The killing of a corgi shows how government power has grown unchecked in China in the name of Covid prevention

A series of loud bangs startle the sleeping corgi, driving it out of its bed. The door opens and two people dressed in full hazmat suits enter the living room, one carrying a crowbar and another a yellow plastic bag.

"Did the leader say we need to settle it right here on the spot?" one of them can be heard asking. "Yes," the other replies, as he proceeds to move a table the corgi was hiding under, and strike the animal on the head with the crowbar. The dog whimpers and runs off camera to another room.

The unsettling scene, captured by a security camera and shared online by the dog's owner, shows the last moments before the pet was killed in its home by Covid prevention workers in the Chinese city of Shengrao, in southeastern Jiangxi province, on Friday, while the corgi's owner was undergoing compulsory quarantine in a nearby hotel.