Please strengthen the disposal of harmful information related to “Tibet independence.” Take strict precautions against stirring public opinion. In case of outstanding circumstances, please report to the monitoring editor on duty. (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

March 10 marks "Tibet Uprising Day," which commemorates a 1959 protest in Lhasa by tens of thousands of Tibetans demanding an end to Chinese occupation of their homeland. A subsequent crackdown by Chinese soldiers killed thousands of Tibetans and led to the escape of the Dalai Lama into exile in India, where he has lived ever since. The day is marked each year by pro-Tibetan groups around the world.

•••

Concerning the assemblies of merchants in many locales requesting that rent be lowered or waived, without exception do not report, do not comment, and do not reprint. (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

In March, small private business owners in various locations in China protested for rent relief in the wake of the COVID crisis. February is generally the biggest shopping month in China during the Lunar New Year holiday, and many businesses lost critical income during the health crisis. Local government programs offered economic assistance such as rent abatement to businesses, but only for state-owned commercial properties.

Concerning the “whistle provider” and this type of reporting, do not place on home pages and remove if there.
Reference links:
The Great Whistle provider! Should be received by top leaders.
https://www.toutiao.com/i1660753158812676/
The first to discover the virus, only she is the whistle provider!
http://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1660752612649836777
People Magazine reported today on whistle provider Ai Fen, director of the ER at Wuhan Central Hospital. The introduction has been cut.
https://www.toutiao.com/i1660744486232078/
The Whistleblower: If these doctors could get prompt alerts, maybe this wouldn’t have happened
http://www.yyrw.org.cn/e/action/ShowInfo.php?classid=5&id=2256&from=timeline&isappinstalled=0″ (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

In the week of March 11, Dr. Ai Fen, the director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, was interviewed by Chinese magazine People (Renwu 人物), and recounted being reprimanded by hospital authorities for sharing a diagnostic report on WeChat showing a patient with SARS-like pneumonia in late December. Previously, Ai had denied being a "whistleblower" and instead called herself a "whistle provider." Ai was one of several medical personnel, including Dr. Li Wenliang, who were admonished for sharing information about the new virus before it had been officially acknowledged. The People interview was quickly censored, but netizens found creative ways to share it.

Regarding the Chinese government’s chartering of commercial flights to repatriate Chinese citizens from countries with severe epidemic outbreaks, such as Iran, there will be no reports unless by unified arrangement. (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

As Iran faced a surge in COVID cases in early March, China chartered flights to repatriate Chinese citizens, a subject of previous directives. On March 6, one such directive stated, "If reporting on confirmed cases among Chinese citizens repatriated from Iran, take information published by authoritative departments as standard. Do not stress patients’ ethnic minority status, do not comment, do not hype, do not exaggerate, and avoid triggering social panic." Another on March 3 warned recipients, "Do not conduct interviews with repatriated people or their friends and relatives in the absence of unified arrangements."

The March 11 Changjiang News broadcast and short summary “Central Leading Group: Fighting Side-by-Side With the Hubei and Wuhan People, Resolutely Winning the Defensive War in Hubei and Wuhan” shall not go online. (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

An article with the same title and sourced to Xinhua is currently available online. Changjiang News is a late night, opinionated news analysis program.

Clean up harmful information related to epidemic prevention and control in response to the notifications from the Beijing Center for Disease Control of the confirmed cases of a certain Guo in Zhengzhou and of a certain Li, who imported the virus from Britain. (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

Guo was sentenced to 18 months in prison for disobeying rules about social distancing and quarantining while infected with COVID after traveling abroad. A certain Ms. Li was mentioned in a report of people who brought the virus back to China after traveling abroad.

The Ministry of Education will soon publish “Guiding Opinions for Actively Responding to the Novel Coronavirus Epidemic While Succeeding in the 2020 Art Major Enrollment Exam.” Use authoritative information if and when reporting, do not question the new examination method, handle comments from training agencies with care, and request opinion from the education department if unsure, in order to prevent false and extreme reports from misleading the public. (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

If a department is in need of video content or collection please contact the content planning service center with your order. (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

1. Reports concerning medical personnel should be simple, unadorned, and pay more attention to the performance of the post-90s, post-00s, and other groups.
2. Do not touch on negative reports from medical personnel. (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

1. When reporting on cases entering other cities and provinces by way of Beijing, the phrases “via Beijing” and “transferred in Beijing” should not appear in the headline or lede. Do not use the wording “in defense of the capital” or “in defense of Beijing.” Reports must be based on authoritative information and should accurately and completely reflect the prevention and control measures of Beijing customs.
2. Standardize wording in reports related to overseas prevention and control. Use the phrase “imported from abroad” instead of “reflux” or “backflow.” (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

Do not report on interim developments in areas such as pharmaceutical efficacy, vaccine progress, virus origins, transmission channels, reagent monitoring etc. that have not yet been confirmed by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Health Commission or other authoritative departments. Handle information on research findings independently provided by universities, research units, firms, and related experts with caution, especially those with content in fields such as vaccines’ clinical trials and expected application timeframes, monitoring reagents’ examination timeframes, viral transmission channels and mechanisms, the virus’ source and intermediate hosts, autopsies of victims etc. In case of uncertainty, promptly contact the press offices of relevant departments such as the Ministry of Science and Technology and Health Commission to check. Handle reports on mutations of the novel coronavirus and human harm in a safe manner to avoid social panic. (March 10, 2020) [Chinese]

These directives follow a stream of almost daily instructions on how to report various aspects of the COVID pandemic. Reports on the spread of the virus to other countries, as well as spread through domestic travel in China, were especially sensitive. Reports on developments in medical treatments, vaccines, transmission, and other scientific factors were also carefully monitored and controlled. Previous directives similarly set rules about how to standardize the language around the outbreak. The final directive here was almost identical to one issued on March 8.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

Recently, problems such as errors of judgment in picture selection, confusion of facts, and publication of inaccurate information have arisen in some media outlets’ reports on the epidemic situation. This is a special reminder that all departments should draw lessons from this, strengthen content examination and verification, and meticulously scrutinize material reprinted from other media, in order to confirm that it is free from error. (February 18, 2020) [Chinese]

Regarding reports on the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic situation, n.b.: if reporting on documentary films or short videos related to the epidemic produced by members of the public, take a firm hold on strengthening checks on their orientation, tone, and content. (February 18, 2020) [Chinese]

These directives are the latest in a string of almost daily updates in January and February telling media how to cover the coronavirus crisis. A number of documentaries were released about the emerging coronavirus outbreak, including from both official media and citizen journalists. Lawyer and citizen journalist Chen Qiushi was detained in early February after posting videos on YouTube from Wuhan while the city was under lockdown. Another video by a doctor in Wuhan tells the story of the outbreak from his perspective. A directive the previous day had urged recipients to "find lessons in the mistakes of others and strengthen your diligence to avoid error," while other directives urged media to maintain a solemn tone in keeping with the national crisis.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

1. When completing scheduling and inspection work for entertainment programs, strengthen final checks on content aimed at amusement. Decisively replace content and advertisements that are clearly at odds with the overall tone.

2. In response to the recent issue of false content appearing because some media reproduced incorrect information found online, please strengthen content inspection and checks, and rigorously carry out categorization and censorship. Uphold the principles of favoring our own content and programming, and of cautiously selecting, meticulously verifying, and multi-dimensionally differentiating information sourced from elsewhere, to ensure truth and accuracy. (February 4, 2020) [Chinese]

This directive was issued as China was in the grips of the initial novel coronavirus outbreak, and Wuhan and other cities were on a strict lockdown. Its wording echoes earlier directives targeting "overly upbeat content" as the government took measures to limit celebratory content about the Spring Festival in the midst of the intensifying health crisis. A string of propaganda directives during this period restricted independent reporting and commentary on the spread of the virus as well. Residents of Wuhan, low-level officials, and the general public wrote about their frustrations and anger at the government’s handling of the outbreak, and quickly had their posts censored. The government was quick to label unofficial sources of information as "rumor" or "false content"; on February 4, Dr. Li Wenliang, who was one of eight medical personnel disciplined for "spreading rumors" about the virus, was in the hospital after being infected by it himself.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

Below is a partial translation, with some added explanatory links, of the WeChat post. The post includes a statement—ostensibly from a teacher in the university’s department of information management, though it reads more like an ABT product pitch—touting the four “advantages” of ABT’s software:

1. High performance equipment, simple installation. […] Tailor-made for colleges and universities.
2. Cutting-edge capability for identifying 116 types of GFW-circumvention proxy utilities, including popular utilities such as Shadowrocket, Clash, Freegate, and more.
3. A variety of authentication methods to meet the real-name requirements of different clients. […] Utilizes overseas IP-address tracing and real-name registration to accurately pinpoint and “apprehend” violators.
4. Detailed and comprehensive reports, displayed in a separate interface.

How did the school discover which students “scaled the wall” to visit overseas websites? […] The school had installed the ABT Online Behavior Management System, which utilizes reverse IP lookup and real-name identification to accurately pinpoint students who circumvent the Great Firewall.

[…] Universities in various cities and provinces have also issued similar notices. For example, the National University of Defense Technology [in Changsha, Hunan province] issued a notice declaring, “This wall cannot be scaled! Do not test the law,” and Jilin University of Finance and Economics issued a set of “regulations regarding students’ illegal use of GFW-circumvention software.”

[…] What are some university test-cases?

Five universities in Jiangxi province: Thanks to the product’s outstanding accurate proxy-identification capability and robust library of proxy-identifying features, [ABT] successfully won the bid involving both 40Gb/s- and 60Gb/s-bandwidth equipment.

During a test at a certain university in Jiangxi, the Internet Supervision Office reported that a student had used a VPN to circumvent the GFW. ABT’s technical staff worked closely with teachers in the university’s Information Management Office to check the VPN logs and NAT (Network Address Translation) logs on ABT’s Online Behavior Management System, and were able to accurately identify the suspected violator. A subsequent inspection of the student’s computer revealed evidence that the suspect had accessed VPN software and illegal online forums. This efficient collaboration and precise investigation won high praise for our equipment and service from the teachers at the university’s Information Management Office, which not only laid the groundwork for cooperation between our two parties, but also smoothed the path to ABT winning the bid for the project.

[…] In addition to countering circumvention, ABT’s Online Behavior Management System also has sophisticated capabilities for identifying, controlling, and auditing more than 7,000 common software applications such as instant messaging, P2P downloads, stock trading, online gaming, online video-streaming, and more. By combining powerful bandwidth-management features, sophisticated management of network application behavior, and user-friendly logs and other functions, it can help academic institutions and companies alike to achieve visual control and worry-free security. [Chinese]

There is a long history of prosecutions and punishments of individuals in China who use VPNs to circumvent the GFW and access the uncensored Internet. One recent case involved the retroactive administrative punishment of a man in Ningde, Fujian province, for using a VPN back in 2020. In 2023, a programmer in Chengde, Hebei province, was fined three years of “illegal income,” totaling over one million yuan, for using a VPN to do work for an overseas client. VPN-related prosecutions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been even stricter than in other areas: in 2017, a computer science student in Urumqi was sentenced to 13 years in prison for using a VPN to bypass Internet censorship and view “illegal information.” Other double standards abound: in November of last year, current affairs blogger Xiang Dongliang had his Weibo account banned for reporting nationalist pundit and former Global Times Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin for illegal VPN use and posting to overseas websites such as X. (Xiang was punished, but authorities ignored his complaint about Hu’s violation of the law.) In late 2022, CDT translated a censorship directive about a crackdown on censorship-circumvention tools. The crackdown was likely aimed at suppressing news about the nationwide spate of anti-lockdown demonstrations that came to be known as the “White Paper protests.”

In the last week alone, CDT Chinese editors have archived eight deleted articles from Chinese academics, legal experts, and commentators expressing serious reservations about the national Internet ID proposal. Specific criticisms of the proposal include:

• The new law is unnecessary, given the existing real-name ID system.
• It is unlikely that the new measures will prove “voluntary” in practice.
• It could exert a chilling effect on online speech by making it easier for authorities to track and punish online dissent.
• The proposal raises more data privacy and security concerns than it solves.
• It would needlessly increase bureaucracy and bolster centralized control over internet users.
• The proposal may not be legal, or even constitutional.

Three articles in particular seem to have touched a nerve: a short essay by Tsinghua University philosophy professor Huang Yusheng led to his Weibo account being permanently banned, and two other articles—a short critical analysis by Lao Dongyan, a well-known professor of criminal law at Tsinghua University, and a longer critical analysis including commentary from Lao and Peking University law professor Shen Kui—led to Lao Dongyan’s Weibo account being temporarily muted, unable to add new posts for 90 days. Lao has also been the target of ad hominem and misogynistic attacks from online trolls due to her strong criticism of the proposed law.

