A host of measures intended to stifle dissent allowed Beijing’s military parade last week to take place without any major disruptions. The following is a summary of some of these examples of censorship and control.
Some of these measures were implemented before the parade began. A recent censorship directive, leaked online and later translated by CDT, advised cyber-regulators to remain vigilant against a long list of “ideological risks” related to the upcoming military parade and other events during the third quarter of the year. Last week, Laura Bicker at the BBC detailed how Beijing tightened control in the lead-up to the parade:
Airport security scanners have been installed in some office entrances. All drones are banned and international journalists have been visited at home, some on multiple occasions, to ensure they get the message.
Guards have been stationed 24 hours a day at the entrances to overpasses and bridges to prevent any protests, some of them in army uniforms.
[…] People living near Chang’an Avenue, which leads to Tiananmen square, were told to stay off their balconies to ensure the rehearsals could be held in secrecy. [Source]
One notable target of censorship was a viral hot-mic moment between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin that was inadvertently livestreamed by CCTV. Extolling the potential of modern medicine, Putin said that continual organ transplants could help people achieve “immortality,” while Xi replied that some people may live to be 150 years old. (Both of these elderly autocrats have defied norms of political succession.) After the parade, searches for the terms “150 years” and “immortality” were censored on Weibo. CGTN also removed the video of the conversation from its YouTube page. Later, CCTV withdrew Reuters’ legal permission to use the video and demanded its removal. Complying, Reuters then issued a “kill” order to its more than 1,000 global clients that had received a video of the conversation.
CDT Chinese compiled a list of incidents in which Chinese internet users were censored or even detained for criticizing the parade on social media:
According to the X account “Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher” [@whyyoutouzhele], a WeChat user from Huaibei, Anhui province made a comment about the military parade in a WeChat group: “What era is it, when we’re still doing crap like this?” Within three hours, the commenter was arrested by the police and later given ten days of administrative detention.
[…As reported in a post from Teacher Li on X,] a Weibo user who asked, “How come women in the PLA wear makeup, but men don’t?” was banned from the platform for seven days on the grounds of “spreading hatred.”
[…] In a post on X, Jia Huigang said that after he posted a critical comment about the “September 3 military parade” under a WeChat video, WeChat banned him from posting comments or “bullet-screen” comments for 30 days.
[…] According to internet police in Xiangyang, Hubei province, a local WeChat user made “slanderous, defamatory, and inappropriate remarks” in response to WeChat Moments’ content about the September 3 military parade. Public security authorities later placed the individual in administrative detention on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” [Chinese]
Other notable content on Chinese social media was censored, as well. One article about “the allure of fascist aesthetics,” originally published by “Happiness Troupe” (幸福剧团, Xìngfú jùtuán) on an overseas blogging platform in July 2021, was reposted by several WeChat public accounts, two of which (“I Watched Him Build a Tall Pavilion” and “Yixuan Studio”) were subsequently blocked. Part of the article warned about how massive, militarized spectacles reinforce toxic in-group emotions and thereby replace ethical, critical thinking with blind obedience:
The grand narratives of fascist aesthetics often seduce spectators into an inescapable frenzy of excitement and righteous indignation. In that moment, the collective is infinitely glorified, while the individual is correspondingly diminished. The individual feels an intense desire to belong. In the pursuit of collective approval, individuals are willing to abandon their sense of right and wrong, to swap their intellect for the comfort of belonging. Furthermore, as the book “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” (French: “Psychologie des Foules,” by Gustave Le Bon, pub. 1895) suggests, once an individual becomes part of the crowd, they no longer take responsibility for their actions, and instead reveal the unrestrained side of their nature. The crowd never seeks truth or rationality, but rather knows only the crudest, most extreme emotions: blind obedience, cruelty, prejudice, and fanaticism. Fascist aesthetics seek to unleash and harness this most harmful aspect of the collective unconscious. Therefore, whenever you find yourself mesmerized by the grandeur of certain artistic spectacles, you should pause and ask yourself what you are unwittingly losing in the process.
[…] This collectivist aesthetic is also very common in some opening ceremonies: thousands of people forming a phalanx, creating an image, becoming a spectacle, marching with computer-like precision. Such a perfectly regimented scene demonstrates that the collective is the most beautiful, the collective is supreme, and only within the collective do you have value: without it, you are nothing. [Chinese]
