beijings clamp-down on allowing people to discuss it beyond the parameters of the official view could further test the patience of the Chinese. Such a situation would risk putting Chinas otherwise stable social structure into unchartered territory.

Combatting this virus means everything to Beijing, and this could be another reason why the market is willing to stay invested despite daily forecasts for lower growth in China.

Virologists are still trying to find a way to combat the disease. To do so, they need to know more about its origin.

On Wednesday, New Scientist magazine reported that the virus came from bats.

From the virology evidence available to date, the virus is almost certainly from a species of bat, says Andrew Cunningham of the Zoological Society of London.

On Wednesday, Chinas Ministry of Finance announced it would allow local governments to sell $122 of new debt issuance to raise money from the market, instead of the government. China bond prices have been in decline all week, suggesting either a risk-on move with bonds selling in favor of equities, or fears that the outbreak is going to hurt numerous companies more than the government is letting on.

Says Brendan Ahern, CIO of KraneShares, a China ETF fund in New York, We are not out of the coronavirus storm yet.

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China Ramps Up Censorship On Coronavirus As Critics Risk Criminal Charges - Forbes

In its 23 years of service, Netflix has removed only nine pieces of content due to government censorship.

In a new report titledEnvironmental Social Governance, the streaming giant revealed that over the years it has received takedown requests from the governments of New Zealand, Vietnam, Germany, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia. The first ever takedown notice came from New Zealand in 2015, but Singapore is by far the most active.

[Read: How to opt out of Netflixs autoplay previews]

Here are the nine titles Netflix removed over the years:

For what its worth, Netflix aims to make as much content as possible available on its platform, but it says itll ultimately comply with removal notices if a country has forbidden the distribution of certain titles.

This is the first time Netflix has revealed the list of titles that have been removed following government pressure, but the company intends to continue disclosing such information in the future. Beginning next year, we will report these takedowns annually, the company writes in the report.

via Axios

Read next: Every c-suite leader needs to be a Chief Empathy Officer

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Here are the 9 titles Netflix purged due to government censorship - The Next Web

Last Thursday, with the coronavirus death toll hurtling past 500 and no sign of new infections slowing down, Mr. Yan decided he wanted to share his anger at the governments botched response to the outbreak.

So the 36-year-old data scientist, who lives in Washington, D.C., posted links to a series of articles critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping to a WeChat group with about 22 other people.

At first, everything appeared to be normal, but then Yan realized that his friends in China were not seeing any of his posts. Only the two other U.S.-based group members and one in the Philippines had seen what he posted.

I have never received any notice from WeChat about being blocked. And thus there is no way for me to appeal. I have sent messages to WeChat Help but there hasn't been any responses, said Yan, who is a green card holder living in the U.S. Technically, they did not cover my mouth but covered my friends and relatives' ears when I speak.

Yans case is not isolated. VICE News spoke to dozens of WeChat users in the U.S. and Canada, as well as some users in the U.K., France, Spain, Australia, Germany, and Malaysia, who reported identical problems with their accounts as they tried to share information with their family and friends in China.

The restrictions prevent international users from sending information to contacts in China, and in some cases they have also had their accounts suspended or blocked completely and accused of spreading malicious rumors. In many cases, the censorship means their only communication link to people inside China has been cut off completely.

For decades China has sought to strictly control what people can say and see online by tightly regulating any company that operates in China. But as Chinese companies have gone global, so has Chinas ability to censor communications outside of the mainland.

READ: China arrested a whistleblower who shot viral video of coronavirus corpses in Wuhan

WeChat is a unit of Tencent, one of Chinas largest tech companies, which also happens to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Now users in the U.S. are calling for Congress to intervene.

I came to the U.S. for freedom. I thought I escaped from the threat of the Communist Party. But I'm wrong.

Tencent is the evil helper of a totalitarian government that suppresses freedom of speech and democracy, one WeChat user who lives in Philadelphia and wanted to remain anonymous due to fears of retribution, told VICE News. They delete or block your posts if they think it promotes democracy and challenges the government. It violates my civil rights as a U.S. citizen. I came to the U.S. for freedom. I thought I escaped from the threat of the Communist Party. But I'm wrong, I still live in terror because Tencent is monitoring my WeChat and may report me to the Chinese authorities.

