There were signs that police and local officials were also moving in to carry out "ideological work" with people who attended Wednesday's massive protest.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party's propaganda machine has cranked into action in the wake of "silver protests" by thousands of retired workers in two major cities this week, warning people not to believe "rumors" that medical insurance reforms will leave pensioners worse off.
"A lot of elderly people in Wuhan were bewitched by rumors and took to the streets," the "My medical insurance" official account on the social media platform Weixin wrote in a post after tens of thousands of retirees took to the streets in the central Chinese city and the northeastern city of Dalian, facing off with hundreds of police and singing communist anthems to protest changes to their medical insurance payouts.
The post referred to an earlier protest by thousands outside Wuhan municipal government headquarters on Feb. 8, but made no mention of the much larger protests on Wednesday.
A protester surnamed Gao from Wuhan said the authorities have been calling him non-stop since yesterday, with an unspecified number of his fellow protesters detained.
"It's like the white terror now," he said, in a reference to mass arrests following public shows of dissent. "Nobody dares take to the streets any more."
"They're calling people and detaining people one by one."
But he declined to comment further.
"I dare not tell you too much, because I'm afraid that they are monitoring [my calls]," Gao said, adding that the new rules would definitely leave retirees at a disadvantage.
...protesters told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday that they had relied on these cashbacks to buy regular medications over the counter at pharmacies rather than making a trip to a hospital clinic, which carries a much higher co-payment, making their medication unaffordable.
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