China jails a citizen journalist for vlogging about covid

IN A VIDEO posted in February to YouTube, Zhang Zhan (pictured) insisted that people in China had the right to speak freely and monitor officials. She was reflecting on efforts by officials to silence those, like her, who had dared to report independently on the epidemic of covid-19 then engulfing the city of Wuhan. A court in Shanghai plainly disagrees. On December 28th it sentenced Ms Zhang, who has been on a prolonged hunger strike, to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and causing trouble”.

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub