Qatar World Cup awakens Chinese to COVID lies

A few days ago, the Qatar World Cup started, and beyond some surprising results, there is a country that attracts a lot of attention, China. Yes, you heard right, China, which, although it does not have its national team participating in the World Cup, this world event is generating a lot of commotion within the Asian giant. Let's see what is bothering Chinese citizens so much. Can you imagine being locked up for weeks, with strict limitations on leaving their homes, and with the obligation to wear masks everywhere? Suddenly they see on television that during one of the most multitudinous events in the world, people move freely and without the need to wear masks. Well, that is what is currently happening in China. While the Chinese Communist Party's CCP continues with its strict restrictions under the zero COVID policy, keeping a quarter of the population behind blockades, citizens began to show their discomfort on social networks when they saw the freedom that exists in Qatar during the football World Cup. The zero COVID policy imposed by the CCP on its citizens is displayed in all its glory. The Financial Times' Ding Liu, chief China economist for financial services firm Nomura said, China is seeing a record level of lockdowns. It's even a bit worse than during the Shanghai lockdown, because so many cities are partially locked down. This extreme situation has already been generating unrest among the Chinese for some time now, but the World Cup in Qatar seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back. And yes, it seems that the CCP did not take into account that promoting the World Cup among its citizens could lead to major internal problems. As AFP noted Wednesday, the same state television has been bombarding its captive viewers with reports that the rest of the world, and particularly the United States, is engulfed in mass deaths and chaos caused by COVID, because China's draconian policies are the only way to control the disease. And many Chinese citizens began to see during the World Cup broadcast that everything the CCP has been reporting is a lie. According to AFP, this generated a flood of complaints on social networks. A resident of Guangdong said on Twitter, some people are watching World Cup matches in person with no masks. Some have been locked at home for a month, others locked on campus for two months, can't even step out the door. A user on the Chinese social network Weibo from Shaanxi province said he was disappointed in his country. The World Cup has allowed most Chinese people to see the real situation abroad and worry about the economy of the motherland and their own youth. It should be noted that the Chinese national soccer team is not participating in the current World Cup having been eliminated. According to The Guardian, the absence of the Chinese soccer team is due to the strict COVID measures implemented by the CCP, which generated a poor performance from the national team in the qualifying rounds where it was knocked out. In this context, and seeing that the people of China are waking up to the lies of state propaganda, how long will the Chinese dictatorship be able to sustain its zero-COVID policy?