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CHINA MEDIA BULLETIN

Issue No.184: September 2024

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A monthly update of media freedom news and analysis related to China

For daily updates in the Chinese language, follow FH_China

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on X.



Analysis: The Boomerang Effect of Beijing’s Economic Censorship

In the News:

Censorship and surveillance

Harassment and detentions

Hong Kong

Beyond China

Read Online

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The Boomerang Effect of Beijing’s Economic Censorship

By suppressing negative content, the regime could blind itself to China’s economic reality and motivate citizens to seek out uncensored information.​​​​​

By Yaqiu Wang

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Last week, the Chinese government unveiled a massive stimulus package intended to pull the country’s economy out of its protracted slump. The Chinese stock market responded to the planned measures—including interest-rate cuts, smaller down payments for mortgages, and more liquidity for banks—with the largest single-week jump since 2008. However, in the flurry of global news stories and opinion pieces about Beijing’s bold move, many of which cast doubt

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on its long-term effectiveness, the absence of critical analysis from Chinese economists was glaring.

This is an unfortunate result of the Chinese government’s increasingly feverish efforts to crack down on economic dissent. While censorship on economic issues is hardly new, the level of repression has taken a darker turn of late, sending chills through anyone in the country who analyzes the economy as part of their profession.

The most extreme example is the reported disappearance of Zhu Hengpeng, one of China’s most prominent and well-connected economists. Zhu is a director at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a leading think tank that reports directly to the cabinet. According to the Wall Street Journal, he is believed to have been forcibly disappeared

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in April after he made disparaging remarks about the economy in a private chat group on the Chinese social media platform WeChat. The specifics of what Zhu said are unclear, but some reports

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indicate that he had “improperly discussed central policies” and made a reference to the “mortality” of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping.

In the past year, a slew of China’s most influential analysts have been subjected to social media restrictions

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that limited their ability to comment on the economy. Some were banned from making new posts or gaining new followers. One of the country’s best-known propagandists, former editor in chief of the nationalist tabloid Global Times Hu Xijin, mysteriously went silent

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after he volunteered an unorthodox interpretation of the central government’s guiding economic policy document. Authorities also frequently harassed economists and commentators, warning them not to speak ill of the economy. Even private online conferences were reportedly cut off

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when participants expressed pessimistic views about China’s growth trajectory.

While economic information is perceived as being less politically sensitive than discussions about democracy or human rights in China, Freedom House research

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shows that over the past decade, the CCP has repeatedly ratcheted up restrictions whenever the economy appears to be in trouble. This year, the crackdown has increasingly focused on content that addresses income inequality, youth employment, and poverty—in other words, deep-rooted problems that affect large swaths of the population and could undermine a key pillar of the CCP’s political legitimacy.

It’s not just economic news and analysis that are being censored. Chinese citizens are also prohibited from expressing their feelings about the economy. In February, WeChat removed a popular article

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that reported on survey findings from the Guangzhou-based Canton Public Opinion Research Center, which revealed a prevailing sense of pessimism about the country’s economic well-being. Around the same time, the CCP’s flagship mouthpiece People’s Daily published an article

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titled “The Whole Country Is Filled with Optimism,” attempting to project positivity online. Netizens immediately flooded the social media platform Weibo with posts ridiculing the article. Within hours, the hashtag being used to discuss the piece was removed from public view.

Such censorship obviously infringes on Chinese citizens’ rights to information and expression, but it also carries risks for the Chinese government itself. Authorities need good data and analysis to craft sound economic policies. Critical perspectives force policymakers to reexamine their assumptions and show their work. Suppressing unwelcome news and faking optimism creates an environment in which mistakes are not corrected and errors compound. It could also incentivize officials within the system to falsify data for the sake of their own careers—already a widespread problem

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—and further muddle the situation.

There is at least one additional risk for the regime. Unlike information related to the CCP’s human rights abuses against minority groups or political rivalries within the party leadership, information on the economy is a daily concern for almost everyone in China. Tight censorship on this topic can breed mass distrust in approved sources and compel more netizens to circumvent the CCP’s draconian internet censorship, despite the possibility of punishment, in search of more objective news and analysis on China’s economic situation. In other words, censorship on the economy could ultimately backfire on censorship in general, exposing the regime to an even greater crisis of legitimacy.

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Yaqiu Wang is the research director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House. This article was also published by the Diplomat

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on October 1, 2024.





Censorship and Surveillance

Murder of a 10-year-old boy censored: On September 18, the 93rd anniversary of the 1931 Japanese invasion of China in the lead-up to World War II, a 44-year-old Chinese man surnamed Zhong fatally stabbed

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a 10-year-old boy near a Japanese school in Shenzhen. The boy died

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the next day. Beijing labeled the attack an “isolated

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incident” despite the fact that it was the second widely reported assault targeting Japanese schoolkids in the past three months. (In June, a Chinese man attempted to stab

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a Japanese mother and her child in Suzhou, leading to the death of a Chinese woman who tried to stop the attack.) At least two Weibo hashtags

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and 12 articles

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referencing the Shenzhen assault, including a commemorative letter

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from the victim’s father, were censored.

