Ron DeSantis Blasts China’s ‘Zero COVID Policy’: ‘CCP Has a Maniacal Desire to Exert Total Control’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) kicked off Tuesday’s press conference by blasting China’s “zero COVID policy,” deeming it “draconian” and “completely unscientific.”

Prior to announcing $5.5 million for the City of Jacksonville to expand infrastructure, DeSantis remarked on China’s “zero COVID policy,” praising the people of China for “finally speaking out” in the face of these draconian rules.

DeSantis said, highlighted the CCP’s “maniacal desire to exert total control over its population.”:

I just want to make a comment about what we’ve been seeing going on in China. This zero COVID policy is draconian and violates people’s liberties, and it is completely unscientific. And the people of China are right to be able to speak out and protest against what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is doing. Zero COVID is really just a pretext for them to do what they want to do anyways, and that is not a model that can work over the long term,” DeSantis said. “The people in China are finally speaking out against it.

“And I just think we need these draconian COVID policies to go to the ash heap of history where the belong,” he continued before mentioning the reports of Apple not allowing protesters to use the AirDrop function to communicate, as Breitbart News detailed:

Until Apple clipped its wings, AirDrop was one of the few readily-available methods of secure and private file sharing on China’s heavily-monitored Internet. The system is difficult for censors to monitor or block because it does not run through remote online servers. Instead, it allows iPhones and other Apple devices to send files to each other directly using WiFi and Bluetooth signals. The devices must be fairly close to each other for AirDrop to work.

The AirDrop connection is protected by firewalls on both devices and the files are encrypted, which makes the transfer safe and secure — and also makes it hard for the Chinese Communist Party’s content moderators to stop people from sending illegal pictures of Winnie-the-Pooh to their friends. Protesters have reportedly been using AirDrop to shoot banned material to fellow passengers on buses and trains.

Apple’s move is “obviously” providing “aid and comfort to the CCP,” DeSantis added, deeming it “very concerning.”

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The CCP’s sustained lockdowns and quarantine camps have sparked what the Associated Press described as “the greatest show of public dissent against the ruling Communist Party in decades.” China actively uses house arrest as a virus mitigation method, and the harsh reality of life under the ironclad rules has even prompted criticism from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), whose chief has deemed the communist country’s strategy “not sustainable.”

Despite the mass protest, China has not eased up, rather attempting to convince the world that it has loosened rules by mangling language to deceive those outside of the totalitarian state. 

“In Beijing, for example, the government “advised” residents to stay in their homes, but did not mandate it – a distinction without a difference in a brutal totalitarian dictatorship,” Breitbart News reported. “Similarly, in Guangzhou, authorities have not locked down the entire city of 15 million people, but announced a plan to expand quarantine facilities by upwards of 200,000 beds, essentially preparing to lock residents down outside their homes.”