A novelist who revealed early details about the coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January 2020 has been banned from writing and faces "total censorship".
Fang Fang's phone is tapped and she is subject to surveillance whenever she leaves her house.
The professional writer has also been banned from speaking to foreign media and cannot participate in any social activities, publish any essays, have any of her new work published or her old work reprinted.
The 67-year-old, whose real name is Wang Fang, has lived in Wuhan since her early childhood.
She began writing about the coronavirus outbreak after an editor of a Chinese literary journal asked her to produce a record of the lockdown.
Fang said: "That gave me the impetus to start recording things, I began to post a record of what was happening. The diary seemed to provide consolation for many readers."
She also wrote about the outbreak on Weibo - the Chinese equivalent of Twitter - and her posts were read by tens of millions of people.
Fang gave an insight into chaos and suffering in Wuhan, including when a child ran after an ambulance carrying away her dead mother and a six-year-old was found locked up at home with his dead grandfather.
As part of her reporting, Fang chronicled her struggles living alone with her dog and fave an insight into Chinese bureaucracy and the Communist Party which at first downplayed the dangers of the virus.
However, her reporting made her a target for the regime which imposed a form of "cold violence" on her.
While China has now lifted Covid restrictions, the writer continues to suffer for her diary and said she feels "somewhat depressed".
Her reporting was turned into a Book, 'Wuhan Diary', which voiced the frustration, anger and hope of her fellow citizens.
Fang told The Sunday Times : "All of these repercussions I am facing are simply because I recorded my experiences during the lockdown in Wuhan and published a book entitled Wuhan Diary . I did not break a single law or violate a single rule. The whole thing is extremely bizarre and utterly unimaginable."
She said that when her book was published, she was accused of being a "traitor to China" as attacks became "more unbridled and crazed".
Michael Berry, director of the University of California’s Centre for Chinese Studies in Los Angeles, who rendered the writer's online posts into a book, called the censorship Fang faces "the most aggressive disinformation campaign waged against a writer in China since the Cultural Revolution".
He said: "I feel so much respect for her. She is a symbol of dignity and respect for me.
"She stood up to the torrent of hatred and death threats washing over her every day. The fact that she remained so steadfast has made her a real hero to me."
In her interview, carried out via email, Fang added: "For a professional writer like myself, this is the greatest punishment they could hand out."
In October, Wuhan was put back into lockdown after an increase in the number of Covid infections.
A Wuhan resident surnamed Chang, 38, said: "I don't know what to do. If we can still survive living like this then I suppose that's what we'll do.
"When we see these news stories about Covid, we now feel a bit numb. We feel numb to it all. We feel more and more numb."
