The authorities admit that the 2023 campaign was a failure and issue a new tougher regulation against independently produced news posted on social media.
by Zhou Kexin
In March 2023, as reported by “Bitter Winter,” the Cyberspace Administration of China launched with much fanfare a campaign against “self-media,” i.e., news independently created and posted on social media or the Web by independent netizens who are not registered as journalists.
One year later, the authorities admitted the campaign was a failure and enacted harsher measures, dated April 21 and published on April 23.
Five new crimes were created, which may lead to harsh punishments. First, “self-directed and self-acted fraud.” This is described as “posting false information about current affairs at home and abroad, social and people’s daily life, and other fields,” “to deceive the public and disrupt public order,” including (but not limited to) by doctoring photos and videos or “quoting old news and events without accurately and completely explaining the full story of the incident, using the old as the new to deceive the public and damage the network ecology.”
Second, “speculate on social hot topics,” sensationalizing news to gather netizens’ attention, including through “conspiracy theories.”
Third, “frame the topic with generalizations,” i.e., “select controversial or negative words in a unilateral manner, create headlines and shocking topics,” or “exaggerate negative narratives to inflate negative emotions,” thus “undermining social consensus.”
Fourth, “create a personality that violates public order and good customs” by posing as extremely poor or extremely wealthy or mentally disturbed to gather attention.
Fifth, spread “new yellow news.” This echoes the old American expression “yellow press” and target those who “use sensational expression techniques, coupled with eye-catching titles and covers, to produce information content with incomplete release elements, difficulty in distinguishing true from false, low quality, and lack of public value.”
The fifth crime has been the subject of several comments by netizens (some of them promptly deleted by censors), who have ironically argued that the definition of “yellow press” applies to the regime’s media, particularly when they publish stories about how economically destitute and plagued by violence and human rights violations allegedly the West and the United States are.
Obviously, fake news spread through social media are an international problem. However, the vague definitions of the new regulations allow for repressing whatever the Communist Party does not like and regards as “without public value” or “undermining social consensus.”
The continuous proliferation of new campaigns and regulations of the Internet also shows that Xi Jinping’s warnings about the web becoming “chaotic” and “impossible to control” even for the CCP are becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.