Lao Dongyan’s now-deleted Weibo article, translated in a previous CDT post, likened the proposed national Internet ID system to “installing a monitor on each individual’s online behavior, allowing convenient, instantaneous access to all traces of [their] Internet activity (including their browsing history).” If the Internet ID system is enacted, Lao argued, it would mean that “going online or using services provided by ISPs will essentially become special privileges that require permission.”

A now-deleted WeChat article by Peking University law professor Shen Kui included Shen’s own analysis, Lao’s analysis, the full text of the draft law, and instructions for how to comment on the draft law. Shen emphasized the dangers inherent in entrusting individual citizens’ data to a centralized repository, including the chilling effect this might have on online speech:

In this Internet age, it is hard to avoid exposing some of my personal information, but in a decentralized system, commercial platforms can only get “part of me,” not “all of me,” so I am not “stripped naked,” with all of my data completely exposed. Furthermore, laws such as the Civil Code, Data Security Law, Personal Information Protection Law, and ethical norms surrounding the use of AI require commercial platforms to clearly comply with protections related to individual privacy, personal information, data security, and so on.

However, were the unified national Internet ID system to be widely adopted, and were I to register on various platforms using my personal “Internet ID number” and “Internet credential,” it is conceivable—although by no means inevitable—that all of my activity on various platforms could be collected and analyzed by the centralized platform linking that number and credential to my real identity. Whereas my previous online existence could be described as “piecemeal exposure,” this sort of centralized platform could easily transform my online existence into a form of complete, or “naked exposure.” Although I might remain unaware of this exposure for a time, and although it might not necessarily inflict any immediate harm upon me, it would undoubtedly cause me to become overcautious and prone to self-censorship in my online behavior. No longer would I dare to endorse or oppose certain positions, nor to communicate fully with others, nor to read and browse as widely as before. And if this form of self-censorship, this self-shackling, were to become prevalent, how is it possible to maintain the vitality of our digital economy, improve our online social environment, and create new frameworks for online cooperation and collaboration?

In short, the vitality of our digital economy and online society springs from decentralization, rather than from some centralized monopoly. The potential risks and harms of a unified national Internet ID system are enormous, and its potential benefits—such as preventing platforms from excessive collection of user data, or from divulging users’ personal information and data, etc.—can be attained through existing or alternative means. In view of this, the question remains whether the unified national Internet ID proposal adheres to the core legal principle of “proportionality” and whether it is compatible with the development of our digital economy. As such, the proposal should be taken seriously, and rigorously questioned and examined. [Chinese]

A now-censored Weibo essay by Tsinghua University philosophy professor and former department head Huang Yusheng took a different tack, arguing that the Internet ID proposal is a needless throwback, because a truly modern nation should not subject its citizens to excessive monitoring, surveillance, or control. Both the title and body of the essay mention the phrase 编户齐民 (biānhù qímín), which refers to an archaic system of household registration used during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE). The final paragraph makes reference to the “direction” the nation should be heading in—a not-so-veiled reference to Xi Jinping’s frequent directional pronouncements “pointing the way” forward in various areas of Chinese life. Huang Yusheng’s fiery essay was quickly deleted, and his Weibo account was permanently banned. A portion of Huang’s essay is translated below:

A nation that attempts to turn its citizens into transparent chess pieces that can be tracked and located at any given time will never become a vibrant and creative nation. This is because all creativity will remain hidden in the abyss, and because all vibrancy depends on our ability to live free of surveillance.

Such a nation, of course, can never achieve modernity, for a truly modern nation does not aspire to an archaic “bianhu qimin” system that registers and keeps tabs on each and every last one of its citizens. Rather, a modern nation is one in which all citizens enjoy abundant freedom, particularly freedom of speech, as well as freedom from being arbitrarily harassed, surveilled, threatened, or arrested by government authorities.

[…] Any nation that endeavors to monitor all aspects of its citizens’ lives and peek into every corner of their existence is showing us, in the most brutal and unvarnished way possible, that it is not a “nation-for-the-people.” A nation-for-the-people has no need to spy on its citizens or monitor their whereabouts, because it trusts its citizens, and its citizens likewise identify with, trust in, and wish to protect their nation. Nor does a nation-for-the-people seek godlike omniscience or omnipotence over the minds and mouths of its citizens, because a nation-for-the-people cannot be harmed by anything its citizens might think or say. On the contrary, it is precisely by protecting citizens’ right to exercise free speech and respecting their right to think for themselves that a nation maintains its vitality and creativity.

[…] If Chinese-style modernization is our goal and our direction, then it would be a mistake to run in the direction of an archaic system that seeks to register and control each and every citizen. We should be heading in the direction of more freedom, openness, independence, civilization, and prosperity. […] Without freedom, our sense of trust and self-confidence can neither withstand comparisons nor weather conflict. This is the secret to genuine trust and self-confidence. [Chinese]

An article by Zhai Zhiyong, a professor at Beihang University (formerly known as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), analyzes the Internet ID proposal in terms of its relationship to China’s existing body of law. Zhai raises some compelling questions about both the necessity and the legality of the proposal, citing Article 24, paragraph 2 of the Cybersecurity Law; Article 18 of the Data Security Law; and Article 62 of the Personal Information Protection Law. He concludes that “if a new regulation diminishes the rights of citizens or burdens them with more responsibilities, if it increases the power of a government department or reduces its statutory obligations, it may not even pass the test of legality, let alone the test of constitutionality.”

Although the national Internet ID proposal is still in the stage of soliciting public opinion, 81 Chinese apps—10 public service platforms and 71 commercial apps including WeChat, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, QQ, and Zhaopin—have already rolled out beta-versions utilizing the new credentials. Despite widespread public concern over various aspects of the national Internet ID proposal, as Nikkei Asia’s Katsuji Nakazawa reported, the proposal appears to have powerful backers among the Party elite (who are currently holding their annual summer retreat at the seaside resort of Beidaihe), making it likely that the draft law will be implemented with its core elements unchanged:

Do not be fooled by the words “draft regulations.” The cyberspace ID plan will not be derailed as the reputations of two close aides to Xi are at stake: Chinese security czar Cai Qi and Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong.

Cai is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body, and is ranked fifth in the party hierarchy. Wang concurrently serves as state councilor, a vice premier-level post.

The two are key members of the Fujian faction, one of the two biggest political groups aiding Xi’s concentration of power, the other being the Zhejiang faction. Xi has known Cai and Wang since his time as a senior official in Fujian province.

[…] It remains to be seen how discussions at the ongoing Beidaihe meeting will affect the internet ID plan, with information about any key decision made there not expected to trickle out for days or even weeks, and then only in vague snippets. [Source]

CDT Chinese editors believe that the leaked instructions (excluding the nurse) are authentic, and have been able to confirm that 11 of the listed individuals are indeed cyber-police officers from various localities. (For more screenshots and other detailed evidence verifying the identity of the officers, please see the original CDT Chinese post.) The following translation of the post offers more detail about the operation, as well as images of the two screenshots:

On March 24, 2023, the Eleventh Bureau of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security issued internal instructions for plans to send more than 40 seasoned “online investigators, big-data systems engineers, and data-mining specialists” from across the country to Beijing for a month-long “special reconnaissance operation” to take place between March 27 and April 27, 2023. The stated purpose of the operation is to “dispatch personnel to engage with overseas ‘cyber forces’ in the battle for public opinion, and to effectively maintain online political security.”

The leaked instructions, which appear to have been obtained via an email breach, reveal that the special operation was organized by Department 22 of the Eleventh Bureau of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. The Eleventh Bureau, known to be an internal bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, is tasked with handling computer and internet security and cybercrime cases, and managing the nation’s cyber-police force. The individual responsible for the special operation is listed as Hu Fengming (his internal telephone number and mobile phone number are included at the bottom of the notice). The instructions are addressed to multiple “Public Security Bureau Internet Security Units” in over 40 cities, provinces, and autonomous prefectures. There is also a second-page addendum that lists the real names of 32 “combatants,” public security officers slated to participate in the operation, and the locations they were sent from. For Shanghai, Chongqing, and Yunnan, there are no names listed, just the request, “Send two technical officers familiar with big-data systems architecture and data mining (Please contact Department 22.)” For Beijing, the instructions read, “Beijing is invited to send participants as desired.”

China Digital Times has independently verified the identities of some of the participating officers on the list via Internet searches and cross-referencing for validation. At present, we have been able to confirm that the following 11 listed individuals are indeed cyber-police officers from various localities, and we have preserved screenshots with the relevant evidence. For these reasons, we believe the leaked instructions to be authentic.

Tianjin: Ren Jianzhong

Liaoning: Sun Wen

Shanghai: Yang Zepu

Jiangsu: Cai Du

Wuxi, Jiangsu: Jiang Yuxiang

Taizhou, Zhejiang: Chen Chengcheng

Zhejiang: Wang Weifeng

Fujian: Zhan Xianliang

Qingdao: Han Zhikui

Chongqing: Yue Jingbiao

Sichuan: Ye Hongzhi

Chinese officials appear to have learned of the leak and taken action to delete some (but not all) online biographical content about the participating officers. Baidu Encyclopedia pages for the listed officers have been taken offline, as have some news articles mentioning the names of officers.

Weibo also seems to have “cleaned up” content related to the list of names: some of the names yield many search results that appear as blank pages on Weibo’s home-page search (web version). In addition, Weibo searches for some of the names only show content posted by “verified” users. [Chinese]

In a video posted on May 25, Youtube commentator 公子沈 (Gongzi Shen, “Mr. Shen”) shared the news and screenshots from CDT, and mentioned that he, too, had been able to confirm the identities of 11 of the officers. The following is a partial translation of his commentary on the purpose of the cyber-operation, taken from 13:34-14:00 in his video:

To put it bluntly, it’s a war of words, a battle of words. But who are these so-called “overseas cyber forces”? I’m still puzzled about that. I’m guessing it means channels like this. Or like the fact that I sometimes speak out on Twitter. I’m guessing they must see us as “overseas cyber forces.” Since they’re the “domestic cyber forces,” they have to go out in search of some “overseas cyber forces.” Otherwise, who would they fight? In fact, it’s us they’re planning to fight, right? Those of us who express our opinions freely, and are willing to go head-to-head with them. [Chinese]

The administration’s concerns about China’s tech ambitions culminated last week in the unveiling of the most stringent controls by the U.S. government on technology exports to the country in decades — an opening salvo that would ripple through global commerce and could frustrate other governments and companies outside China.

[…] The controls could be the beginning of a broad assault by the U.S. government, [Matthew Pottinger, deputy national security advisor in the Trump administration,] said.

“The Biden administration understands now that it isn’t enough for America to run faster — we also need to actively hamper the P.R.C.’s ambitions for tech dominance,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “This marks a serious evolution in the administration’s thinking.” [Source]

Previewing the administration’s approach last month, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated that the U.S. needed to change its previous policy of maintaining only “relative” advantages over China in key technologies: “We previously maintained a ‘sliding scale’ approach that said we need to stay only a couple of generations ahead. That is not the strategic environment we are in today. Given the foundational nature of certain technologies, such as advanced logic and memory chips, we must maintain as large of a lead as possible.” Justifying this new approach in its announcement of the export controls last week, the U.S. Commerce Department argued that these technologies help the Chinese government create advanced military systems, including weapons of mass destruction, and commit human rights abuses. 

2/ The new rules reflect the administration's view that certain civilian technologies have multiplier effects, and that China has used commercially available tech to modernize its military, pursue strategic economic dominance in key sectors, and commit human rights abuses.

— Ryan Hass (@ryanl_hass) October 11, 2022

4/ The administration is pursuing a dual-track approach of seeking to run faster at home while slowing down China's indigenous development in order to build as wide of a lead as possible. To this end, I expect an outbound investment screening mechanism to follow at some point.

— Ryan Hass (@ryanl_hass) October 11, 2022

And yet, US continues to fail to offer a genuine, democratic alternative, as argued by myself, @F_Kaltheuner + @deblebrown here: https://t.co/TdydzZYpJS 2/5

— Maya Wang 王松蓮 (@wang_maya) October 11, 2022

At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Gregory C. Allen summarized the “chokepoint” technologies in the global semiconductor supply chain over which the U.S. is exerting control with these new regulations: 

The most important chokepoints in the context of this discussion are AI chip designs, electronic design automation software, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and equipment components. The Biden administration’s latest actions simultaneously exploit U.S. dominance across all four of these chokepoints. In doing so, these actions demonstrate an unprecedented degree of U.S. government intervention to not only preserve chokepoint control but also begin a new U.S. policy of actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry—strangling with an intent to kill.

