On January 29, 2022, Tsinghua University Law Professor Lao Dongyan wrote a post on Weibo expressing
anguish at the present state of affairs in China under Xi Jinping and criticising the unbridled use of technology,
ranging from facial recognition to controls on the internet and social media, to control the population. She
said the authorities had used the pandemic as a pretext and claimed, "Everything is done in the name of
security or social stability." The post was deleted within 20 minutes. Very briefly, she cited as examples an
instance of a woman eight months pregnant sitting outside the hospital in snowy weather awaiting a
miscarriage, an old man having a heart attack who lost his chance to be treated because he must wait until he
gets a nucleic acid test for COVID-19, a mother coming to pick up her daughter from high school at the start
of vacation and despite having passed eighteen rounds of nucleic acid testing still being prevented from
returning home at the quarantine checkpoint and compelled to wander the cold winter night streets until
dawn. She added that this mother, who wandered the streets with her daughter on a cold winter night, cried
out at one point: “If every lesson has to cost a life to become a lesson, isn’t that in itself a tragedy? …… you
are law enforcement agencies, but shouldn’t you be reasonable and put people first?” and her cries made
people weep. In contrast she quoted a township Communist Party Committee secretary in Shandong warning
petitioners that there are a hundred ways to “criminalize” them. The county government head of a certain
county in Henan Province, she said, was even more aggressive in shouting that those who "maliciously"
return home during the Spring Festival should be isolated and detained. Professor Lao Dongyan added "I,
like my colleagues in the legal profession and the media, have worked hard over the past two years on the
issue of facial recognition. Two years ago, when the Beijing subway was preparing to promote face
recognition, it was shelved due to public opposition. Two years later, face recognition has been quietly
implemented in five subway stations in Beijing and is expected to be fully rolled out soon. Not only that, in
communities, in shopping malls, schools and other kinds of public venues, facial recognition technology is
becoming more widespread under the banner of epidemic prevention and control". Another instance referred
to the more than 70% of the graduates from the top two universities in China in recent years who have chosen
civil service and teaching positions within the system. She said she "felt a bit sorry even as I understood why
they made that choice. I understand because I see how the young people around me face huge pressure of
survival and are generally highly anxious. I feel sorry because choosing a position within the system means
choosing stability". The post included the comment: "It can be said that many people, including myself,
choose to just bear it and retreat, thereby enabling evil people to continue to do evil with impunity. In a
sense, we are responsible by our passive inaction for the deterioration of our environment since we choose
to tolerate and beat a retreat in the face of it. This is not the way a good person should behave. Instead, it is
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only a manifestation of cynicism and cowardice. How can we repay virtue with virtue? Without lowering
yourself, it is time to consider a firm counterattack".
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