What do China, the World Cup and George Orwell have in common? Quite a bit, actually.
If you’re China, how do you avoid drawing attention to the billions of people outside your country who are no longer wearing COVID masks? Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, summed it up best:
Whoever controls the media controls the mind.
With FIFA overseeing the television broadcast of every World Cup match, everyone sees the same images. Except, not in China. Chinese television producers are replacing live footage of fans in World Cup stadiums with close-ups of players and coaches on the pitch.
Why? China does not want its people to realize that the vast majority of the world has overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. Many local regions in the PRC are still on lockdown. Chinese residents have been forced to carry out daily COVID tests and people have had enough. Large street protests have broken out and protesters are calling on politicians to resign.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s strict Covid Zero policy has been a failure with a record number of cases across the country as the virus rages.
The World Cup opens a window to the world for China
China is a soccer crazy nation. For example, 623 million people in China watched 2014 World Cup matches. Despite failing to qualify for World Cup tournaments in 2014 and 2018, there is great interest in watching the 2022 World Cup.
All games are televised. In doing so, that creates a problem for Chinese politicians.
Spectators in China can see hundreds of thousands of people sitting close together in stadiums, without masks.
“There are no separate seats so people can maintain social distance, and there is no one wearing blue and white. [medical] outfit aside,” a Chinese citizen told the BBC. “On one side of the world is the carnival that is the World Cup, on the other are the rules of not visiting public places for five days.”
Chinese state media employs Orwellian tactics
Knowing that the crowd shooting earlier in the World Cup caused some consternation among Chinese politicians, Chinese state media began to censor the coverage.
Here’s a clip showing a side-by-side example of coverage of the game (above) and what viewers in China saw (below):
The last thing the Chinese government needs right now is for citizens to see average people enjoying life and not wearing masks. It undermines the authority of the Chinese government, especially leader Xi.
censorship in the west
Media censorship doesn’t just happen in China.
Anyone who has watched the first 30 minutes of Germany against Japan last week will have noticed something unusual. Despite having more than a dozen touches of the ball, FIFA’s global broadcast prevented viewers from seeing close-ups of German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer.
Why? Presumably, FIFA did not want to draw attention to Neuer, who was going to wear a OneLove bracelet.
Closer to home, FOX Sports has censored its own World Cup coverage from reporting on the off-field controversies happening in Qatar. The fact that Qatar is a multi-billion dollar sponsor of FOX coverage shows that capitalism, as well as communism, also has a way of censoring programming.
final thoughts
George Orwell summed it up best in his classic 1984 book:
“Whoever controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past.”
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the protests that took place in China this weekend were influenced by what Chinese World Cup viewers saw earlier in this tournament?
We will see in the next few days.
Photo credit: IMAGO / NurPhoto
World Cup 2022 Guide
Here are some resources to help you make the most of the biggest event in soccer!
