Chinese citizens have been forced into quarantine after they or a family member planned to protest the freezing of their bank funds.
Chinese citizens need a green code on their smartphone health app in order to travel across the country, use public transport, and access public venues, like restaurants and malls.
Electronic records allow the Chinese government to restrict the activities of its citizens based on a “social credit score.” People lose points for transgressions including dissenting speech. Human rights advocate Reggie Littlejohn has noted that this score is integrated into “a surveillance system that gives the CCP total control over every person in the nation.”
A planned protest by hundreds of bank depositors in central China seeking access to at least 1.1 billion Chinese Yuan ($178 million US) held in three Chinese based banks has been thwarted by the Chinese government, which has turned their Covid-19 health code apps “red,” meaning they could no longer travel legally from their homes to where the protests are being held.
Since April 2022, the freeze on withdrawals has left local businesses unable to pay workers and individual depositors unable to access savings.
Chinese regulators have not confirmed the amount of money that has been frozen, but depositors who have formed groups on various social media platforms to air their grievances claim the figure totals tens of billions of yuan.
SOURCES: