COVID-19 hit the world from China, but the Chinese COVID-19 censor has been very strict. The censor was spoken of in the news, but the real extent of it is still not clear.
Amidst the complete censorship in China on all COVID-19 related content, a journalist for the South China Morning Post, Sarah Zheng, is claiming to have published an interview of a doctor about the coronavirus with the Ethereum Network.
Per Zheng’s tweet, the words of Dr. Ai were posted on the Internet, thanks to the utilization of Ethereum blockchain to be able to store and save its content in the network.
my WeChat timeline is still going strong with versions of Dr. Ai Fen’s interview, incl this version explaining how it was posted on Ethereum blockchain and another told in QR code excerpts https://t.co/uYFKpCtsgM pic.twitter.com/kP9kf6t5fV
— Sarah Zheng (@_szheng) March 11, 2020
Interview amidst Chinese COVID-19 censor
Per the reports, the interview was encrypted with the QR codes and deliberate typing mistakes, providing support in the PDF files and Morse code.
The interview included writing with the ‘Hanyu Pinyin System.’ In this system, Chinese alphabets are translated into Latin characters; moreover, emojis were also included to replace several words in the article.
Censored Version of Interview
The content censored quoted Dr.Ai’s words statin that Dr. Ai was subjected to an “unprecedented and severe reprimand” by the Chinese authorities, after warning other doctors in December about the diagnosis of coronavirus after performing tests on a patient.
Dr. Ai had to face some disciplinary measures by the hospital administration after alerting other doctors to take precautionary measures against the coronavirus.
At the time of writing this, there have been 3,150 deaths, and around 81,000 people in China are infected with the coronavirus.