[…] There are four interlocking elements of the new policy targeting different segments of the semiconductor value chain, and all elements must be understood simultaneously to grasp the scope of what the Biden administration plans on achieving. In short, the Biden administration is trying to (1) strangle the Chinese AI industry by choking off access to high-end AI chips; (2) block China from designing AI chips domestically by choking off China’s access to U.S.-made chip design software; (3) block China from manufacturing advanced chips by choking off access to U.S.-built semiconductor manufacturing equipment; and (4) block China from domestically producing semiconductor manufacturing equipment by choking off access to U.S.-built components. [Source]

In addition to these export controls, the administration fired a volley of other competitive measures against China. The Commerce Department added 31 of China’s top chip makers to the Unverified List, a government trade watchlist that makes companies ineligible to receive goods subject to U.S. export regulations. It also announced that those companies unable to provide required data for its verification process would be moved to the Entity List, a government trade blacklist. In September, Biden issued a series of executive orders aimed at boosting the domestic semiconductor and biotech industries, reducing reliance on foreign countries, and clarifying the scope of the committee charged with preventing Chinese companies from acquiring U.S. companies and technologies critical to national security. Last week, Biden also touted IBM’s $20 billion investment in semiconductor research and development as part of a “manufacturing boom” fueled by the CHIPS and Science Act, signed in August, which provides $52 billion in federal subsidies for advanced technologies in order to “counter China.”

Experts and industry insiders say the implications of the new export controls are significant. “To put it mildly, [Chinese companies] are basically going back to the Stone Age,” said Szeho Ng, Managing Director at China Renaissance. Another unnamed industry executive stated, “They are not just targeting military applications. They are trying to block the development of China’s technology power by any means.” Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Edward Alden wrote, “[A] choice has now been made: For the first time in a generation, weakening China is now more important to the United States than working with China. […] Blinken’s claims notwithstanding, a growing raft of U.S. measures now aims at slowing China’s development as a high-technology economy” via “the sort of sweeping technology export [restrictions] that were a central feature of the Cold War.” Jon Bateman, a senior fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued in Foreign Policy that Biden has gone “all-in” on thwarting China’s ambitions and pursuing rapid decoupling:

In short, America’s restrictionists—zero-sum thinkers who urgently want to accelerate technological decoupling—have won the strategy debate inside the Biden administration. More cautious voices—technocrats and centrists who advocate incremental curbs on select aspects of China’s tech ties—have lost. This shift portends even harsher U.S. measures to come, not only in advanced computing but also in other sectors (like biotech, manufacturing, and finance) deemed strategic. The pace and details are uncertain, but the strategic objective and political commitment are now clearer than ever. China’s technological rise will be slowed at any price.

[… T]he U.S. government’s latest move reveals a strategic mindset that cannot help but influence future China tech policy. U.S. officials have focused intently on possible threats, imposed disproportionate measures, downplayed the complications, and strong-armed others into compliance. This mindset all but guarantees a continued march toward broad-based technological decoupling.

[…] In this high-stakes game, Washington has been both card player and card dealer, making its own moves while constraining the choices of others. Now the United States has gone all-in—wagering like never before and placing its cards on the table for all to see. The decisive American gamble: to openly block China’s path to become an advanced economic peer, even at significant risk to U.S. and allied interests. Bigger U.S. moves are probably coming in the future. [Source]

https://twitter.com/gwbstr/status/1580237571090546691

https://twitter.com/gwbstr/status/1580245289289404416

Some effects of the export controls were felt almost immediately. On Tuesday, Asia’s top chip stocks plummeted and erased over $240 billion from the sector’s global market share. The CEO of a leading Apple supplier with most of its production in China warned the tech world to brace for “casualties” after witnessing Washington’s “determination to decouple.” This week, several major American chip-equipment suppliers suspended supplies and services in China and pulled out their staff from China’s leading memory-chip makers, since part of the new regulations requires any U.S. citizen or entity to seek permission from the U.S. Commerce Department before providing support to Chinese fabrication plants. While companies can apply for exemptions, applications will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis with a “presumption of denial” standard. One of China’s top semiconductor-equipment makers has also told its American employees to stop taking part in component and machinery development.

https://twitter.com/niubi/status/1580525780974465024

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix obtained a one-year waiver to continue to transfer chip-making equipment to their plants in China, in a U.S. effort to maintain partnerships with allies that play important roles in the semiconductor supply chain. Officials acknowledged that without buy-in from allies and foreign partners, the new export control strategy could backfire. However, while the Biden administration consulted allies prior to taking action, the export controls are “fundamentally unilateral,” as Gregory Allen stated. In this week’s China Talk podcast, former official from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (which produced the recent export controls) Kevin Wolf unpacked the U.S.’s diplomatic strategy and argued that “the solution lies in cooperation with allies”:

There are those that say you shouldn’t act until the allies are on board, because if you go first and you go alone, then the allied companies are going to say, “Woohoo, they’ve just opened up a gap in a market for us to fill.” There’s absolutely truth to that […] But I do see from a broader diplomatic perspective the need to signal how serious the US government is, which this rule does in spades, in order to get a really serious discussion going with the allies about the need for them to change their rules to achieve common national security objectives.

[…O]ver the long term, if the effort to get the allies on board fails, the incentive for non-US companies to produce, develop, sell, and do R&D outside the United States will just accelerate. Over a very long period of time, they will achieve advantages that they wouldn’t have but for the unilateral controls. [Source]

The Chinese government criticized the Biden administration’s actions. “Out of the need to maintain its sci-tech hegemony, the U.S. abuses export control measures to maliciously block and suppress Chinese companies,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning. Expressing its disappointment, the China Semiconductor Industry Association also published a letter stating, “Not only will such [a] unilateral measure harm the further global supply chain of the semiconductor industry, more importantly it will create an atmosphere of uncertainty.” Che Pan at the South China Morning Post described how the export controls are a direct threat to Beijing’s AI ambitions:

[Major technological] achievements by China’s most powerful technology players would [not] be possible without the powerful graphic processing units provided by Nvidia Corp, the Santa Clara-based GPU giant that has played a pivotal role in powering China’s progress in AI, data analysis and computing power.

The US government’s sudden decision last month to restrict Nvidia from selling its two most advanced chips, the A100 and the upcoming H100, to clients in China has therefore sent jitters across China’s AI, cloud computing and smart vehicle sectors, as there is no immediate substitute for the Nvidia GPUs that train AI models for autonomous driving, semantic analysis, image recognition, weather variables and big data analysis, according to industry insiders and tech analysts. [Source]

Long read by Li Chaomin (李超民) assessing the content and impact of the US Chip Act.

Li is the deputy director of the Institute of Public Policy and Governance at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

Below are some of his policy recommendations for #China 🇨🇳:

1/10 pic.twitter.com/F0gISGAiGt

— Thomas des Garets Geddes (@thomasdggeddes) October 11, 2022

In this classic Wei Zhou essay from March 2022, he tries to help his readers understand how and why some of their comments disappear from his WeChat public account. In the process, we gain insight into the methods of platform-based censorship, the relationship between an online writer and his readers, and the careful balancing act required to keep a popular social media account up and running in China today.

“Why did my comment disappear?” I’m often asked this question, and though I’ve explained it countless times, it seems that a lot of my readers still don’t understand what’s going on. Since I’m tired of explaining it separately to each person who asks, I may as well write a quick post to demystify things.

A reader once angrily demanded to know: “Why would you take my comment down after making it public? What kind of fickle game is this?” Someone more diplomatic might have said: “Censoring readers’ opinions and commentary doesn’t seem your style.”

Although this is my own turf, I don’t get to call the shots. Some comments simply disappear after I pin them to the top of the comments section. Think about it: when I pin a comment, it means I strongly agree with its viewpoint, so there’s no reason I’d go back and delete it. Then there are the comments that disappear after I respond to them. There’s simply no logic behind this: if I respond to a comment, of course it means I want you all to read it, so why would I go to the trouble of deleting it?

I think it’s no surprise to anyone that when it comes to online public opinion, platform admins participate in each and every discussion. To give a rough estimate, somewhere between one-half to one-third of the reader comments that I choose to make public simply disappear. Of course, the readers can’t see what’s going on, but I can, behind the scenes.

Some people are aware that WeChat is subject to a certain amount of control, but they don’t understand what policies govern that control. As one reader said: “I thought that if they wanted to control things, it’d be like on Douban where they’d directly notify you that your post had been taken down. When I saw that a comment was no longer visible, I just assumed it was the author who changed their mind and deleted it after making it public. Recently, it seems that no matter what I post, it gets deleted immediately. It’s really frustrating ….”

Even I don’t receive those sorts of notifications (one day last month, I was notified every time a comment was deleted, but it turned out to be too overwhelming.) Since the comments section in WeChat public accounts is limited to 100 comments, here’s how it typically works: I’ll select 100 comments to make public, and after a while, I’ll discover that about 40 of those have been censored (this requires combing through all 100 to make sure.) By this point, even more comments have flooded in, so in order to make room for new comments, I have to unselect the public comments that were censored. I can’t even use the desktop-client dashboard to take down comments deemed to be in violation of the rules; I have to scroll through them manually on my phone. Even then, it’s possible that some of these new comments might get censored, which starts the whole cycle yet again ….

Because this process is so tedious, sometimes when the comments section gets locked down, I feel a strange sense of relief that I no longer have to rack my brains trying to select which comments to make public.

I don’t know why the comments section is limited to 100 slots. Whenever I get more than 100 comments on one of my essays, it adds to my workload because I have to put in a lot of effort deciding which ones to make public. To ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to speak, I often have to remind people not to post a bunch of comments under a single essay, because that takes up multiple slots. If you have a lot to say, you might as well just reply to your first comment. That way, you’ll only take up a single slot.

It was only later that I realized some people have older phones that don’t allow them to reply to their own comments. Others post multiple comments to hedge their bets, figuring that if one comment is deleted, the others will still stand. There was one reader whose comment received a ton of likes, but then he replied to his own comment, and the whole thread disappeared. I said, “Oh no, you were on a roll, why’d you have to go and add that extra comment?” He replied, “I was all fired up … nah, actually I just didn’t have anything better to do.”

Although this is a bit speculative, over time, I’ve more or less developed a sense of which comments will get censored. Once, I came across a particularly forthright comment and couldn’t resist offering the commenter my two cents: “If I make your comment public, it’s going to disappear right away.” But he was adamant: “What I write is my business. Whether or not you want to make it public is your business.”  Of course, what happened after I made his comment public was entirely predictable.

Because I imagine most readers don’t want their comments to stay under wraps forever, as long as there are slots available, I’ll typically try to make comments public as soon as they come in. It sometimes happens that I move too fast, and only after selecting a comment do I discover the words “Don’t post this publicly” written at the end, so then I have to scramble to deselect it. Also, because I’m so quick, some readers get the mistaken impression that the comment selection process is automated, when in fact, all public comments are manually selected by me!

I’m the kind of person who feels that there shouldn’t be any limit to the number of comments. Apart from a very small number of abusive attacks, I prefer to make all comments public and let readers judge for themselves, with minimal intervention on my part. And because I’m pretty laissez-faire, and take a neutral stance toward my essays, the comments section naturally tends to attract a diversity of opinions. Sometimes readers tell me that they come not to read my essays, but to read the comments.

February 20, 2022 7:49 PM

Dear Mr. Wei Zhou, 

I’ve been a hardcore fan of yours all along. I really enjoy your essays, and admire your moral character even more. Most of my comments are reckless and rambling, and aimed at spreading rebellious energy. As long as you see them, that’s all I care about, and if you think they’re too sensitive then don’t bother making them public. I couldn’t care less if my account gets blocked, but if yours ever did because of one of my comments, I’d feel awful.

March 6, 2022, 3:19 PM 

Recently, WeChat’s admins have removed a lot of comments that you made public, which on the whole, must have been a big headache for you. I want to apologize to you for all that, but next time, I still won’t be able to resist posting comments, even those that aren’t very “harmonious.” I can’t help it: I’m game despite my lack of game, just a loud-mouth without the skillz to prevent my comments from getting deleted, haha … I’m seriously hooked, and reading your essays is my fix. Thanks! 

I’m also thankful for how considerate my readers are, so much so that some of them even tell me not to make their comments public, for fear of causing me trouble. Here’s the reason why I have to accept responsibility: as the administrator of this account, I am responsible for keeping the comments section “clean,” as it were, so if any “issues” arise, it means I’ve been careless in my duties. The harshest penalty was in February of last year when the comments function was disabled for a full five days.

Take yesterday’s essay, “Which Side Should China Be On?”, which provoked fierce debate and was flooded with 112 comments within the first hour of being published. The controversy was most likely due to the essay’s title, as it didn’t seem like many people had read the essay or grasped its logic. The upshot of all the heated debate was that the comments section quickly disappeared:

Yesterday, 1:19 PM

Violation of WeChat’s Public Platform Regulations on Comments Control

Hello. Following a user complaint, it has been found that certain comments under your essay “Which Side Should China Be On?” may be in violation of platform regulations, and as such, the comments function has been disabled.