Tencent did not respond to specific questions about its censorship of international users, but sent an emailed statement saying it was committed to providing a secure and open platform for all its users.

While we continue to adhere to this commitment, communications on these platforms are subject to the relevant laws and regulations that apply to the respective platforms on which such communications are being carried out, the statement said.

As a Chinese company, Tencent is obligated to comply with strict government regulations on what content is allowed to be published on its platform, and it invests heavily in both automated systems for content filtering and human curation. That includes undercover community leaders who monitor group chats and report any questionable behavior.

While users in China are used to this type of monitoring, U.S. residents are unaccustomed to having their communication subject to Chinese censorship.

READ: The Chinese doctor who tried to warn the world about coronavirus has died

But thats exactly whats happening according to WeChat users VICE News spoke in North Carolina, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Houston, Pennsylvania, Atlanta, and Indiana, as well as many in Canadian cities like Toronto and Ottawa.

As a U.S. citizen, in the land of freedom, I am still under communist control, a WeChat user who called herself Xianzi and who lives in Edison, New Jersey, said.

All those who spoke to VICE News told similar stories of having their accounts silently restricted without any notification. It is likely many other people have had similar restrictions put in place, but have yet to notice it.

The problem with non-transparent/silent censorship is that you never know your messages are censored unless you check with the receivers, which is something that we as users do not usually do, Lotus Ruan, a researcher on internet censorship with the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, told VICE News.

Tencent operates two versions of its app. The Chinese version (known as Weixin) offers a much greater variety of features everything from calling a cab to applying for a divorce than the international version, which is comparable to WhatsApp.

In China WeChat has close to a billion users who spend an estimated one-third of all their time online using the app. Because practically everyone in the country uses it, it is one of the only ways that Chinese people around the world can keep in contact with their family and friends back home.

Chinese people heavily depend on WeChat, not only for day-to-day chatting, but often for business and reaching out to clients and so on, as well as payments and other financial tools. Losing WeChat is often just unacceptable for many people, and the Chinese government knows that, a Chinese national currently working for Google in California who called himself Benjamin and who recently had his WeChat account suspended, told VICE News.

VICE News has reviewed multiple screenshots showing how messages posted outside of China did not appear for members of a group inside Chinas all-powerful internet censorship apparatus, known as the Great Firewall yet there was no indication or notification that such filtering was taking place.

READ: China Is erasing tributes to coronavirus whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang

But the restrictions are not uniform. Some people report that they can continue to post content in one-on-one chats with Chinese users over WeChat, while others say that feature is also now blocked.

Others report they can send links and pictures, but not messages. More have had their accounts suspended for periods of between one and 30 days. Some groups have been blocked entirely, with warning messages telling them they have been reported for violating WeChats policies.

My family also lives in terror and beg me not to say anything that's challenging or criticizing the Chinese government.

In one case, two account holders who shared a message sent from VICE News to groups they were members of had their group chat feature disabled.

Tencent censors content based on a mysterious collection of keywords, Ruan said, but points out that during times of heightened tensions, the censors widen their restrictions.

Our past research shows that WeChat censors not only content deemed critical to the government but also a wide range of content during critical times, probably as a way to play safe and avoid official reprimands, Ruan said. The platforms sometimes censor even neutral references to official ideologies and government policies. In practice, it means that even if users are genuinely discussing or commending government policies, their messages can still get censored.

The lack of transparency has left many WeChat users confused and frustrated, especially as they worry that their actions may put their families in danger.

My family also lives in terror and beg me not to say anything that's challenging or criticizing the Chinese government, one U.S.-based user told VICE News on the condition of anonymity over fears their family in China would be targeted. Their worries are valid because I know the Communist Party can do anything they want and I will get myself or my relatives in trouble.

