Chinese state television have moved to quell growing anger in the country by altering coverage of the World Cup to remove live footage of maskless fans in the stands.
Protests have been held in China over the return of strict Covid-19 laws amid a rise in cases in the country, with lockdowns and quarantines reintroduced and the public being encouraged to engage in mass testing.
Tens of millions of people in the country's major cities, including the capital Beijing, were in lockdown this weekend.
But with World Cup matches beamed into millions of homes, the lack of masks being worn by fans in Qatar has caused anger, with many willing take to the streets in a rare show of public unrest in China.
Hundreds of people staged protests in Beijing and Shanghai over the weekend, with messages asking if China 'is on the same planet' as Qatar spreading across social media in the country, before being deleted by censors.
World Cup matches in China are shown on state broadcaster CCTV Sports, but where the usual feed cuts to close up shots of members of the crowd the pictures are replaced by footage of players and coaches or a wider shot of the stadium where individual fans are not visible.
Bill Birtles, the East Asia Correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, highlighted the difference between coverage of the World Cup match between Croatia and Canada in both Australia and China.
"So I thought it was BS that China's govt broadcaster was censoring shots of fans at the World Cup due to lockdown anger back home. But it's true," he tweeted.
"Here are live feeds from SBS & CCTV (which has a 32 second delay). As @DreyerChina explained, CCTV avoids crowd close ups:
"'Here's the Canadian goal from the same match. The international feed everyone else gets shows fans close up. CCTV switches out those shots with feeds of coaches or wide shots. Watched 2 games - very obvious. It's imperfect though - one cheering fans shot snuck through in the replay:
"So the usual suspects will claim that China's govt TV CCTV isn't censoring crowd close ups because a few shots do get through… or they choose to use different shots … but it is very clear. Although a mate in Beijing told me he hadn't noticed anything unusual."
On Monday morning it was reported that the Chinese mainland recorded some 3,822 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, adding to a total number of 311,624 cases in the country which have resulted in 5,233 deaths.
Chinese president Xi Jinping is under mounting pressure due to his strict implementation of Covid laws, with civil unrest growing.