WeChat Public Account Holder: Wei Zhou

Regulations Violated: “WeChat Public Platform Operating Standards” (Click here)

Please abide by all regulations, so that together we can build a green and healthy operating environment. If you dispute this decision, please log into the WeChat Public Platform and check your inbox for further details.

Among those readers who surmised that the comments section was blocked, one individual was so curious as to what the fuss was all about that he/she asked if I could forward some screenshots of the offending comments. Among those who couldn’t fathom what had happened, a few were itching to get in one last word, and chased me down, angrily demanding to know, “Why are you so scared to open the comments section?” There was even one reader, a new subscriber, who “liked” my essay and then left me the following message:

March 19, 2022  9:15 PM

Can’t you enable a discussion feature? As your essays lean towards theoretical analysis, it’d be somewhat of a loss if there weren’t a clash of opinions!

This has happened so many times that I guess it needs to be explained every once in a while, but I’m tired of having to explain myself, and it seems that there are still a lot of people who don’t get it. So let me explain yet again: I would never, ever close the comments section, so if you see that the comments have disappeared, you don’t even need to ask: it just means the admins have been at it again.

In fact, for all WeChat public accounts registered after February 2018, the comments function has been disabled, and this remains the case four years later. In order to allow readers of Wei Zhou’s Ark [@维舟的方舟], my secondary account, to continue chatting, I was forced to add a mini-program message board.

What ended up happening was totally unforeseen: the WeChat admins couldn’t delete comments because the mini-program wasn’t under Tencent’s control, but it also gave free reign to some of the trolls that I had previously banned. At one point, I even started to feel that there were some benefits to keeping the comments section within Tencent’s purview.

I believe that I have been consistently tolerant and respectful of everyone’s right to speak. However, after experiencing several unhappy ordeals in which my account was blocked and my essays deleted, in addition to banning abusive or threatening speech, I have absolutely no qualms about axing any comments that could prove risky.

Every time my content is deleted or my account blocked, many readers invariably ask what happened. I always give them the same brief explanation, yet not everyone seems able to understand. The last time I wrote such an essay (“Explainer: The Essay That Disappeared Yesterday”), one reader sent me this mocking comment: “Do you actually think getting your essay deleted is a badge of honor?”

After I made his comment public, the admins came back and deleted it, which added fuel to the fire and worsened the misunderstanding, because he assumed that I was the one who deleted it. In trying to explain the platform’s policies, I wrote to him: “As for your assumption that it’s some kind of badge of honor, I can definitively tell you it’s not. Given the choice, who would actually want their essays to be deleted? Your motivational theory is so bad it’s funny.”

But he refused to back down:

“Then explain why whenever an essay is deleted or your account blocked, you always make a point of posting one or two essays crying about what happened. I’ve always enjoyed your essays, but whenever I see these “badge-of-honor-type” eulogies, I’m revolted. I’ve always wanted to ask that, but have been holding back until now. It’s like what I said in a previous comment: everyone knows what the rules are, and nothing and nobody is going to change that in the long run, let alone in the short run. You clearly know this, so why are you scoffing at my motives?”

His point was this: The rules are there by default and won’t be changing any time soon, so what’s the point of bringing them up? Better to just keep quiet and carry on without complaint. Grousing about it makes it sound like you’re treating your deleted essays and account blocks as badges of honor. By the way, when I ridiculed him for his “motivational theory,” I was referring to his speculation about my motives.

I imagine that no small minority of people share his way of thinking—he just happened to be more forthright about it. Once I’ve finished writing this piece, it’s probably unavoidable that some people will be made uncomfortable by it. I’m sorry about that, and I don’t want things to be this way. If only it were possible, I would very much like to not waste time and energy repeatedly explaining things like this. [Chinese]

Translation by Hamish.

Thousands of depositors have attempted to withdraw money in person from at least four of Henan’s regional banks with tens of billions of yuan in frozen deposits since April. The move came after Sun Zhenfu, a shareholder of one of the banks, fled following “serious financial crimes” in March, according to media reports.

The banks withholding the deposits include Yuzhou Xinminsheng Village Bank, Zhecheng Huanghuai Community Bank, Shangcai Huimin County Bank, and New Oriental County Bank of Kaifeng, with Sun reportedly having indirect associations with all of them. Some 1 million customers are said to be affected.

[…] Many of the depositors said they had traveled from the eastern provinces of Zhejiang and Shandong, as well as Hebei in the north, to Zhengzhou to demand answers and attempt to retrieve their deposits.

Wang Jin, from Zhangjiakou in Hebei, is among them. The 35-year-old said he came to Zhengzhou hoping to retrieve his savings from Yuzhou Xinminsheng Village Bank on Sunday, but ended up at the police station until the following day when his health code turned red while scanning a QR code to exit the city’s railway station.

He had last checked his health code 30 minutes before arriving in Zhengzhou, and it was still green then. [Source]

Wang Jin is not alone. Hundreds of thousands of customers have been affected by the freezing of more than 39 billion yuan in deposits at four different banks. The ongoing investigation, which began in April of this year, has not resolved the issue, prompting thousands of customers to travel to Zhengzhou, where they took to the streets on May 23 in a large public protest. With no update on the status of their deposits since mid-May, some customers decided to meet again in Zhengzhou on Monday, June 13, to seek more information from authorities. 

This is huge. People took to the streets to protest against the fact that they couldn’t withdraw money from several banks for 35 days. May 23, in Zhengzhou city, Henan Province, #CCPChina. Banks have gone bankrupt? pic.twitter.com/qmz7JBGzsJ

— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferzeng97) June 1, 2022

Police are “maintaining stability” when depositors demand the banks to give back their money in Henan province. People shout: we want to withdraw our money! The banks have no money to allow withdrawals. 河南银行，还我存款！ pic.twitter.com/PmamIhRi0f

— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferzeng97) June 1, 2022

As of Monday, official data showed that there were no COVID-19 risk areas in Zhengzhou, and incoming travelers who were not customers of those four banks had no trouble entering the city. However, many customers reported their health codes turning red upon arrival. Some who arrived by train were held in rooms with dozens of other customers in the same situation, and others were forced into quarantine. One depositor who tried to arrive by car was stopped by a police officer who explained that his code flagged him as part of a police monitoring system designed for criminals and drug addicts. Some customers had tested their app from outside of the city by scanning Zhengzhou venue codes remotely and discovering that their health app codes turned red. As Phoebe Zhang, Kate Zhang, and Nick Yang from the South China Morning Post described, even customers outside of Henan who were not planning on protesting saw their health codes turn red:

Even people who had not planned to go to the protest and are not physically in Henan have been affected. One man in Changzhou, Hebei province, said his health code turned red while he was sitting at home.

[…] A Shanghai man surnamed Zeng who had deposits at one of the Henan banks said he had not left the financial hub, but his health code system indicated that his health risk level under the Henan province system was high.

[…] Yet, his local health code in Shanghai was still green, and no staff at the epidemic prevention department called him because of his red health code.

[…] Another man surnamed Yuan, from Shenzhen, also said his code turned red on Saturday even though he had not left Shenzhen recently.

He has 350,000 yuan (US$52,000) at two of the rural Henan banks. When Yuan contacted his local government, he was told that Henan province had issued him with a red code, which was synchronised to the national government affairs platform, restricting his movements – even in Shenzhen. [Source]

"Some of those affected appear to be relatives of customers. One woman who lives in Zhumadian, a town 200km (124 miles) from Zhengzhou, said she was taken to a hotel for mandatory quarantine once her status turned red."

— William Yang (@WilliamYang120) June 14, 2022

"He recently went to Zhengzhou to understand the situation. Once he came back, his health status turned red. My whole family is now in quarantine after our statuses turned red."

— William Yang (@WilliamYang120) June 14, 2022

#Henan bank depositors hit with red code. #China's #Henan province used the covid restrictions as an excuse, some clients of several banks there saw their health code turn red, after arriving at #Zhengzhou and attempting to withdraw money from those regional banks. pic.twitter.com/Kf5i3qAUbD

— FranceTVChine (@FranceTVChine) June 14, 2022

After freezing $6 billion USD, China's banks in Henan (likely in collab with local gov) are stopping affected depositors from physically going to the banks & ask for their $$ by turning their COVID Health Code – RED*. Red means exposed to COVID & bar you from public spaces. https://t.co/jY0D0yyxBk

— Niva Yau 邱芷恩 (@nivayau) June 14, 2022

Citizens and lawyers criticized this apparent abuse of the health code system. “The purpose of epidemic prevention and control is clear — it’s illegal to use personal privacy beyond this purpose,” Zhang Junqiang, a Shanghai-based lawyer, told domestic media, adding, “if citizens get restricted by the red code when they want to exercise other rights, the intended purpose of the health code has been lost.” Nectar Gan at CNN described how the opacity of the system has allowed the health code to be distorted into a “good citizen certificate”:

“The health code should have been used to prevent the spread of the pandemic, but now it has deviated from its original role and become something like a good citizen certificate,” said Qiu, a depositor in eastern Jiangsu province.

[…] “The health code, like many algorithmic-based systems in China and around the world, lacks transparency. Exactly how companies designed the app and the criteria they use to categorize people remain unclear … It is also hard to know whether the system allows local governments to tamper with it as a means to prevent protests,” said Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who has studied China’s digital surveillance.

“The opacity of the health code, the ability of it to arbitrarily control people’s movement while giving people few means to effectively appeal the app’s decision, makes it an especially abusive system.” [Source]

CDT editors have collected and translated some netizen reactions to the health code scandal: 

@甘先生：National pandemic prevention policy has been reduced to a private weapon, and the genuine safety of the people has been cast aside like it’s nothing. This is the height of expansion of power, ideological decay, and evil influence.

@Kelvin Cao：Those measures were never meant for pandemic prevention.

@西瓜大魔王：I’m afraid that China’s pandemic will never end.

@Bg0xyz：This just goes to prove that, once again, these codes are shackles.

@东吴小坏蛋：Sooner or later, this sort of thing is going to happen to us all. Wake up, people.

@花总：Dealing with societal conflict by giving people red health codes is an extremely dangerous tactic. Health codes exist as a means of pandemic prevention, and people have sacrificed some of their personal rights for the sake of the common good. Health codes shouldn’t be turned into “certificates of good citizenship” in disguise. [Chinese]

The following netizen reactions were collected and translated by CDT editors from the Chinese-language, Quora-like site Zhihu:

@闫毅航：My imagination is really lacking. If this sort of thing had happened in 2019, I would have thought it was the plot of a dystopian novel that couldn’t get past the censors.

@白井黑子：The power conferred by a “state of emergency” is eminently convenient and easy to wield, so much so that no one can resist the temptation to “keep the state of emergency going.” If they have the power to render you immobile in a given situation, the next step is to box you into that situation whenever they want to render you immobile. This is the case with credit reporting, and also the case with health codes.

@lili：When you have a tool that can restrict the freedom of others at will—without any reason, any evidence, or any procedure—you’d be stupid not to use it.

@王克丹：The worst case scenario is [listing these bank customers as] “dishonest debtors.” Now, [Zhihu], stop inviting me to answer this question. [Chinese]

In a sign of just how threatening this scandal is to the CCP’s overall pandemic prevention strategy, numerous state media outlets swiftly and strongly condemned the alleged abuses by local authorities. In his Pekingnology newsletter, Zichen Wang described these reactions from Chinese state media and translated some critical commentary from an offshoot of the overseas edition of People’s Daily:

We don’t know which “genius” came up with the idea of giving red codes to the depositors who were defending their legitimate rights, and we don’t know how such an operation, which is clearly against common sense, the rule of law, and justice, can be carried out in a dignified manner!

[…] To be frank, no matter which department or which people authorized the arbitrary use of epidemic prevention and control measures for the purpose of “social governance” or “stability maintenance”, they should be seriously held accountable.

[…] This is not solving the problem, but intensifying it. This is not “smart and capable”, but a typical example of lazy government and shirking responsibility. The people who came up with these ideas might [have] thought they were quite clever, but unfortunately, their brains are skewed. 

[…] The health code is the information infrastructure for epidemic prevention and control. Some people playing smart and faint tricks based on their own “small goals” of governance are not only unhelpful, but will also lose the faith of people. [Source]

China Daily, notably, published an unusually sharp critique of local government authorities “crossing a dangerous red line”:

If some officials abuse their power by turning healthy people’s health codes red, they are crossing a dangerous redline.

Some people in Henan province are alleging that the authorities tampered with their health code to stop them from lodging a complaint against a possible Ponzi scheme. If this is true then this is one of the worst forms of abuse of power.

[…] Most surprisingly, the headquarters for epidemic prevention and control in Zhengzhou, responsible for health code management, is yet to respond to the public outcry. Other departments that the public approached for help have also passed the buck.

This scandal not only discloses the arrogance of those invested with power, but has also brought to light the low level of governance in the some local government agencies’ lack of respect for the rule of law.