Retirement age raised, opposition silenced: On September 13, China’s top authorities announced

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that starting in 2025, the statutory retirement age would be raised from 60 to 63 for men, from 50 to 55 for women

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in blue-collar jobs, and from 55 to 58 for women in white-collar jobs. The move came after the adoption

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of a reform plan in late July, in which party officials outlined a gradual increase in retirement age in response to the country’s aging population. The policy change ignited widespread public opposition, which was swiftly censored

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. Weibo hashtags “delaying retirement” and “retirement time” trended briefly before both were banned. A China Youth Daily article

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published in 2013, titled “Delaying Retirement Is a Breach of Contract with a Generation,” circulated on the Chinese internet again, until it was scrubbed

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from the outlet’s website.

Surveillance on campuses: On September 5, as the school season began in China, Beijing-based tech company Abt Networks posted

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on its WeChat account, promoting its internet surveillance products to school administrations. In an article titled “Hey, I See You Climbing over the [Great Fire-] Wall,” the company claimed that its product can help schools “precisely block” the use of virtual private network (VPN) software and backtrack through internet protocol (IP) addresses to find users’ real names for “accurate arrests.” The article garnered international attention

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in mid-September, sparking concerns over surveillance, and was later deleted.





Harassment and detentions

Activists tried behind closed doors: In a secret trial, a court in Guangdong Province rejected

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the appeals of activists Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, upholding their original

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sentences: five years for Huang, a women’s rights advocate, and three and a half years for Wang, a worker’s rights activist, on charges of “inciting subversion of state power.” The activists’ lawyers were never notified about the trial, and were not present to represent the duo before the court—a clear violation of the activists’ right to counsel.

Uyghur scholar marks a decade behind bars: September 23 marked the tenth

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year of imprisonment for Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uyghur scholar and activist who was sentenced to life in prison over alleged “separatism” charges. Tohti was an economics professor at the Beijing-based Minzu University of China and the founder of the now-defunct platform

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“Uyghur Online,” a Chinese-language website dedicated to promoting exchanges and understanding between Uyghurs and Han people. His peaceful activism led to his arrest in 2014. He has reportedly

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been tortured in prison, subject to lengthy periods of solitary confinement, and denied access to medical treatment. He has also been denied

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family visits since 2017. On September 17, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported

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that a Uyghur jail guard overseeing Tohti was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for disclosing information about Tohti’s condition.





Hong Kong

Journalist denied entry to Hong Kong: An Associated Press journalist was denied entry at the Hong Kong airport and repatriated to France after the authorities declined her work visa renewal earlier this year, Ming Pao reported

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on September 23. The Hong Kong government refused to offer any explanation on “individual cases,” but some suspect

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that the journalist’s deportation may be linked to her past work, including taking exclusive shots

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of the jailed newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai. It has become increasingly difficult for foreign correspondents to secure visas to the city, the Ming Pao report suggests. In late August, Bloomberg journalist Haze Fan was denied

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a work visa to Hong Kong as the news outlet sought to relocate her. Fan, a former staffer at Bloomberg’s Beijing bureau, was detained

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in 2020 by Beijing police on the suspicion of “endangering national security,” and was released on bail in 2022.

Appeal made to UN on behalf of Jimmy Lai: Legal representatives of Jimmy Lai, the imprisoned 76-year-old former publisher, submitted an urgent appeal

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to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture on September 12. Since his detention in 2020, Lai has been held in prolonged solitary confinement with limited access to human contact, daylight, and exercise, and was denied independent medical care, the appeal states. The Hong Kong government condemned the appeal, calling it “unreasonable

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smears by external forces.”

Academic freedom in decline: On September 24, Human Rights Watch and the Hong Kong Democracy Council jointly released a report

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highlighting the increasingly repressive academic environment at all eight publicly funded universities in Hong Kong. Influential student unions have been marginalized, peaceful gatherings are monitored and punished, student publications and teaching materials face censorship, and venues formerly associated with democracy and free speech have been dismantled. Some interviewees, feeling as though “they live under a microscope,” have resorted to self-censorship out of fear of retaliation.

Beyond China

Foreign scholars targeted over Taiwan trip: The Chinese embassy in Canada raised protests with the University of Ottawa and Canada’s Department of Global Affairs after two of the university’s professors visited Taiwan for a government-sponsored event, Canadian paper The Globe and Mail reported

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on September 16. The embassy sought to contact both scholars before their departure, which Roland Paris, one of the harassed professors, perceived as an attempt to dissuade him from trip. Paris also noted that other participants in the Taiwan event had been similarly approached by Chinese diplomatic missions in their respective countries.

Beijing’s disinformation campaign targeting US voters: On September 3, research firm Graphika published a report identifying

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a network of inauthentic social media accounts on X and TikTok. These accounts, all traceable to the Beijing-linked disinformation operation Spamouflage, were impersonating US citizens and spreading content aimed at undermining the electoral process and presidential candidates, the report said. Some analysts believe that this is a part of a broader effort

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to influence discourse ahead of the US presidential election. A Chinese embassy spokesperson dismissed the report as “prejudice and malicious speculation.” Both platforms have suspended the identified social media accounts following researchers’ inquiries, according

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to the Associated Press.





Take Action

Access uncensored content: Find an overview comparing popular circumvention tools and information on how to access them via GreatFire.org, here

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or here

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. Learn more about how to reach uncensored content and enhance digital security here

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.

Support a prisoner: Learn how to take action to help journalists and free expression activists, including those featured in past issues of the China Media Bulletin here

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.

Visit the China Media Bulletin Resources section: Learn more about how policymakers, media outlets, educators, and donors can help advance free expression in China and beyond via a new resource section

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on the Freedom House website.





Copyright 2024 Freedom House

All rights reserved.

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Washington, DC 20036



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