The censorship on “wrong values,” “wrong views,” and criticism of the Party will further intensify.
by Zhou Kexin
On December 5, 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China launched a month-long “special action” to “rectify” the short videos circulating on the web. Not surprisingly, the campaign is presented as based on the new fashion, “Xi Jinping’s Thought on Culture,” and on the evergreen “Xi Jinping’s Thought on the Internet.” We are also reminded that a main feature of the latter is the need of “rectifying the chaos” allegedly prevailing on the web and eluding CCP’s control.
The Cyberspace Administration of China believes there is a “value-oriented anomie and excessive proliferation of harmful content in the field of short videos,” which do not meet the real “spiritual and cultural needs of the people.” Hence the “special action,” which “focuses on the frequent chaos in the short video field and also on rectifying the following three types of short video information content-oriented problems”: “false information,” “inappropriate behavior,” and “misconceptions.”
Many would agree that short videos may carry defamation or pornography. However, “false information” include “rumors related to people’s livelihood” and “tampering with, or taking out of context, official and authoritative information.” This means that, for example, revealing scandals such as the one of rat served as duck in a college canteen and lampooning the CCP’s reaction to the incident will be forbidden.
There is a broad conception of “quasi-pornography,” and it is prohibited to “challenge public aesthetics,” which may easily be broadly interpreted. Cases of suicide should not be mentioned.
As for the third category, pretty much everything may be a “misconception,” and “wrong views” and “wrong values” on various subjects are mentioned.
This is part of Xi Jinping’s broader dream of eliminating the “Internet chaos” and allow only CCP propaganda to circulate. It is a cat-and-mouse game, since the social media works too rapidly to allow the authorities to delete “wrong” content before thousands have seen it. But this is Xi Jinping’s mandate to the Cyberspace Administration of China, and they will not give up trying.