[…] Anyone seen to have abused power in the aforementioned case should be held accountable. No one should be allowed to cross the redline by randomly turning people’s health codes red. [Source]

Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, posted on WeChat: “I would like to remind that health codes everywhere should only be used for pure epidemic prevention purposes, and under no circumstances should they be used by local governments for other social governance goals unrelated to epidemic prevention.” The Global Times published an editorial on Tuesday under the headline “Scientificity and seriousness of health code must be maintained”:

The health code is a technical means designed to make the public compromise some personal information rights to comply with the needs of society’s public health security. It can only be used for epidemic prevention purposes. It is the responsibility of the relevant authorities to protect the privacy of citizens to the greatest extent during the epidemic prevention process. If speculation of the abuse of the power to misuse the health code is allowed to circulate on the internet, it will generate damage to the government’s credibility. Whether the situation circulated on the internet is in line with the facts, it is necessary for the local authority to give a convincing response.

Misuse of health code-related information is not a trivial matter.

[…] The role of the health code in the regular epidemic prevention and control is so pivotal that its scientific nature and seriousness must be maintained. Some grassroots disputes or “technical errors” must not be allowed to affect public confidence and the overall situation in the fight against the epidemic. The relevant departments in Zhengzhou should conduct prudent and strict investigation and verification. The process should be expedited as much as possible. If this is caused by technical problems, a complete and convincing chain of evidence must be presented; if there is indeed regulation-violation in the process, they must be corrected as soon as possible. [Source]

This is far from the first time China’s health code app has deviated from its stated purpose. Last year, a man returning from a neighboring city to his residence in Xi’an noticed that his health code suddenly turned yellow, and his travel app wrongly insisted that he had instead returned from the Philippines. Common, unpredictable glitches such as these leave many in fear. Eva Dou and Pei-Lin Wu from the Washington Post even stated, “The lack of clarity is a feature not a bug: It’s an incentive for everyone to, well, just stay home.” 

Some such “glitches” appear more nefarious. Last year, a Chengdu-based attorney saw his health code abruptly turn from green to red as he passed through Xi’an en route to a trial in Shaanxi. Human rights researchers such as Maya Wang have argued that the health code app provides the government with a new surveillance tool to arbitrarily quarantine activists, journalists, or civil rights lawyers. This follows the popular app National Anti-Fraud Center, produced by the Ministry of Public Security, which was also found to have wide-ranging hidden surveillance capabilities.

Translation by Cindy Carter.

The federal government has banned Huawei from working on Canada’s fifth-generation networks over security concerns — a decision critics say was long overdue.

[…] The government is also banning ZTE, another Chinese state-backed telecommunications firm. A government policy statement posted online says [Canadian] companies will have until June 28, 2024, to remove or terminate 5G equipment from Huawei and ZTE.

They’ll also have to remove or terminate any existing 4G equipment provided by the companies by Dec. 31, 2027. The policy statement says the government expects companies to stop purchasing new 4G or 5G equipment from the companies by September of this year.

“This is the right decision and we are pleased to announce it today because it will secure our network for generations to come,” Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne told a news conference Thursday. [Source]

Canadian opposition parties have criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for waiting too long to implement the ban, given that Canadian intelligence publicly warned about the threat to Canada’s 5G networks back in 2018. Trudeau announced the ban one day after China decided to lift a three-year import ban on Canadian canola seeds. The canola-seed ban may be difficult for China to reinstate, since its lifting may have been connected to the global shortage of food staples resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Canada’s ban on Huawei and ZTE also comes eight months after Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou, entangled in extradition proceedings in Canada over fraud and sanctions violations, was returned to China, effectively in exchange for the release of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, two Canadian citizens arbitrarily held in China for over 1,000 days. The prolonged delay in enacting the Huawei and ZTE ban “was absolutely shaped by the Michaels’ detention—to suggest otherwise is political spin,” said Jonathan Berkshire-Miller, director of the Indo-Pacific program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa think tank.

Canada now joins the other “Five Eyes” countries—the U.S., U.K., Australia, and New Zealand—in placing various restrictions on Huawei’s presence in their respective 5G networks. The U.S. in particular has accumulated a long list of sanctions and other restrictive measures against Huawei. In 2019, the U.S. added Huawei to the “Entity List,” a commerce department list prohibiting American companies from exporting or transferring specified technology to certain foreign individuals, entities, or governments. In 2020, it further sanctioned Huawei by expanding the restrictions to products made overseas with U.S. technology, and adding dozens of Huawei affiliates to the blacklist. Beyond Huawei’s threat to foreign telecommunications networks, The Washington Post found that Huawei has developed AI facial-recognition software that could be used to identify Uyghur individuals and send an alert to Chinese government authorities, and has also supplied surveillance equipment to detention centers in Xinjiang.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is currently laying the groundwork to impose sanctions against Hikvision, according to the Financial Times. The sanctions would likely be administered through the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list that prohibits American companies and citizens from conducting financial transactions with those listed and freezes their U.S. assets. Following the Financial Times’ report, Hikvision shares fell by 10 percent. Sanctions could also put Hikvision customers in over 180 countries at risk of collateral damage, and profoundly escalate U.S.-China tech tensions. In The Wire, Katrina Northrop summarized the seismic ripple these sanctions would have on Hikvision and the global surveillance industry: 

Hikvision would be the first major Chinese tech company put on the SDN list – even Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, has not been subject to this designation. While the list is usually reserved for companies engaged in drug trafficking, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or terrorism, Hikvision is under pressure due to its alleged involvement in the Chinese state’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang. 

Such a move, if implemented, would roil the global security industry, potentially forcing providers to shift suppliers and customers to ditch Hikvision for other, more expensive products. It would also signal the U.S. government’s willingness to expand the arsenal of economic weapons it uses to push back against China’s human rights abuses — all at a time when decoupling between the American and Chinese economies is gathering pace, particularly in the technology sector. 

“SDN listing is a big deal because it is essentially kicking this company off the global financial infrastructure,” says Emily Kilcrease, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former USTR official. “That is a pretty escalatory step, and would be a significant shift in sanctions policy.” [Source]

The five most prominent listed Chinese ai specialists are collectively worth nearly $120bn (see chart 1). The biggest of them, Hikvision, has a market value of $60bn. Also a target of US sanctions. https://t.co/E7gQNC53ej pic.twitter.com/zJaqnFnEGB

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) January 23, 2022

https://twitter.com/barros_bryce/status/1524750081928347648

Jon Bateman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, provided a long twitter thread on how putting Hikvision on the SDN list could set a dangerous precedent and escalate into a full-blown tech war:

No doubt, China would retaliate. In the past, China has been cautious—taking superficially reciprocal actions (like its “unreliable entity list”) that may not pack the same punch as an initial U.S. blow. And China’s economic malaise, esp in tech, could give it reason for caution.

— Jon Bateman (@JonKBateman) May 4, 2022

Worryingly, a powerful Chinese counterpunch could trigger tit-for-tat cycles. American leaders and commentators would of course demand further punishment for China’s “coercive” and “arbitrary” response to the “legitimate” and “rules-based” U.S. sanctions of Hikvision.

— Jon Bateman (@JonKBateman) May 4, 2022

Ultimately, the uncorking of SDN sanctions for human rights abuses in Xinjiang would embolden those who call for similar sanctions of Chinese companies involved in “ordinary” mass surveillance/censorship, in the PLA’s military build-up, in unfair economic practices, and more.

— Jon Bateman (@JonKBateman) May 4, 2022

Hikvision has already been singled out for sanctions several times by the U.S. government. In 2019, it was placed on the “Entity List” and locked out from federal procurement, and last year it was put on the Pentagon’s “Chinese military-industrial complex companies” list, authorizing the president to impose new sanctions. Hikvision’s notoriety as a prime target for sanctions stems from its well-documented role in supplying equipment to the Chinese military and to Xinjiang mass detention camps. A recent white paper by surveillance industry firm IPVM described the numerous ways that Hikvision has been involved in human rights abuses in Xinjiang:

Hikvision’s is a major provider of surveillance technology in Xinjiang, and its operations have expanded considerably since 2017 in tandem with high demand for surveillance by government authorities. This includes several large, ongoing projects in regions with high Uyghur populations, deployment of surveillance systems in mosques and concentration camps, and a People’s Armed Police (PAP) camp research center in the provincial capital, Urumqi.

[…] In 2017, Hikvision entered into 5 ‘private-public partnerships’ with Xinjiang public security authorities based on the ‘Design-Build-Finance-OperateTransfer’ (DBFOT) model, meaning Hikvision not only supplies and constructs the projects, but is contracted to directly operate them for a period of several years. The projects, worth a combined total of ~$275 M USD (1.86 B RMB), include mass surveillance and face recognition installations across Xinjiang.

[…] Several of Hikvision’s aforementioned private-public projects specify surveillance and face recognition cameras in mosques. In the Moyu County project alone, Hikvision agreed to build and operate installations at all 967 mosques in the County thru 2035. Mosque  surveillance is also included in the Pishan County, and Yutian County projects.

[…] Hikvision’s private-public partnerships detail how the company agreed to install and directly operate surveillance systems for concentration camps in the Pishan, Moyu, and YuTian county projects. Hikvision’s cameras have also repeatedly appeared in investigations of Xinjiang concentration camps.

[…] Ovalbek Turdakun, a witness from the camps, said Hikvision cameras acted as virtual prison guards in his cell. He and his 22 cellmates were monitored 24/7, with a speaker attached to the cameras used to enforce rules such as preventing inmates from conversing with each other. Inmates were even required to ask guards through the surveillance cameras for permission to use the toilet. Consistent with this account, a recent book explains how cameras “allowed 1-3 guards to manage an entire floor of the camps, so thousands of people.” [Source]

2) Surveillance for camps. Several Xinjiang concentration camps have been filmed covered with advanced Hikvision cameras that can track people & objects at night https://t.co/lsIJxqIYHY
The BBC's @TheJohnSudworth
filmed one during a guided tour in 2019 https://t.co/bsx9P8UwZH

— Charles Rollet (@CharlesRollet1) May 18, 2022

4) Uyghur detection cameras. @ipvideo
discovered a facial recognition camera on Hikvision's China website with specs saying it could automatically detect Uyghurs https://t.co/faYjTol6D6

— Charles Rollet (@CharlesRollet1) May 18, 2022

6) Powering Xinjiang's "Stability Maintenance Command Centers". Recent government procurement docs found by @ipvideo stated that Hikvision powers most of these surveillance centers, closely tied to the PRC's "anti-terror" crackdown. https://t.co/5UZ0JVluDl

— Charles Rollet (@CharlesRollet1) May 18, 2022

8) @ipvideo interviewed a camp survivor who instantly recognized Hikvision's logo and confirmed the cameras are ubiquitous inside & outside the camps, where they are used as 'virtual guards' https://t.co/Plb1VhNcoR

— Charles Rollet (@CharlesRollet1) May 18, 2022

Having long been aware of the threat of sanctions for its policies in Xinjiang, the Chinese government has taken an interest in critiquing the general use of sanctions and undermining their institutional foundation within the UN. A recent press release by UN Watch revealed that in 2021 the Chinese government contributed US$200,000 to Alena Douhan, the UN Special Rapporteur on “the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures.” This contribution was the largest given by any country to any special rapporteur that year, and the larger of two contributions by China, indicating the value of Douhan’s mission to the Chinese government. The UN Watch press release described how Douhan not only received an enormous sum from China, but also legitimized China’s policies in Xinjiang by then participating in government-sponsored propaganda events:

A professor at the Lukashenko-controlled Belarus State University, Douhan was appointed in March 2020 to a position—initiated by Iran on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement—that defines Western sanctions against rogue regimes as violations of human rights.

According to disclosures buried in an 83-page UN filing, Douhan last year received $200,000 from China — at the same time as she lent the imprimatur of her UNHRC mandate for the most extreme forms of Chinese disinformation, including a regime-sponsored propaganda virtual event with the banner, “Xinjiang is a Wonderful Land.”

Douhan headlined China’s September 8, 2021 online program, lending UN legitimacy to propaganda videos and speeches from Chinese government officials aimed at covering up the regime’s herding of 1 million Uyghurs into camps by falsely portraying Xinjiang as a utopia.

