Recent articles have highlighted the ways in which various Chinese groups attempt to circumvent censorship in the liminal spaces of its enforcement. Across different domains, shifts in censorship capacity and communication methods provide opportunities to expand the limits of free speech, albeit sometimes only temporarily.
As mentioned in a previous CDT post, the Made in China Journal’s Gateway to Global China Podcast featured comments by veteran Chinese journalist Fang Kecheng on the spectrum of externally and internally imposed censorship, and the creative ways in which he and his colleagues managed to push the boundaries of what was possible in the newsroom. Increasingly, podcasts have emerged as a popular—and to some extent, perhaps less censored—alternative medium for discussing societal issues. The Asia Society recently highlighted several Chinese-language podcasts hosted by journalists, academics, independent analysts, and others both inside and outside of China, which offer a “flexible and accessible format for in-depth analysis that is often less constrained than traditional media.” This week, Edward White at The Financial Times described how Chinese podcasts are booming in the shadow of censorship, while remaining a fluid and contested space:
China’s media landscape is characterised by state control. While podcast hosts often discuss vastly different themes from state media, the hosts instinctively understand the state’s red lines.
Censors may monitor content but “the notion of civic or freer space in China is always fluid”, said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, a research group that has been monitoring media in the country for 25 years. “The space is always shifting, opening and closing.”
[…] In a June episode [of the podcast Zhong Nü Radio, host Wang Ziyue] and Li Jin, a Chinese sociologist, discussed sexual harassment at universities, a topic that in other media would have been taboo, [Wang] said. “In an art exhibition, if you mention the words ‘sexual harassment in colleges’, it will not be allowed,” she said.
[…] While oversight ultimately rests with Beijing, the podcasting platform apps can also influence what is broadcast. The companies screened for sensitive topics and words before approving release, people in the industry said.
According to a 2021 financial disclosure, Ximalaya [China’s biggest podcasting and audiobook app] said it used artificial intelligence technologies such as automatic speech recognition to screen content. [Source]
Chinese social media remains a heavily censored arena, with feminism among the topics particularly targeted. On Tuesday, the South China Morning Post reported that Weibo permanently closed or suspended numerous accounts for “inciting gender antagonism.” Two of these accounts—each with hundreds of thousands of followers—frequently raised awareness about rape cases, domestic violence, and sexual harassment, and criticized authorities for their inadequate handling of these issues. But as Xinrou Shu wrote this month in her new Substack newsletter Peking Quack, “Chinese women are hacking censorship to keep female voices alive.” Shu described how the strategic use of innocuous comments under feminist social-media posts allow Chinese women to stay visible in a system designed to silence them:
Amid China’s crackdown on feminist discussions, the murky and inconsistent nature of Chinese internet regulations has sparked a new form of digital solidarity among women. Before a post gets shadowbanned or even censored, women users intentionally leave inconspicuous, unrelated comments—for instance, about battery level, sweet vs. savory sticky rice dumplings, food preferences, or video games—under “sensitive” posts like Dudu’s, to outsmart the algorithms, boost visibility and therefore spread the messages to a wider user pool.
Other than the battery squad and food debates, other common coded comment strategies include 乱打组 (keyboard mash squad), which consists of gibberish words, cat photos under “报猫咪 (cat squad)” to keep engagement up, or simply repeating the titles of censored cases involving women. Some embed long, seemingly irrelevant comments with game titles or brand names—like “Genshin Impact, BBQ pork buns, Egg Party”—to push the content to other algorithmic pools. The most ironic tactic: posting phrases with “positive energy,” like “I love China” or quoting China’s core socialist values, knowing these won’t be deleted, while the real message lies just beneath the surface.
“It brings more people into the conversation and builds solidarity. Some users may share it with others manually. This collective action has symbolic value for women,” said Xiao Qing, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University who studies collective algorithmic actions used by Chinese internet users.
[…] “The ‘battery level squad’ feels more unified,” said [Huang Youpi, an 18-year-old student from Hubei who often participates in this form of resistance and praised its simplicity]. “It’s better at mobilizing people to like or reply. And since everyone with a phone knows their battery level, it creates a shared reference point that makes people more likely to engage.” [Source]
The publishing industry is another domain rife with censorship. Earlier this week, James Palmer at Foreign Policy wrote about the different stages of censorship in the formal publishing process. One of the most inconsistent stages that he highlighted was the scrutiny by different levels of propaganda bodies, given that “[p]otentially controversial material can be waved through because the censor wasn’t paying close attention that day,” and “[a] publisher’s or studio’s existing relationships with officials can help make things easier, as can the rare intervention of powerful officials to protect a particular artist.” Adding to this variability, as Palmer concluded, is the fact that “[a]ll of this exists within a wider political context of stages of opening or tightening of political sensitivities.” (For more, see CDT’s past coverage of the political pressure on book publishers, and how bookstores subtly fight back.)
The realm of academic research also demonstrates the impact of censorship over time. In last month’s edition of The China Journal, Ning Leng and Elizabeth Plantan published “Disappearing Research: Academic Control and Self-Censorship in China,” which analyzed the convergence of top-down and bottom-up censorship and their negative impact on academic freedom. The authors found that intensifying political pressure in China, particularly since Xi Jinping came to power, has not only narrowed the range of topics published in Chinese journals (even by U.S.-based scholars), but it has also pushed China-based scholars to “migrate” their publications to overseas English-language journals. Here is a summary from the article’s conclusion:
Overall, this article has investigated the relationship between self-censorship and censorship in China and how that impacts academic freedom both about and within China. It builds on the existing literature on autocratic censorship, which is largely focused on China, by filling a key gap in our understanding of the mechanisms of self-censorship. It does so by developing a typology of self-censorship mechanisms as informed by in-depth interviews with professors and doctoral students affiliated with top Chinese universities. These mechanisms lead to four different outcomes for self-censorship: surgical, approximate, sweeping, and scattershot. To investigate how self-censorship and censorship affect the production of knowledge in China in the social sciences, we collected and analyzed a large-N dataset of publications of China-based academics in political science, public policy and administration, and sociology at top Chinese universities. We also compared these findings to a matched sample of US-based scholars with similar backgrounds to see whether these self-censorship mechanisms also affect Chinese academics outside of mainland China.
The article yields several important findings. First, we find that China-based scholars are indeed altering their research behavior in response to pressures for self-censorship. Their publication topics have become less sensitive since the rise of Xi Jinping, with certain topics either disappearing completely or migrating from Chinese-language to English-language publications. These findings for the China-based sample are consistent with the four self-censorship mechanisms and rankings of perceived research sensitivity that we uncovered through interviews with China-based students and scholars. However, we were surprised to find that even US-based scholars have been affected by these pressures, particularly their Chinese-language publications. Considering that US-based scholars will only self-select to publish in Chinese journals, their tendency to publish less sensitive research in these venues is likely because these scholars are also susceptible to sweeping and scattershot self-censorship behavior induced by the publisher and word-of-mouth mechanisms.
[…] In addition, since we find that scholarship on more sensitive topics is migrating to English-language publication outlets—or perhaps is only being published by academics outside of China in English-language venues—the Party-state may be expending additional resources to track, monitor, and translate that information back into Chinese to inform policymakers. Indeed, our interviews suggest that the Party Committee in some universities has begun to do this by monitoring China-based scholars’ publications in English and adding them to their “political records” (professor 6). Most recently, we observe that some Chinese universities have begun to reduce the importance of English publications in faculty tenure evaluations or even exclude them entirely. [Source]
