“China – Communist Slave State”

One at a time, our warders led us into a makeshift infirmary where men in lab coats were waiting. There was no choice.

I was told by one of the superintendents: ‘You must be vaccinated. You’re 50 years old. Your immune system isn’t what it used to be. If you don’t do this, you might get the flu.’

Terrified of reprisals if I didn’t agree, I signed a document giving my permission. One of the men jabbed the vein in my arm. I was so stupid.

As the world gears up for the most political Olympic Games in a generation, the West has struggled to find a common position on the host nation.

The Games begin in Beijing on February 4, with China under fire over human rights abuse accusations, including the repression of the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region and the uncertain situation of tennis star Peng Shuai, who accused a former top Communist Party official of sexual assault.

An army of western social media influencers, each with hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, Instagram or Twitch, is set to spread positive stories about China throughout next month’s Winter Olympics.

Concerned about the international backlash against the Beijing Games amid a wave of diplomatic boycotts, the government has hired western PR professionals to spread an alternative narrative through social media.

China has brought back anal swab testing to screen for Covid-19 in a bid to stop the spread of the Omicron variant, just two weeks before the Beijing Winter Olympics begin.

At least 27 people underwent the controversial anal swab tests at an apartment building in Beijing where a 26-year-old woman had contracted Omicron, the city’s first recorded case of the variant, according to Chinese newspaper The Beijing News.

The anal tests involve inserting a sterile cotton swab up to two inches (5cm) into the rectum and rotating it several times. The swab is then removed before being analysed in a lab.

It’s become a boring habit of Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping and his senior officials to ridicule any effort by the world’s democracies to uphold some modicum of “rules-based” international decorum as evidence of a zero-sum “Cold War” mentality. It’s a propaganda tool that has proved somewhat useful in the work of infantilizing the western “discourse” around China, which is why Beijing employs it so frequently.

An official with China’s Olympics organizing committee has cautioned foreign athletes against speaking out during next month’s Winter Olympics, warning that any behavior that violates Chinese regulations could potentially get them ejected from the Games.

“Any expression that is in line with the Olympic spirit I’m sure will be protected, and anything and any behavior or speeches that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment,” said Yang Shu, deputy director-general of Beijing 2022’s international relations department.

Eleven fishermen and five “related personnel” reaped the rewards of their vigilance on Monday – quite literally – with authorities in China’s Jiangsu Province remunerating them generously for capturing a total of 10 “suspicious foreign devices with spying functions in Chinese territorial waters since 2020.” According to China’s state-affiliated Global Times outlet, upon technical investigation all 10 drones turned out be foreign-made and “posing a threat to national security.”