[…] The program also screened videos claiming that “Xinjiang’s policies conform to international labor and human rights standards, and support the will of all ethnic groups to live a better life.” [Source]

3/ In December, after she took China's $200,000, @AlenaDouhan suddenly appeared at this Chinese regime event, lending U.N. legitimacy to a series of propaganda videos & speeches that covered up the herding of 1 million Uyghurs into camps, falsely portraying Xinjiang as a utopia. pic.twitter.com/lj1edrkvtw

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) May 17, 2022

5/ China sponsored this UN Human Rights Council event with Belarus, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Interestingly, Douhan works for the Lukashenko regime's Belarus State University; has already visited Venezuela and Zimbabwe; and is today in Iran. pic.twitter.com/7e4h7Lti34

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) May 17, 2022

7/ On June 3, 2021, Douhan legitimized a third propaganda event on Western sanctions co-sponsored last year by China, together with Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.https://t.co/RYbRWU2rhhhttps://t.co/sMLrjLkQF4

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) May 17, 2022

The attack likely targeted Namewee for his outspokenness against censorship, particularly in China. As he wrote on his Facebook page shortly after the hack, “I was mentally prepared for this day long ago … what goes around, comes around. Over the years, I really have offended too many people. The fact that it took 13 years for something like this to happen means it’s already long overdue, especially since the launch of ‘Fragile’ last year.” Last October, Namewee and Kimberley Chen released “Fragile,” a song mocking the sensitivity of nationalist “little pinks” and Xi Jinping. The song received 20 million views in two weeks and was quickly blocked in China, along with Namewee and Chen’s music and online accounts. (“Fragile” was one of CDT’s Top-10 Censored Words of 2021.) A month later, Namewee released “The Wall,” a song subtly critiquing the Great Firewall.

By Wednesday, YouTube had restored his account, including all of its lost content. Namewee posted on Facebook: “Namewee’s YouTube Account is BACK! Thank you to everyone who has helped us and supporting us! We will keep creating our music/videos and keep voicing out for freedom!” CDT Chinese collected netizen comments on the hacking of Namewee’s account: 

o0NXkDxDiMLVK2q：The “fragile-hearted” wreak their revenge. 

freelysiumeu：Most likely it was done by the gangster CCP’s little red hackers. The Russians aren’t that “fragile.”

UIMfy8k02PBLHHz：With Daddy’s [Russia’s] help.

Moranjianghe：Namewee didn’t offend the Russians too, did he?

Xiaoju777：They keep saying that our country needs to be strong and confident, that we’re a great and powerful nation, but then they throw a big tantrum when someone says a few words not to their liking. It’s so petty.

YeY6slVaHwjqOIJ：The more they do this sort of thing, the more it proves they’re “fragile.” [Source]

Another recently targeted YouTube account is that of Wang Jixian, a Chinese national who has been based in Odessa, Ukraine for the past four years. After several weeks of reporting on the war through daily vlogs, often with content that challenged Chinese government narratives, his YouTube account was abruptly suspended on March 31. Yitong Wu, Chingman and Wang Yun from Radio Free Asia described Wang’s reaction to the suspension:

YouTube told Wang that his account had been suspended for posting “violent content” in his March 28 video, ignoring an appeal submitted by Wang.

“I find this inexplicable,” Wang told RFA. “YouTube claims that my account was reported for violent content, which violates the rules, but where is the violence? I didn’t include photos [of violence] in my video.”

“This was a front-line war report … In my appeal, I asked them to say which video or photos weren’t allowed, but within five minutes of my submitting the appeal, YouTube sent its final decision, which was that my account has been suspended for a week,” he said.

Wang said he didn’t blame YouTube, but the “ulterior motives” of whoever reported him.

[…] Wang said his suspension came after he was targeted by multiple messages warning him “don’t provoke the Chinese government,” and “don’t be too aggressive with your comments.” [Source]

Wang’s YouTube channel had over one hundred thousand subscribers and had garnered over seven million views. His videos documenting his lived experience of the war and the brutality of the Russian attacks often contradicted coverage from Chinese state media, which has largely amplified pro-Russian narratives and disinformation. As Jessie Yeung and Yong Xiong reported for CNN, Wang’s videos resulted in a backlash from the Chinese government and from many on Chinese social media:

“You don’t need this Chinese passport anymore, you have already forgotten which country you are from,” one popular comment on Douyin read. “The official position of the country should be the position of all Chinese people.”

[…] He said [a Chinese embassy staff member] reached out to him recently, insinuating Wang was being paid to post his videos, and asking: “Who sent you?” When Wang insisted he wasn’t doing it for money, the staffer replied: “Your current behavior is not in line with national interests. I want to cut off relations with you, let’s block each other.”

That “really hurt my heart,” Wang said.

[…] Chinese censors have also cracked down on his videos online, he said. [… Only] about 80% of his videos have been left on WeChat, and fewer than 20% on Douyin.

[…] After speaking with CNN, his Chinese social media accounts were banned, leaving him unable to contact his family back home. [Source]

Wang’s YouTube account was restored last week, but his WeChat account has been permanently deleted. “What are you scared of? Is my voice really that terrifying?” he asked in a video reacting to the deletion of his WeChat account. Other online media groups outside of China have been targeted in similar “malicious reporting” attacks that prompted platforms to suspend their accounts. On April 2, the Twitter account of The Great Translation Movement, an anonymous group that seeks to expose pro-CCP propaganda via translation, was suspended before being restored the next day. Much of the group’s attention has focused on pro-Russian and pro-war online discourse on Chinese social media. In response to the reporting attack, the group warned little pinks: “Stop taking advantage of the free world to persecute our freedom of speech.” CDT’s YouTube account was also suspended for several days in January after a similar “mass reporting” attack. 

🔻 The Great Translation Movement @TGTM_Official has tweeted an official statement (in both English and simplified Chinese) pic.twitter.com/cC5F6AWpVC

— Byron Wan (@Byron_Wan) April 3, 2022

Within China, little pinks’ reporting of social media accounts that run counter to nationalist narratives is a classic tactic of online censorship. Sharpening this tactic in April of last year, the Cyberspace Administration of China launched a new “historical nihilism” hotline to allow netizens to report on online activity that spreads unapproved content about history, in a “hope that the majority of Internet users will actively play their part in supervising society … and enthusiastically report harmful information.” In an article about the hotline for Quartz last year, Jane Li described the evolution of online smear campaigns by regular Chinese users: 

While in the past the Party has cultivated paid internet armies and requir[ed] tech companies to use a mix of employees and automation for censorship, it’s increasingly relying on regular users to shape discourse online by encouraging them to join smear campaigns against activists and dissidents.

Most recently patriotic internet users have helped wage a consumer boycott against foreign companies who issued public stances about Xinjiang, where China is accused of mass human rights abuses against the Uyghur ethnic minority. Still, as the news outlet Protocol this week documented in its examination of a sexist campaign to troll researcher Vicky Xu, who co-authored reports on Chinese factory use of forced Uyghur labor for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, even seemingly spontaneous waves of abuse get a nudge from state-linked online accounts. [Source]

In the course of daily conversation, the students found that messages preceded by the term “200 jin of dumplings” (200斤饺子) were not received by their counterparts. Juvenile hilarity ensued. They sent each other curses and confessions: “200 jin of dumplings, you’re a stupid c***,” “200 jin of dumplings, you’re an idiot,” “200 jin of dumplings, piggy,” and “200 jin of dumplings, you’re a lil’ cutie.” They then shared screenshots of their “discovery” online—delighting in their exploitation of a perceived bug in China’s most popular chat app.

Little did they know, the “bug” was no accident—but rather an automatic censorship mechanism. In 2017, CCTV aired a special on Xi Jinping’s time as a sent-down youth in the village of Liangjiahe, Shaanxi Province, in which Xi claimed, “I’d carry 200 jin of wheat on a ten-li mountain road without even switching shoulders.” Mass ridicule followed his boast. Many doubted his claim. In 2020, a group of Taiwanese bodybuilders attempted, and failed, to recreate the feat (their shoulder yoke broke under the weight). The 2021 smash hit song “Fragile,” which is censored in China, also mocked the claim. 

Subtitle: “I’d carry 200 jin of wheat on a ten-li mountain road…”

“200 jin” soon became a tongue-in-cheek reference for Xi, alongside a host of other phrases derived from the same interview series: “Wheat-Carrying Man,” “Wheat-Bearing Donkey,” “Without Switching Shoulders,” and the character 奭 shì, which resembles a single person carrying a heavy load across their shoulders (the two radicals 百 at left and right mean “one hundred.”) All of these have become sensitive words subject to censorship. In 2019, a person claimed that they were invited to “drink tea,” a euphemism for police interrogation, after posting “I hope that Trump beats ‘200 jin’s’ brain out soon,” in a QQ group.

It is not uncommon for young Chinese netizens to brush up against censorship without realizing it. Even the censors need refresher courses on the Tiananmen democracy protests and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Liu Xiaobo. China’s censorship regime is so vast that it is difficult to remember what must be forgotten.

On March 24, the hashtag #ResearchConfirmsNovelCoronavirusCreatedByUSCompany# (#研究证实新冠病毒是美国公司制造#) briefly topped the Weibo Trending Topics List, although it has now disappeared from the list. Many were dismayed by the overnight popularity of a rumor whose “chain of transmission” stretches from Chinese state media and a Confucius Institute professor back to the British anti-vax and conspiracy podcast The Exposé, the Daily Mail tabloid, a Fox Business channel interview, and a study that appeared in a minor medical journal. The rumor has been debunked by a number of fact-checking organizations, including AFP Fact Check and Politifact.

Rumor that "Study proves US company (Moderna) created COVID-19" is trending top 2 in Weibo now (Chinese versions of Twitter). pic.twitter.com/4hfYtE0YZ0

— Yanzhong Huang (@YanzhongHuang) March 24, 2022

Someone who claims to be a Confucius Institute professor shared an English conspiracy theory article that "proves" America's Moderna started Covid. And with China's gov't media amplifying, it topped Weibo's trending list. Gov't officials too constantly fuelling such narratives: pic.twitter.com/3SzYPYkkPk

— Bill Birtles (@billbirtles) March 24, 2022

This is nuts. Somehow the UK conspiracy site The Exposé has become "British media" in a Chinese blog article that calls Moderna the Covid inventor, and that has been republished by a subsidiary of Global Times, China Daily, etc. A relevant Weibo hashtag has been read 200M times. pic.twitter.com/QGStCybA9B

— Yaling Jiang (@yaling_jiang) March 24, 2022

Posts debunking the rumor quickly appeared on Chinese social media sites. In a WeChat post titled “Does research confirm that the novel coronavirus was created by the American company Moderna?” Wang Zilong of China Fact Check delved into the source material, including the Daily Mail article that quoted scientists skeptical of the study’s findings, and concluded that the rumor was unfounded. Another WeChat essay (“Moderna created the novel coronavirus? Sorry, you’ve been hoodwinked again”) conducted a deep dive into the medical evidence and concluded: “Subscribing to rumors and conspiracy theories will ultimately only […] blind us even more. Not to mention that at present, the currently effective vaccines are the best way to fight the pandemic and return to normal life and [economic] production as soon as possible. If vaccines are demonized in this way, we will only victimize ourselves.” 

A post by WeChat user donkeymeipin (“No one really believes that #ResearchConfirmsNovelCoronavirusCreatedByUSCompany#, do they?”) took a humorous approach to debunking the rumor and highlighting the official hypocrisy that allowed it to spread:

After reading it, I couldn’t help but be amazed: such big news, such an evil act, yet the BBC, CNN and the like all chose to remain silent. Even RT, hitherto so outspoken, didn’t utter a word about it. It was only some of our local media that chose to stand up and unmask the truth—it turns out that China’s journalism industry is the cream of the crop!

So, who was this maverick foreign media source? According to our local media, it was the Daily Mail. 

This left me speechless, because the Daily Mail is a famous tabloid that often publishes sensational news. In 2017, Wikipedia announced that the Daily Mail would be classified as a “generally unreliable source,” and that citations from it would be prohibited when editing Wikipedia articles in English, except in exceptional circumstances.

The Daily Mail has also spread rumors about us. Last year, when people made memes satirizing some Chinese netizens’ extreme fixation on gold medals, […] the Daily Mail saw it, assumed it was true, and without fact-checking, published the fake news on its website under the headline: “China declares itself the winner of the 2020 Olympics after altering medal count to claim those won by Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.”

[…] If you search a bit online, you will also find that as early as July 22 last year, the [Chinese] National Health Commission was proclaiming that the novel coronavirus showed no sign of being altered or manipulated by humans, thus fundamentally negating the possibility of it being man-made. [Chinese]

Despite the debunkers’ best efforts, the rumor was further amplified when China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) entered the fray. Li Yang, counselor of the Department of Information at MoFA and former Chinese Consul General in Rio de Janeiro, tweeted out a screenshot from the ur-source of the rumor: anti-vax/conspiracy podcast The Exposé.

Wow, officials with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs now spreading the conspiracy theory that Moderna created Covid. Hard to believe they don’t see the credibility they lose amplifying this stuff. Takeaway is still no sign the wolf warrior approach has been reconsidered. https://t.co/zNPM8Wwijq

— Paul Mozur 孟建國 (@paulmozur) March 25, 2022

This is consistent with the recent uptick in Chinese government officials and affiliated academics promoting pet conspiracy theories such as “American-run biolabs in Ukraine” and the warmed-over “Fort Detrick COVID-origins probe.”

