How China’s influencers are promoting a culture of online lynching

New Delhi: Chinese internet users had called for a boycott of H&M, Nike, Burberry, Adidas and a few other western fashion brands, when the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union announced sanctions on Chinese officers over Beijings treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang in March 2021. Tracy Wen liu of Foreign Policy Magazine reports that one of her old friends, an engineer living in Jiangsu province, had expressed his frustration that people kept purchasing items from these brands on WeChat and received support from a few others with a similar mindset.
He later formed an online group, made a few leaflets arguing for boycott of foreign brands and aimed to distribute these leaflets on Labour Day in front of major department stores. He later received a phone call from a local police station politely informing him that gathering at public places could be illegal and that he could be booked for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. Most of China’s activists are often detained under the same criminal charges.
China has now begun expanding its ever-growing censorship system by recruiting a legion of new online informers who report posts- even unapproved patriotic ones even though the Chinese state often backs nationalist rhetoric. In both professional and private contexts, China’s censorship system has become ever stricter. Radio Free Asia reports that new regulations approved and implemented by the State Administration of Press and Publications of China require journalists to evaluate their social media posts as part of the annual verification process for journalism ratings.
Netizens are encouraged to spontaneously check whether posts shared by celebrities and performance artists support the party’s line, principles, and policies and whether they are regular in sharing patriotic posts on Weibo written by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) affiliated organizations. This is a stark change from the past, when criticisms were only directed at public intellectuals. Many articles that do not involve sensitive political topics are being withdrawn on the orders of the state, making writing journalistic articles exponentially harder.
Anyone trying to honestly report the events happening in China is labelled a “hostile foreign force”- a Chinese expression used to blame people disagreeing with the view of the Chinese Communist Party and blame problems on imaginary outside saboteurs. Even more vulnerable to this censorship are the marginalized communities of people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community and women.
The feminist Xiao Meili was subjected to barrage of threats and insults by netizens and labelled a “Hong Kong separatist” for supporting the Umbrella Revolution of 2014. Nikkei Asia has reported that Sina, the parent company of Weibo banned her account along with a dozen others to silence them.