• China is particularly cautious about its image and status in the international community.
• Therefore, it maintains a strict censorship regime banning access to foreign news outlets, search engines, social media platforms.
Image: FILE
While the whole world has entered into an era of freedom and expression where people are getting more digitally connected, the Chinese government aims to extend the control of cyberspace beyond its “Great Firewall”.
It is said to be launching powerful malware by minutely restricting citizen freedom including citizen journalists and independent content creators.
China is particularly cautious about its image and status in the international community, thus in order to preserve the monopoly of power, it strongly believes that giving any sort of freedom to the Chinese citizen will definitely threaten that monopoly of power.
Therefore, it maintains a strict censorship regime banning access to foreign news outlets, search engines, social media platforms. Any online expression that goes against the official narrative is met with severe reprisal from the Chinese government.
Recently, China’s internet watchdog Cyberspace Administration of China has announced new rules to crack down on self-media accounts, social media accounts run by independent content creators and citizen journalist in an attempt to curb political content that is deemed to be in violation of socialist core values under the President Xi Jinping.
China’s “clean-up” campaign not only targets to clean up self-media accounts or self-publishers called “We-media” that indicates independent power of citizen journalist and content creators, but also targets social media trending charts, push notifications and short video platforms that have flourished on Chinese platforms such as WeChat and Weibo covering myriad topics ranging from fashion and food to politics and current affairs.
The announcement by China’s Cyberspace Administration leaves no room for doubt that it clearly aims to curb independent reporting thereby adversely impacting freedom of expression and online speech. Moreover, information that authorities consider illegal while only promoting government authorised information, news and one that specially focuses on political content as Xi administration fears that self-media accounts will spread secrets of its distorted party and country history and promote so-called wrong values the Chinese authorities vehemently dislike.
The growth of social media platforms such as Weibo, WeChat and more recently video sharing platforms such as Khuaishou, Douyin etc have not only enabled numerous self-media accounts to flourish around the country in the recent years but also given voice to millions of Chinese citizens creating a space for them to report critically about China’s malicious deeds. And, has subsequently made WeChat the most popular news source by producing unregulated news content.
China has about 940 million internet users and 99 per cent use mobile devices having self-media accounts. WeChat alone has 360 million users; Weibo- China’s answer to Twitter, has always attracted citizen journalist. The recent new development in China’s internet regulation has gravely restricted the online freedom of self-publishers that they once enjoyed.
Under CAC’spre-eminently important mission to treat regulations of self-media, the public accounts must obtain permit and other media accreditation before providing online news. Such a requirement proves to be a death knell for independent social media publishers particularly journalist who cover politics in particular.
These online information services cannot report, publish or comment about politics, economy, military, foreign affairs etc. In other words, these independent publishers cannot choose hot topics deemed to violate the core values of socialism, i.e. the tone of news coverage should only aim at spreading CCP‘s positive image that goes in hand with China’s so-called sophisticated national image.
In addition to this, fake news and misinformation have also become a legitimate problem through these independent accounts leading to a crackdown on critical journalism.
Fact checking is integral to China’s traditional news media where it’s journalist and editors strictly follow the standards of news production and require the public accounts to spread only positive energy.
For example: on Weibo, content restriction is a necessary condition in order to engage with friends within China. The settings are in such a way that it hides post if found inappropriate for public opinion.
Further, new rules specify the actions inciting extreme emotions, number of clicks etc. The amalgamation of social media under certain regulation into traditional press means that these independent social media platforms will have to take account of the content moderation, thus resulting in a complete crackdown on online news freedom through social media platforms.
Despite China’s continued strangulation of media, independent publishers, content creators, citizen journalist manage to find new ways to adapt to the social media platforms to report sensitive topics because a deep desire for credible and independent information reporting brews deep within them.For example, US- China relation is a sensitive topic, therefore ,as a norm it must be avoided.
In February 2020, following the death of Dr LiWenliang#IWantFreeSpeechwent viral.
A,37-year-old citizen journalist, named Zhang Zhan, was arrested for critically reporting from Wuhan. She accused the Chinese government for covering the severity of Coronavirus outbreak and misleading the world on the origin of the outbreak.
Some Chinese internet users have also sort to a group audio chat app called ‘Clubhouse’ for discussing sensitive topics and has gained popularity in both US and China.
The Clubhouse app involves Tech workers, social media opinion leaders, activists, journalist, both in China and outside China, majorly covering China’s fraud political discourse and debate about China’s real identity under it’s increasingly pervasive censorship regime.
No matter how hard the Chinese authorities attempt to oversee the massive growth in Internet, they will continue to battle to keep the independent voices at bay.
Internet is a cohesive marketplace of ideas free of tyranny, China must not create a marketplace of its own ideas i.e. lay a proper public opinion guidance to severely restrict freedom of any sort.
China will soon realise that in order to develop and progress, a vibrant society where its citizens can freely express opinions is needed to fulfill its ambition.