If the #US really has nothing to hide, it should immediately give international experts full & unfettered access to #FortDetrick & hundreds other bio-labs it operates all over the world.

— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) March 24, 2022

This can be added to the video of Renmin University Professor Jin Canrong I shared yesterday, and it marks an escalation in the party-state media's approach toward this readily debunked Kremlin conspiracy.https://t.co/WriqtDcIxJ

— Tuvia Gering 陶文亚 (@GeringTuvia) March 24, 2022

The fact that these hashtagged conspiracy theories are allowed to germinate and thrive on Chinese social media offers a glimpse into top-level propaganda priorities, as communicated to tech platforms via censorship directives. Recently leaked directives from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), published and translated by CDT, reveal the extreme control that platforms and censors exert over hashtags and trending topics.

A March 3 CAC directive addressed to major media platforms including Baidu, Tencent, Sohu, Netease, and Sina contained the following instructions regarding list management on the topic of Ukraine (italics added by CDT editors):

Strengthen list management. Without exception, existing hashtags started by individuals, self-published media, and commercial platforms must not be included in trending topics, and new hashtags are strictly prohibited. Apart from local media hashtags that feature objective reporting on official government statements or on measures such as the evacuation of Chinese citizens living overseas, any other local media hashtags should gradually move down and drop off the lists, and the addition of new hashtags on lists should be controlled.

[…] Apart from core media [i.e. the core state-media outlets such as Xinhua, CCTV, People’s Daily etc], all news topics started by commercial websites and self-published media will be dissolved, without exception, and collected content citing foreign media reports will be suppressed and dealt with. [Source]

Past censorship directives provide ample evidence that the central government can “turn down the temperature” on an issue when it so desires, or shut down unwanted discussion about an inconvenient topic, including the origins of COVID-19:

This morning, the State Council will hold a press conference on tracing the origins of COVID-19. Do not report. (July 23, 2021) [Source]

The high-level, tacit approval of the recent Moderna/COVID conspiracy hashtag stands in stark contrast to the relentless censoring of hashtags related to topics the government would prefer to suppress—the Xuzhou trafficking case, Peng Shuai, Xianzi’s sexual harassment lawsuit, commemorations of International Women’s Day, or anti-war sentiments. On the same day that the Moderna/COVID conspiracy hashtag shot to number one, the official hashtag for the Xuzhou trafficking case was quietly scrubbed from Weibo, despite continuing public interest in the case and concern for the woman involved.

有网友今早发现，徐州八孩案件的话题被微博悄无声息删除了。别说半年，连两个月的时间都没到，韭菜是很容易健忘的。 pic.twitter.com/QHeLbEzFYB

— Jacobson🌎🌸贴贴BOT (@jakobsonradical) March 24, 2022

Translation of the above tweet by @jakobsonradical: This morning, netizens discovered that the hashtag about the Xuzhou mother-of-eight case had been silently deleted from Weibo. It hasn’t even been two months, much less half a year. How easily forgotten are we lowly “chives” [peons].

Image at bottom left shows a message posted by Weibo user @更九九:  Sure enough, it quietly disappeared. While the China Eastern Airlines plane crash drew major attention, it quietly disappeared, along with the six billion views it generated. #OfficialUpdateOnTheFengxianMother-of-8# [the now-deleted official hashtag]

Image at right shows that @更九九’s Weibo account was later suspended for the previous comment. Notice at bottom right: “This account is temporarily suspended for violating the [Weibo] Community Agreement.” [Chinese]

The issue of what gets censored and what is allowed to remain on Chinese social media is at the heart of the “Great Translation Movement” (大翻译运动, Dà Fānyì Yùndòng), a crowd-sourced project to translate and publicize some of the more extreme and uncensored nationalistic sentiments being expressed on Chinese social media. On March 24, the Global Times printed a scathing editorial in which it accused the movement’s participants of selecting and translating “cherry picked content” as part of “a malicious smear campaign against China.”

Some users active in the so-called #GreatTranslationMovement are Chinese immigrants to #Western countries. Some of them hold a delusional superiority complex toward China, and woo the attention from Western media, said observers. https://t.co/LM7RnN9lsC

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) March 24, 2022

Thank Global Times for advertising us to a wider audience!
Though, here are some misunderstandings that needs to be cleared.#TheGreatTranslationMovement #大翻译运动 https://t.co/z50woMzrXA pic.twitter.com/3BektbPuHO

— The Great Translation Movement 大翻译运动 (@TGTM_Official) March 24, 2022

(1/4) How to identify a political infiltration AKA 境外势力?

People's Public Security University of China crafted this comic with simple explanation. We are here to share these tips so they can be identified on Twitter as well 😉#大翻译运动 #TheGreatTranslationMovement pic.twitter.com/vZJjor4hDK

— The Great Translation Movement 大翻译运动 (@TGTM_Official) March 24, 2022

Global Voices’ Oiwan Lam reported on the origins of the movement, which began among Chinese-speaking Reddit users and has spread to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram. She also detailed the varying reactions to the movement, and the dilemma it poses for Chinese censors:

Apart from criticism from official Chinese outlets, some overseas Chinese netizens also expressed concern that translating hate speech on Chinese social media would fuel anti-Chinese sentiment among western societies.

[…] Chang Ping, an exiled veteran Chinese journalist, however, pointed out that the Great Translation movement is not counteracting against Chinese people, but a propaganda and censorship machine that produces a large number of patriotic “zombies” or the so-called Little Pinks

[…] Cai Xia, a retired professor of the CCP Central Party School also supports the initiative.

[…] Some users suggested that the organizers of the Great Translation Movement should review and provide more context for the translations so as to prevent the spread of hatred against Chinese people.

Others believe that the translation efforts are creating a dilemma for Chinese censorship authorities. Namely, if it censors problematic content from the Little Pinks, they may lose some supporters; if the authorities ignore them, they are tacitly approving them. [Source]

A recent CDT Chinese article includes a compilation of Twitter comments describing the ideas behind the Great Translation Movement, and how it seeks to draw attention to the Chinese government’s tacit support of hateful or bombastic online commentary:

@liuchiawan: Since it [the content being translated] 1. was posted within the Great Firewall of China (GFW) and 2. was not deleted, this indicates that this sort of speech is, in fact, very much in line with Communist Party censorship standards for speech, and counts as “allowable speech.” How, then, can it be labeled “extreme”?

[…] @Nicky38950176: This type of censored speech is, in itself, a reflection on them [the CCP leadership]. They’re the reason that this sort of speech can exist.

[…] @RekishitoSeiji: “You insulted China!” “What did we do to insult China? “You translated what I said.”

@Allan_km_lin: Actually, the Chinese government is capable of censoring this sort of speech. The fact that they don’t means that they have no objection to it. [Chinese]

This week, Chinese government officials and state media also began amplifying disinformation from Russian officials and state media about American-funded biolabs in Ukraine alleged to be secretly producing chemical weapons. A wave of articles from Xinhua, CGTN, China Daily, People’s Daily, and Global Times—all citing Russian government and media sources—has flooded the Chinese media landscape. David Rising from the Associated Press described these articles and the traction they have gained online:

China has been actively promoting the claim, however, with headlines like “Russia reveals evidence of U.S.-funded bio-program in Ukraine” and “China urges U.S. to disclose more details about biolabs in Ukraine” on state-run China Global Television Network’s website. The Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper published a story Thursday with the headline “US tries to refute ‘rumors’ about its biolabs in Ukraine, but can we believe it?”

A nearly three-minute video of a Russian Defense Ministry news conference repeating the allegations has been viewed more than 10 million times on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform akin to Twitter, and liked more than 90,000 times. [Source]

https://twitter.com/ThisIsWenhao/status/1502098672481411076

https://twitter.com/ThisIsWenhao/status/1502103996689006596

While experts worry that Russia may have floated these conspiracy theories as a pretext for its own potential use of chemical weapons and to increase domestic support for its invasion, China found another reason to amplify it: to reinvigorate its own conspiracy theories claiming that the U.S. is responsible for having artificially created the virus that causes COVID-19novel coronavirus. Chinese state media articles have now begun citing Russian government sources claiming that the biolabs had been conducting research into bat coronavirus. 

It has been picked up again in Chinese media environments this week alongside Russia propaganda campaigns, and been brought to China’s Foreign Ministry press conference. https://t.co/PYdJBtoEtx

— TTCAT 🇺🇦🧋 (@TTCATz) March 10, 2022

Dziś rosyjskie i chińskie MSZ gra na tę samą nutę: laboratoria biologiczne w Ukrainie, a że udziały w nich mają rzekomo Amerykanie, to Chiny mogą upiec dwie pieczenie na jednym ogniu: odgryźć się za żądania USA (i reszty państw) dot. dochodzeń w Wuhan i poprzeć Rosję. pic.twitter.com/sU0EArf7aN

— Krzysztof Pawliszak (@luigiluib) March 8, 2022

Last week, Li Yuan from The New York Times tracked numerous other instances of Chinese state media recycling disinformation from Russian state media:

Hours after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Chinese Communist Party tabloid, Global Times, posted a video saying that a large number of Ukrainian soldiers had laid down their arms. Its source: the Russian state-controlled television network, RT.

Two days later, China’s state broadcaster Central Television Station (CCTV) flashed a breaking news alert, quoting Russia’s parliamentary speaker, that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had fled Kyiv. CCTV then created a related hashtag on the Twitter-like platform Weibo that was viewed 510 million times and used by 163 media outlets in the country.

[…] Chinese media is also propagating Russian disinformation that Ukraine has been using civilians as human shields. In its prime-time news program on Feb. 26, CCTV quoted President Putin as making that allegation. A few days later the nationalistic news site, guancha.com, ran a banner headline that said the Russian military was going only after military targets, while the Ukrainian military was using civilians as human shields.

[…] While videos circulated outside China purportedly showing Ukrainians’ kind treatment of Russian prisoners of war, the trending social media topic in China was that captured Russians had endured Nazi-like torture. Both CCTV and the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, created hashtags echoing the same, based on a briefing by the Russian defense ministry. They had combined views of more than 200 million. [Source]

Staying on the theme from the previous tweet, Chinese state media outlets Global Times and CGTN both had to issue corrections after falsely reporting that President Zelensky had fled Kyiv. He hasn't.

H/T @kerrya11en pic.twitter.com/E2Zyel9rfl

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) March 4, 2022

They marvel at Russia’s propaganda skills with a video about Russian soldiers sharing food with Ukrainian children or Ukrainian POWs reflecting on their sins at a memorial for children killed by the evil Ukrainian Government…. Note these are all from Chinese state media accounts pic.twitter.com/1fMMoL5tvf

— Han Yang 涵瞰世界 (@polijunkie_aus) March 6, 2022

DoubleThink Lab, a Taiwan-based organization mapping online information operations, created an observatory that has tracked, among other information operations throughout the war, Chinese state media’s use of Russian government and state media content:

7th March 2022: China’s Role in the Russian-Ukrainian War

[…] Global Times also made a series of posts about the discovery of biological laboratories in Ukraine on Weibo, and used hashtags such as, “U.S.-funded laboratories have developed biological weapons” (美資助的烏克蘭實驗室曾研發生化武器), or “Russia says it has found U.S. military-biological programs in Ukraine” (俄方稱在烏發現美國軍事生物計劃). Chinese media Guancha Syndicate also published a post with the hashtag that “Ukraine is destroying U.S. funded chemical and biological weapons” (烏克蘭正銷毀美國資助的生化武器項目). The information in these posts is heavily based on an article published by Russian think tank the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) on February 25, 2022, which alleged that there were bio labs in Ukraine funded by the U.S. government. SCF is closely affiliated with Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Global Times then used the information to write a Mandarin-language article, but it did not receive immediate attention at that time. 

[…] 6th March 2022: Anti-US, Anti-Ukraine, Pro-Russia Sentiments in the Chinese Information Space

[…] The Russian government released a video showing Vladimir Putin explaining the reason for sending Russian troops to Ukraine to a group of flight attendants sitting in close proximity to him, in an attempt to turn around his image. The video was quickly reposted by Global Times, which added Chinese subtitles to it, and spread to other Chinese media environments including Taiwan.

[…] 4th March 2022: Regularly quoting disinformation and conspiracy theories from Russian sources

[…] Xinhua’s “Reference News” established a Weibo topic “Putin states only Fascists fight like this,” claiming that Ukraine’s military has no humanity towards their populace, echoing Russian state media’s false narrative that “Ukraine’s government is using the populace as a shield.”