Cover: A spectator wears a mouthguard and holds her smartphone in her hand at a table tennis tournament in Germany. (Photo: Swen Pfrtner/picture alliance via Getty Images)

See the article here:

Heres How China Is Silencing Coronavirus Critics in the U.S. - VICE

Social media company Parler has slammed Twitters decision to suspend Project Veritas founder James OKeefe, saying that the move amounts to political censorship and election interference.

Twitter suspendedOKeefes account last month shortly after Project Veritas released undercover footage showing Bernie Sanders staffers praising Stalins gulags and promising that cities will burn if President Donald Trump is re-elected.

Parler CEO John Matze said in a statement to Breitbart News that Twitters decision represents an attack on investigative journalism.

Investigative journalism requires information to be released that would not normally make it to the public eye. This is a form of transparency. By going out of your way to stonewall transparency you are killing real journalism and when you only do it to protect politicians with your favored ideology, it looks biased and it is political censorship. This is election interference, he said.

Additionally I would like to stress that people need to make a stand against social publications and join Parler because this election interference by Twitter is going to get much worse before it gets better and Parler is the only answer.

Parler launched in 2018 as a competitor to Twitter and has attracted conservatives concerned about censorship from Silicon Valley giants.

Twitter has claimed that it lockedOKeefes account because of privacy violations after OKeefe posted a publicly available FEC paystub of the Sanders staffer who praised violence and gulags.

OKeefe told Breitbart News earlier this month that the information we published was a screenshot from a U.S Government website, certainly not private. But even if it was private, the information did meet the threshold of overriding public interest.

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Parler: Twitter Suspending James OKeefe Is Political Censorship and Election Interference - Breitbart

The coronavirus is the greatest crisis to have faced President Xi Jinping since he took power in 2012.

Since the outbreak began in the central city of Wuhan last December, it has killed 565 people and infected more than 28,200. All but two of the deaths were in mainland China. It has forced the government to lock down cities with a population exceeding 60 million and is likely to cut GDP growth this year by at least 0.5 percentage points.

Who is responsible for this catastrophe? Beijing cannot blame it on the United States and the hostile foreign forces it holds responsible for eight months of protest in Hong Kong and helping Tsai Ying-wen to win a second presidential term in Taiwan. No the guilty parties are within China.A bitter war is being waged on the Chinese internet over this issue.

Many believe the government is guilty of a cover-up after the first patient in Wuhan experienced the symptoms of the disease on December 1. On the social platform Douban, many people have written reviews of the television series Chernobyl, about the Soviet nuclear disaster in April 1986. The Soviet government delayed news of the catastrophe and did not report faithfully what had happened. In any era, any country, its the same. Cover everything up, wrote one blogger. That is socialism.

On December 30, Li Wenliang (pictured), a Wuhan doctor, informed fellow doctors in an online chat group that seven patients from a local seafood market had been diagnosed with a SARS-like illness and were quarantined in his hospital. Contaminated animals in the market are the most likely source of the virus.

Li and seven other doctors were visited by city police; they accused them of rumour-mongering and warned them not to discuss the disease in public. Li himself was tested positive for the virus on February 1 and died in the early hours of February 7.

His death caused an outpouring of grief and anger on social media. Wuhan government owes Dr Li Wenliang an apology, said one. We want freedom of speech, said another. Tens of thousands read the comments before the censors deleted them.

If any of us here is fortunate enough to speak up for the public in the future, please make sure you remember tonights anger, said another comment.

Lis death is the most tragic result of a cover-up. On January 2, hospitals in Wuhan accepted 27 patients who had direct exposure to the seafood market. By January 18, the number of infected patients in Wuhan had risen to 62; that day the city government arranged a public banquet with 40,000 families making and sharing food. By then doctors had told the city government that the virus could be spread from human to human.

But it was only on January 22 that the city was quarantined and severe measures put in place. In the weeks before, five million people had left Wuhan to travel all over China and around the world. It is they who have carried the disease across the globe.

Chinese are asking why it took seven weeks from the first case to the public announcement and imposition of drastic measures. The answer is Chinas highly centralised reporting system. The Wuhan government is likely to have reported details of the disease to Beijing; but it could not announce anything or take strong measures without approval.

Was it only Xi himself who could make such a major decision? Did the Prime Minister and Minister of Health have to wait for him?

Many of the bloggers direct their anger at Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang and Hubei governor Wang Xiaodong. During an interview that Zhou gave to state television, one commentor wrote in a live stream: Stop talking. We just want to know when you will resign.

To avoid the censors, bloggers must be ingenious. Some refer to Xi Jinping as Trump. Others describe the police and police stations with characters that are incorrect but have the same sound as the correct ones. This works because most of the censoring is done by computers, which cannot detect wordplay.

In the early days of the crisis, control of the Internet was eased, allowing criticism of the local government. Then this week President Xi said that the government needed to step up propaganda and strengthen online media control to maintain social stability. Many WeChat accounts have been shut down. State news media runs positive stories about how China is defeating the virus and about health workers in the front line.

This epidemic is devastating and figures at the very top of government are implicated in the appalling response. The Chernobyl catastrophe was so horrific that it helped to speed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The question now is what the consequences will be for the Chinese government of this terrible, growing crisis that it has handled so incompetently.

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Censorship, lies and death: China's government under fire - TheArticle

On February 3, the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, unexpectedly cancelled its convocation ceremony that was scheduled to be held on February 7.

This sparked speculation that the institute had cancelled the ceremony under pressure from the Modi government because it had invited dancer and performer Mallika Sarabhai as the chief guest. Sarabhai has remained a vociferous critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi since his tenure as chief minister of Gujarat.

In an interview with Scroll.in, Sarabhai said the institute did not offer any explanation for the cancellation. She said she knew how much pressure institutes were under. But she saw a silver lining in the ongoing protests against the Citizenship Act in India: Suddenly, hundreds and thousands of people otherwise silent who never thought of themselves as activists, who never thought of themselves as defenders of the nation are out there. That is a huge silver lining.

The 65-year-old dancer continues to run Darpana Academy of Performing Arts in Ahmedabad that was set up in 1949 by her parents Mrinalini Sarabhai, a classical dancer and Vikram Sarabhai, a scientist who initiated space research in India.

Excerpts from the interview:

How long ago did NID invite you as their guest and when did they inform you that the event was cancelled?They invited me three or four months ago. On Monday [February 3], I got the same letter as everyone else [informing them that the convocation was cancelled].

Did the institute give an explanation as to why the event was cancelled?No.

How do you view the institutes decision on cancelling the convocation because of unforeseen circumstances?I know how much pressure institutions are under. It is on the board to take a decision on whether they want to give in to that pressure or not. We also know what happens to people who do not give into pressure. I might have taken a different decision had I been the chairI dont know.

It is also not an individual thing, right? There are so many things that one needs toI am not condoning or approving, I am just saying that it is a difficult time.

What had you planned to speak about in your address to students at the convocation?I am actually contemplating making public what I was going to say in the next few hours. I was going to talk about how the world has gone wrong because human beings think we are the centre of the universe, and the universe and everything on it is for our good and for our greed. That has got us to the state we are in where the world is falling apart and animal species are being destroyed and languages are being destroyed and diversity is disappearing.

If there is one thing that is the soul of India, it is our diversityit is our culture that means 900 languages, 3,000 ways of weaving, 500 ways of placing embroidery, colours, the fact that dal is not the same from one village to the nextthat is the only thing that makes us unique.

I think we have gone wrong when we are trying to catch up with what we think are our superiors because we have an inferiority complex. For instance, if you look at traditional building technologies, every school is teaching how to build with cement and concrete when we know that cement and concrete uses so much water in the making of it and then falls apart in two to three years. And if you go into traditional building then you have forts that lasted 500 years.

Why is it that when we have answers to the kind of crisis we are in just now, why is it that we are still copying people we think are our superiors. And this kind of muscular patriarchy and capitalism is what is wrong. I want students to be actually able to change their worldview from this lackey of the West to what we should really celebrate is where we can lead the world.

The terms have to be ours because we have things that should be shared with the world. We have the recycling culture and tradition that the world needs to follow and not that we need to follow the world. And that the diminishing of difference into only one thing that is right is killing the very essence of India.

