Migrant Poverty, Revised Punishments Law, VPN Fines, Li Keqiang’s Death, Economic Woes)

Partially two of our look again on the most notable censored articles of 2023, as chosen by CDT’s Chinese language editorial crew, we current 5 extra articles on such various topics as poverty amongst older migrant employees, proposed revisions to the “Public Safety Administration Punishments Legislation,” fines and punishments for VPN use, Li Keqiang’s dying and political legacy, and the narrowing house for on-line discourse concerning the Chinese language financial system. Partially one, we lined 5 different censored articles concerning the 2022 “White Paper” protests, ChatGPT, Xi Jinping’s unanimous rubber-stamp re-election, beleaguered stand-up comedians, and censored infographics. (For extra on these matters and trending on-line terminology, see CDT’s newly launched e-book, “China Digital Instances Lexicon: twentieth Anniversary Version.”)

The ten articles and essays we now have chosen signify solely a small fraction of the net content material that disappears every day from the Chinese language web resulting from censorship (or generally, self-censorship). In 2023, CDT Chinese language editors archived and added 287 new posts, essays, and articles to our “404 Deleted Content material Archive,” which now comprises over 1,515 objects in whole. 

6. “Migrant Staff in Their Elder Years,” by Qiu Fengxian

On July 5, a video lecture with regards to aged migrant employees by Qiu Fengxian, an affiliate professor at Anhui Regular College who researches the migrant workforce, attracted widespread consideration. After conducting a examine through which she despatched out 2,500 questionnaires and interviewed 200 migrant employees, Qiu concluded that China’s first era of migrant laborers, after spending practically three many years working in massive cities, had turn into a “forgotten era”: stricken by illnesses, excluded from the social providers internet of enormous cities, wanting financial savings, and unable to afford to retire.

The video initially appeared as a TED Discuss-style video for Yixi (一席, Yīxí), a platform that includes academic lectures. (Yixi has a WeChat public account in addition to a YouTube channel.) Later, when the WeChat public account 正面连接 (Zhèngmiàn Liánjiē, “Constructive Connection”) revealed highlights of Qiu’s survey below the title “Three Many years of Working Like This,” it was promptly deleted, and video and textual content variations of Qiu’s Yixi lecture have been additionally taken down (The total lecture has been archived right here, on CDT’s Chinese language-language YouTube Channel). The censorship has continued into 2024: simply someday after the discharge of a NetEase Information documentary about migrant employees (additionally titled “Three Many years of Working Like This”), it was taken offline, and a hashtag of the documentary’s title was blocked on Weibo. However this repeated censorship can’t fully suppress essential questions concerning the remedy of the era of migrant employees who constructed the Chinese language cities we see at this time. As Qiu Fengxian famous in her lecture, “The primary era of migrant employees labored in these cities all their lives, similar to city residents, however they ended up with nothing. This isn’t regular.” One web person, commenting on the censorship of the NetEase Information documentary, lamented, “So in the event you exit and make a movie about the actual lives of the underclass, apparently it must be banned in China as a result of it deviates from the “primary melody.”

Under are a few of the infographics featured in Qiu’s lecture. They make for sobering studying. Qiu discovered that 58.5% of migrant employees don’t search skilled medical assist for sickness, and that 60.7% don’t have any plans to retire and can work till they’re bodily unable to proceed: 

7.  “Media Silence on the ‘Public Safety Administration Punishments Legislation’ is Deafening,” by Wei Chunliang

Early September noticed the censorship of current-affairs blogger Wei Chunliang’s article concerning the deafening media silence on proposed amendments to the “Public Safety Administration Punishments Legislation.” The amendments, which have been on the time open for public remark, proposed “criminali[zing] feedback, clothes or symbols that ‘undermine the spirit’ or ‘hurt the sentiments’” of the Chinese language nation. Wei famous that whereas many authorized specialists had expressed alarm that the proposed amendments have been overly broad and could possibly be utilized arbitrarily, Chinese language media retailers have been virtually uniformly silent on the matter. Wei’s censored put up contained an extended listing of main Chinese language media retailers that had zero protection of proposed modifications to the regulation, and talked about quite a few authorized students who had bravely commented on the problematic proposals. The media silence, Wei wrote, was but extra proof that “over time, our conventional media retailers have misplaced their potential to jot down about and affect points that truly matter.” He ended his put up by together with hyperlinks to websites the place residents might touch upon the proposed amendments, and urged his readers to weigh in with their opinions.

8. “I Was Fined a Million Yuan by the Police for Circumventing the Nice Firewall to Entry the Open Web for Work,” by a pc programmer in Chengde, Hebei

In September, a Weibo person working as a pc programmer in Chengde, Hebei province, reported that he was fined and had three years of revenue confiscated by the native public safety bureau for utilizing a digital non-public community (VPN) to bypass the Nice Firewall (GFW) whereas working for an abroad shopper. Supporting documentation supplied by the programmer on Weibo confirmed that the Shuangqiao Department of the Chengde public safety bureau (PSB) levied a 200 yuan ($27 U.S. greenback) positive and confiscated three years of the person’s earnings, totaling 1.058 million yuan (over $144,000), for the interval 2019-2022. The programmer’s put up, which was partially translated by CDT, was later censored:

Thanks, on-line pals, to your help and concern. 

[…] In April and July of this 12 months, I used to be interviewed by the police a number of instances, throughout which I defined my employment state of affairs intimately and supplied [them with] my financial institution card, my employer’s firm registration info from the nation through which it’s positioned, the consulting contract I signed with the corporate, and different supporting paperwork. Throughout this era, the PSB knowledgeable me that their investigation concluded I had nothing to do with the Twitter incident, however that I might be penalized for circumventing the GFW, and that my revenue can be deemed “illegally obtained revenue.”

In August of this 12 months, a proper administrative penalty verdict was issued: circumventing the firewall is against the law, thus any revenue earned from “scaling the wall” is taken into account illegally obtained revenue.

On September 5 of this 12 months, I utilized for administrative reconsideration, however the division in control of reconsideration basically concurred with the opinion of the PSB. If I want to proceed, I might want to file an administrative enchantment via the courts.

All through this course of, I’ve said many instances that each github.com and my employer’s after-sales service and help web site might be accessed with out circumventing the GFW, and code might be written on an area pc with out circumventing the GFW, however these explanations weren’t accepted.

The following step is to retain a lawyer to actively put together for my administrative enchantment within the courts. [Chinese]

Information of earnings from work achieved outdoors the Nice Firewall being labeled as “illegally obtained revenue” had a chilling impact on Chinese language professionals who use VPNs to entry the worldwide Web for work. Since a 2017 crackdown on VPNs and the introduction of recent guidelines regulating their use, quite a few VPN apps have disappeared from Chinese language app shops; many Chinese language home VPN suppliers have been fined, pushed out of enterprise, and even imprisoned; state-run telecom suppliers have been ordered to dam clients’ entry to VPNs; Chinese language Twitter customers have been tracked down and punished; and tutorial, scientific, and enterprise communities have been hit arduous by lack of entry to important on-line supply materials. VPN regulation enforcement and punishment can fluctuate extensively, starting from minor fines and naming and shaming to lengthy jail sentences.

Shuai Li, writing at Medium, delved into the id of the programmer, his employer, and his prolific work on Github. The programmer’s plight, along with producing some dialogue on Reddit and different tech-related websites, fueled a groundswell of criticism on Chinese language social media, with some commenters criticizing Chengde for imposing extreme fines, and others joking about steering away from Chengde, lest they’ve their wages garnished for VPN infractions.

9.  “Li Keqiang’s Backstory,” from WeChat account 喀秋莎来信 (Kāqiūshā Láixìn, “Letter from Katyusha”

After former Chinese language Premier Li Keqiang handed away on October 27 of a sudden coronary heart assault on the age of 68, there was a surge in on-line censorship about his life, dying, and legacy. Li Keqiang was largely overshadowed by Xi Jinping throughout his lifetime, and was finally pushed to the sidelines politically, however for a lot of Chinese language residents, his dying was seen as a logo of another path for China, thus imbuing any tributes to the previous premier with a heightened political sensitivity. CDT translated a censorship directive that instructed media retailers to solely quote copy from mainstream central media retailers (akin to Xinhua, CCTV, and Folks’s Day by day), to exert management over feedback sections, and to watch out for “overly effusive feedback and assessments” about Li’s political and historic legacy. Quite a few tributes to Li have been censored on-line, together with the picture essay talked about above, which though not overly glowing, featured a plethora of pictures from all through the course of Li’s private and political life. Regardless of the stringent censorship, many Chinese language residents nonetheless mourned Li on social media, with some posting tributes to Li Wenliang’s Wailing Wall. “In the present day, it appears one other truth-teller with the surname Li has departed,” wrote one Wailing Wall customer. Others complained that even expressions of grief have been being censored, and famous that the feedback sections below some on-line information reviews of Li’s dying had been shut down.

In early January, Caixin Weekly’s “12 months in Memoriam” characteristic about distinguished figures who died in 2023 was mysteriously deleted quickly after publication. Li Keqiang was one of many people featured within the article, together with medical doctors Jiang Yanyong and Gao Yaojie, famed jurist Jiang Ping, and thallium poisoning sufferer Zhu Ling.

10. “China’s Socio-economic Contradictions Are Nearing a Vital Level,” belatedly censored 2012 Caijing interview with economist Wu Jinglian

Within the latter half of 2023, there was a marked improve in on-line censorship of financial content material, notably of research or articles analyzing the underlying causes of China’s present sluggish financial progress. Every month noticed the deletion of articles about excessive youth unemployment, slowing financial progress, the troubled property sector, financial inequality, financial reform, and different urgent financial matters.

One such article was “Ten Questions In regards to the Non-public Financial system”—revealed and later deleted from the WeChat account “Caijing 11”—through which 4 distinguished Chinese language economists (Huang Qifan, Liu Shijin, Shi Jinchuan, and Zhang Jun) mentioned quite a few financial and structural points with journalists from the finance journal Caijing. Economist Liu Jipeng, dean of the Capital Finance Analysis Institute at China College of Political Science and Legislation, appeared to have been banned or in any other case restricted on a number of social media platforms, possible in retaliation for a few of his latest feedback on the moribund Chinese language inventory market. Customers on Douyin, Toutiao, and Weibo reported that Liu’s accounts weren’t allowing new followers. In early December, Liu gave a keynote speech at a finance convention through which he criticized stalled reforms in China’s capital markets. Noting that China has had 45 years to enact “reform and opening” insurance policies and 33 years to develop its capital markets, he stated that that is nonetheless “a market with an unfair distribution of wealth and an absence of justice.” One Weibo commenter wrote that “Liu Jipeng being banned is an instance of their tried-and-true technique: if [the government] can’t clear up the issue, it’s going to punish the one who introduced the issue up for dialogue.”

In an instance of extraordinarily belated censorship, a September 2012 Caijing journal interview with famed economist Wu Jinglian was deleted from WeChat in early December, 2023. The intensive interview, which skilled a resurgence in recognition after it was shared by WeChat finance and economics blogger Leng Xiao, mentioned the necessity to curtail state interference within the financial system, proceed market-based financial reforms, and strengthen the rule of regulation. The now 93-year-old Wu Jinglian was—and maybe nonetheless is—one among China’s most recognizable and extensively revered economists, recognized for his frank pronouncements and incisive evaluation. A 2003 editorial within the Wall Avenue Journal opined, “If there’s one economist in China at all times price listening to, it’s Wu Jinglian,” and described him as a “grasp diagnostician.” Two months earlier than the Caijing journal interview, in a keynote speech at a world convention sponsored by the Worldwide Financial Affiliation, Wu Jinglian had declared, “China nonetheless lacks a authorized basis that’s indispensable for a contemporary market financial system. Authorities officers intervene out there at their will via administrative means.” Eleven years later, it appears that evidently Wu’s critiques are nonetheless related sufficient to alarm China’s censors.