[…] From 9 pm Global Times published a number of articles on Weibo questioning whether Zelensky had left Kyiv, referencing Sputnik and TASS. Close to midnight, they referenced Sputnik as reporting that Zelensky was still in Kyiv. An hour later they quoted an opposition parliamentarian’s claim that Zelensky had already fled to Poland. On the morning of the 5th, after Zelensky posted a video of himself clarifying that he is still in Kyiv, Global Times followed suit and once again changed their story. [Source]

The content used by Chinese state media has been propagated widely across Western and Chinese social media. An investigation by Axios discovered that Chinese state broadcaster CGTN had placed dozens of advertisements on Facebook that support Russia’s narrative of the war. The ads feature newscasts from CGTN, and are particularly controversial since Facebook recently stated it would ban ads from Russian state media. Over on Chinese social media, an analysis by CNN’s Simone McCarthy and CNN’s Beijing bureau revealed a significant amount of Chinese state-media content to be pro-Russian and sourced directly from the Russian government or state media:

A CNN analysis reviewed nearly 5,000 social media posts from 14 Chinese state media outlets during the first eight days of Russia’s invasion posted onto China’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo. The analysis found that of the more than 300 most-shared posts about the events in Ukraine — which were each shared more than 1,000 times — almost half, about 140, were what CNN classified as distinctly pro-Russian, often containing information attributed to a Russian official or picked up directly from Russia’s state media. 

[…] While about 140 posts showed Russia in a positive light, the analysis identified fewer than 15 posts that portrayed Ukraine positively. [Source]

In another vivid example, Chinese reporter Lu Yuguang gave a report for Phoenix TV, a partially state-owned Chinese broadcaster, while embedded with a frontline Russian military unit in Mariupol, Ukraine. Lu managed to interview Russian soldiers, and he parroted Russian disinformation that militants in Kyiv were using hostages. In an earlier report, he also managed to interview Denis Pushilin, leader of the separatist-occupied Donetsk region. CGTN recently amplified Pushilin’s call for Ukraine to surrender to Russia.

A lot of questions floating around about this guy at the moment, who's appeared in Mariupol, interviewing Russian soldiers on Chinese TV.

His name is Lu Yuguang and he's Phoenix TV's chief Moscow correspondent. He's a former navy officer. pic.twitter.com/QlJzZJOdAG

— Kerry Allen 凯丽 (@kerrya11en) March 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/ZichenWanghere/status/1501211958892285955

Edward Wong from The New York Times reported that China has reached a new level of government cooperation with Russia in spreading disinformation over state media:

The Chinese government’s promotion of Russian disinformation in the middle of the war has ignited concern among Western officials because of China’s powerful diplomatic standing and extensive cyberabilities. Analysts who study disinformation from the two nations said this was the first time they had seen this scale of amplification between Beijing and Moscow around a conspiracy theory.

“I can’t think of another active propaganda campaign by Russia that has gotten this level of boost from China,” said Bret Schafer, who tracks disinformation from China, Russia and Iran as a senior fellow for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington nonprofit group. “I haven’t seen this volume around something like this.”

[…] “Now that American tech platforms have taken action against Russian state media, the Chinese state media are filling the gap,” [Mr. Schafer] said. “They’re mirroring Kremlin talking points.” [Source]

China and Russia have a history of amplifying one another’s government talking points, with China often copying from the Russian playbook and both countries mutually benefitting. Within the realm of state media, China and Russia have a longstanding partnership focused on sharing content and “combatting disinformation.” In an article for The Moscow Times last year, Alexander Gabuev and Leonid Kovachich, Russia and China experts respectively, described some of the agreements underpinning Sino-Russian state-media cooperation and China’s interest in emulating Russian state media tools:

Since 2014, Russian and Chinese state-run media have signed several agreements. Russia’s Sputnik News and the China Media Group (CMG) are the most visible and important players. (The CMG includes CCTV, Chinese National Radio, and Chinese Radio International.) In 2018, Sputnik and the CMG signed a cooperation agreement focused on content sharing and joint projects. Sputnik previously had similar agreements with other Chinese media outlets (including the Xinhua News Agency, Chinese Radio International, and the Global Times), but since the CMG’s emergence as a leading international media holding in China, the company has become the prime interlocutor on the Chinese side. The respective heads of Sputnik News and the CMG—Dmitry Kiselyov and Shen Haixiong (who is also deputy director of the CCP’s Propaganda Department)—co-chair the Media Council of the Russia-China Peace, Friendship, and Development Committee. Despite the fanfare, the 2018 agreement remains limited to bilateral exchanges of content, with CMG materials about China appearing on Sputnik News platforms in Russian and vice versa.

[…] Several internal Chinese government studies examined the modus operandi of Russian state-run channels and news agencies aimed at foreign audiences. These studies sought to identify international best practices to improve engagement with international audiences by the Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese Global Television Network (CGTN), and other state-run Chinese media that produce content in foreign languages. Internal analytical pieces were also produced by state-linked research organizations operated by the Ministry of State Security and the CCP Propaganda Department. They reportedly looked into the experience of Russian international media outlets, as well as the digitalization of the Russian diplomatic corps. [Source]

"That China has chosen to follow Russia's lead in deliberately mischaracterizing the war…almost makes a mockery of China's self-proclaimed impartiality in helping to engage with Russia &bring an end to the violence." I think we can safely strike "almost" https://t.co/nTkp48Kuqf

— Mareike Ohlberg (@MareikeOhlberg) March 11, 2022

The sweeping pro-Russia disinfo on the Chinese internet isn’t created in a day. Want to recap a tiny bit of what happened in the past decade. As the idiom 草蛇灰线 goes, there’re always traces. All the developments below are intertwined with each other. 1/

— Tony Lin 林東尼 (@tony_zy) March 10, 2022

Rumors about the 25-year-old’s sudden death first started to swirl on February 7 when Weibo user Wáng Luò Běi @王落北 who discusses workplace issues and has nearly 5 million followers, said (in Chinese) that he had received multiple anonymous tips about a Bilibili employee leading an artificial-intelligence-powered content moderation team in Wuhan, the capital of Central China’s Hubei Province.

He was told that the young man died from a brain hemorrhage on the night of February 4 after working five overnight shifts in a row, with each starting at 9 p.m. and ending at 9 a.m. “Many people quit their jobs because Bilibili refused to pay extra for holiday shifts and denied their requests for time off during the Lunar Year Holiday,” a person who claimed to be a Bilibili worker wrote in a private message sent to the blogger, adding that the company was purposefully withholding the news of the death from its employees and seemed to have deleted the man’s profile from its employee database.

[…] In response to the accusations online, Bilibili wrote in the internal letter that an attendance check showed that the employee worked from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the days leading up to the brain incident, which are considered “regular working hours” in the company. “We have created a special task team and have been working with the police and his family to follow up on the matter,” it wrote. “Everyone, please take care of yourself and let your supervisor know if you need some time off to rest or seek medical help.” [Source]

……
a young censorship worker at Bilibili died reportedly from overwork during the spring festival holiday
and now other censorship workers employed by the video platform are working around the clock to delete discussions about the death
(more info from CLB below) https://t.co/rLVsZuORMj

— @chenchenzh.bsky.social (@chenchenzh) February 7, 2022

Bilibili’s denial was met with skepticism online. While the popular video streaming platform is famed for its playful work culture—“demerits” issued by an internal inspection team are referred to by a cutesy homophone, “Yosenabe,” a Japanese hot pot dish—work hours can be brutally long. An advertisement for a position in the Wuhan office where “Muse Muxin” worked clearly states that content moderators are expected to work twelve-hour shifts, sometimes late or overnight, and should have “relatively strong ability to withstand pressure.” China’s internet sites are under increased governmental pressure to tighten already stringent moderation policies. In the months leading up to the Chinese New Year, the Cyberspace Administration of China fined a number of major tech companies for lax censorship.

Bilibili is a video and gaming platform known for anime (of the infamously libertine variety until a 2018 crackdown), nationalist clickbait, and anime that doubles as nationalist clickbait. As of 2020, Bilibili employed 2,413 content moderators. According to company insiders, workers are divided into groups with three different work schedules: one group works the day shift, five days a week with two days off; another works from noon to midnight; and a third works from either two in the afternoon to two in the morning, or nine in the evening to nine the following morning. The latter two groups work every other day. They are tasked with removing everything—from the pornographic to the political—that falls afoul of site guidelines or government restrictions. In 2018, the company promised to recruit 36,000 “volunteer” censors, although the success of that effort remains unclear. The office that “Muse Muxin” worked out of was established in 2018 in response to the above-referenced crackdown on vulgarity.

An investigation by Liu Lutian, Zhu Likun, and Yao Yinmi of Late Post, a Chinese digital media outlet, provided an in-depth look at the work culture of Bilibili’s content moderation department. CDT has translated the following excerpt from the report, in which Late Post interviewed a former Bilibili employee who had held a position of nearly equivalent rank to “Muse Muxin,” albeit in a different office:

Before he left Bilibili, Tong Lijun was the interim leader of a moderation team. The job is a trial period for a promotion to moderation team leader. If it went as expected, he would have been promoted to team leader and received a commensurate raise in internal rank and salary. Among the management team, where “everything is a labor of love,” the burnout rate is noticeably high. Whereas previously, Tong could work on “even” days and take “odd” days off, after his promotion to interim team leader he was expected to come in on odd days to supervise another, separate, team’s work. Of his 15 allotted days off, he was expected to show up for work on approximately seven of them. This was not reflected on his timesheet, nor was it technically considered “overtime.”

The greatest pressure came from managing the team. Team leaders are expected to track the volume and accuracy of content moderated by over 30 team members, as well as their monthly test scores (an internal test of job knowledge and time spent in training sessions). They are then expected to compare these data points with a chart produced by a department specifically tasked with scoring employees. The results affect each employee’s monthly rating, making the accounting period extremely nerve-wracking.

Upper management’s demands fall on team leaders’ shoulders. The phrase that makes all team-leaders fraught with anxiety is “human efficiency.”

When management is at its most stringent, team leaders are expected to check their team’s data every two hours. This process is called “chasing human efficiency.” The team leader must then discuss “remedies” with the worst-performing employee. Tong didn’t dare push his team members too hard because his greatest fear was that they would quit. His performance was in part graded on his “talent-preservation rate,” which stipulated that he was to ensure a very low monthly attrition rate. But after a month of “one day on, one day off” night shifts, every team loses at least five to six people who simply cannot stand the pace.

After a month as an interim team leader, Tong Lijun was on the verge of a breakdown. The day he decided to turn in his resignation was the hottest time of year in the south [where he was working]. The company had mandated a two-day management-level training course which required full attendance, on top of which team leaders were expected to pull an overnight shift (from 9:30 pm to 9:30 am the following day).

At noon on the first day, Tong asked for leave from the night shift so that he could get eight hours of sleep. The company leadership told him to “just hang in there a bit longer,” and suggested that he move up his leave request by an hour and a half so that he could start on the 8:00 am shift […] Tong figured that this was because the leadership didn’t want him to miss the morning data announcement, so he had no choice but to do as they asked. In order to finish his monthly report on his team members’ grades, he pulled overtime again, and headed home at 4:00 am. He only slept four hours that night.

By noon the following day, Tong began to feel pressure in his chest and shortness of breath. He felt like his heart was pounding so loudly that it drowned out the sounds of the meeting. When he sent a message informing his bosses of this, he received the same response as before: “Just hang in there a bit longer.” In the middle of a meeting about how team leaders can become even better managers, Tong dashed out of the room, wept at his desk, and turned in his resignation.

Tong told Late Post that censorship teams’ work schedules vary, but he guesses that the team that [Muse Muxin] worked on, the Graphics and Text Censorship Team, must have been even more “involuted” [or burnout -prone] than his own. When he was working overtime shifts, Tong was always told, “Over at Graphics and Texts, the overtime is even worse.” [Chinese]

In response to the outcry over the content moderator’s death, Bilibili announced that it would hire 1,000 new content moderators.

Overwork is an endemic problem in the Chinese tech world. In 2021, ByteDance instituted a “1075” work schedule, 10am to 7pm, five days a week. Yet not all companies have embraced the new push for moderation. At the South China Morning Post, Iris Deng reported on a Tencent employee’s anger over the company’s praise for 20-hour work days:

In his own account of the event that took place on Tuesday evening and was widely circulated online, Fole Zhang Yifei said he criticised his team’s praise of a colleague working “20 consecutive hours at high intensity” to release a promotional page and another “week of consecutive work” to make over 200 modifications to a product design. Zhang works on the team behind WeCom, Tencent’s workplace app.

[…] On Wednesday, WeCom head Ted Huang Tieming, one of the managers Zhang targeted, said in the company’s internal forum that long working hours are “not sustainable”. He also thanked Zhang, who joined the team two months ago, for bringing up the issue, according to two company sources.

[…] The incident was one of the most-searched topics on China’s microblogging platform Weibo on Wednesday, with more than 250 million views and 320,000 discussions around the topic. Many netizens expressed their admiration for Zhang’s stand against the tech giant, calling him a “hero”. [Source]