Are you aware of the mock convocation that NID students held?Yes, absolutely. I wish they called me. I would have loved to have gone...that is the spirit.

How far back does your familys association with the institute go?It goes back to its birth, to its very idea. My aunt and uncle Gira and Gautam Sarabhai were the ones who brought in [American designers] Charles and Ray Eames and founded it.

I have worked on and off with NID. We have had a lot of students coming and working at Darpana, studying dance, studying mudras, doing projects. I have been on their governing council.

You have been an active voice of dissent in the protests against the amended Citizenship Act and proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens in Gujarat. How do you view the current political situation regarding the ongoing protests?For the first time in many years, I feel such a glimmer of hope that the young people are really taking on what is of absolute essential value to India, which is non-violent protest. More and more people are coming into this without a single leaderthe women that have come out of it. For me, working in womens empowerment, I think that this is amazing and thank god for breaking the silence and finally finding your own speech and your voices and the sisterhood.

Our Constitution and our flag have become genuine symbols of our good rather than something that you stand up and salute every few months.

What role do you think women have played during these protests?Very primary. They are at the absolute centre. It is something that we are seeing for the first time. I have heard that during the freedom struggle there were a lot of women involved but I do not think women were leading it.

But certainly, in all my years of activism, I have never seen women as the force of the protestsThe sisterhood that has come out is breaking through [the lines of] caste, community and religion, and their men who keep them at home.

At the Jaipur Literature Festival, protestors were detained by police. At the India Art Fair, a Shaheen Bagh-inspired exhibition was disrupted. How do you view such incidents as a performer and dancer?When I first did Sitas Daughters in 1990, I told Sitas story from her perspective, I had right-wing Hindus trying to burn the theatre down in Pune. That was 1990. Two years ago, Professor [Shivaji] Panikkar at MS University [Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda] had to resign and leave the city because of [something like] this.

How do you think cultural spaces have been affected by this?I think that while censorship is on at its fullest and most brutal, the fact that every kind of artist is using the art, poetry, painting, cartooning, songs is amazing. That is the true role of culture.

The bigger the festival, the more they feel scared. It is done to frighten people into silence into not protesting. What is a literature festival if literature is not dissent and debate?

Some observers say that these are the biggest protests since the Emergency in the 1970s...This is the first time. Nirbhaya was one sort of thing, the anti-corruption [movement] was one sort, but this is about the soul of India.

This is about who we are. It is otherwise a very distant concept for those people looking at their rozi roti everyday but suddenly it is not a distant concept.

Suddenly, the Constitution is what makes us us. And suddenly, hundreds and thousands of people otherwise silent who never thought of themselves as activists, who never thought of themselves as defenders of the nation are out there. That is a huge silver lining. And I think it will turn into a silver cloud, not just a lining.

What are you currently working on?I have just done a major tour a few months ago of a new piece that my colleague Yadavan Chandran and I created with a Pakistani British singer Samia Malik and the show is called Colours of Her Heart. It was looking at five individual personal stories of the five performers to try and build a post #MeToo dialogue between men and women, men and men and women and women. And it had tremendous success.

We did 10 cities in America and people from the audience would come and hold our hands and say that they had never spoken about this. There were men who came and said thank you for giving us the opportunity and we have felt so frustrated, so frightened and so guilty because no one gives us a chance to say that there are men who are different, who would like to defend you, and there are men who think that what we are doing is wrong, there are men who think that entitlement is all-pervasive and needs to be changed.

We have finished the building of our theatre which was necessitated by the Riverfront Sabarmati project cutting off our state from the rest of us, a process that took three and a half years. We have created a very beautiful gallery that we have dedicated to my mother and because we were trying to get the theatre up and running we have not had time to do what we wanted to do which is for the first three months create an exhibition celebrating her many facets people do not know at all. That is one thing I am very actively working on.

For years, people have been telling me to write a book about the experiments I have done with health, food, nutrition and exercise because I am constantly asked how I look the way I do. So I am writing. I have never worked on a book before.

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A glimmer of hope: Mallika Sarabhai on the cancelled NID event, CAA protests, censorship and more - Scroll.in