MCLC: When Beijing's online propaganda goes awry

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When Beijing’s online propaganda goes awry
Source: China Real Time, WSJ (9/11/15)
China’s Boisterous Social Media: When Beijing’s Online Propaganda Goes Awry
By Yiyi Lu
Nowadays, China’s social media users are increasingly polarized in their ideological orientations. But several recent cases suggest that the engagement between government-affiliated Weibo accounts and ordinary users can sometimes produce messy results rather than straight propaganda victories for the state.
China’s social media users are generally divided between leftists and rightists. The leftists are typically people who combine an emphasis on domestic political stability, sovereignty and national dignity with a strong belief in the leadership of the Communist Party. The rightists, meanwhile, tend to be liberals who favor democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism.
Often, the leftists call the rightists “running dogs of the Americans” or the “Leading-the-Way Party”—suggesting that if China and the US were to go to war, the rightists would betray their country by helping the American army find its targets. Rightists tend to deride the leftists as members of the “Fifty-Cent Party”—implying that they are paid to post pro-government comments online—or “patriotraitors,” self-proclaimed patriots whose extreme nationalism actually harms China’s national interests.
When leftist and rightist social media users clash on Weibo, China’s main microblogging platform, one would expect that accounts maintained by state organs and individual cadres would lend their support to leftist users. This has indeed happened in reality, but the reality is also far more complex.
It is impossible to tell how many Chinese state organs and individual government employees are currently active on Weibo, as they may open accounts anonymously. Weibo offers users the option of maintaining a certified account once their identity is verified by the microblogging service. By the end of 2014, 94,164 state organs and 35,939 state employees had opened certified Weibo accounts. These accounts are referred to hereafter as “government-affiliated Weibo.”
These Weibo generally toe the Communist Party line and perform functions useful to the state, such as propagating government policies, answering queries about government services, and monitoring and attempting to influence public opinion.
However, in some recent cases, direct interactions between government-affiliated Weibo and ordinary users—many of whom are unequivocally rightist—have produced unintended consequences.
The Hou Jusen incident in late July is a case in point. First, word spread on Weibo that a teenager named Hou Jusen had been attacked outside his school in Weihai City in east China’s Shandong province by people who resented his patriotic postings online. Many leftist Weibo users expressed support for Hou. In particular, the Weibo accounts of the Communist Youth League (CYL) National Committee and CYL Shandong Provincial Committee were quick to denounce the violent attack against a “patriotic youth.”
However, the local police later announced through their Weibo that the incident had been a physical altercation between two groups of young people. A police investigation concluded that all six youths who took part in the scuffle, including Hou, were equally to blame. The six were penalized for their role in the incident.
Angered by this turn of events, many leftists attacked the local police on Weibo, with some accusing them of taking a political stance in support of the rightists. Rightist Weibo users, meanwhile, rallied behind the police.
The left was further enraged after the local police addressed a vaguely worded message to the Communist Youth League National Committee, which ended with the line that achieving China’s goal of national rejuvenation would depend on everybody working together. The tweet was perceived by leftist Weibo users as a move to provoke the CYL. It sparked more angry responses from leftist users, including thinly-veiled ripostes from some provincial CYL Weibo accounts.
So the Hou Jusen incident created an intriguing situation: Not only was there a role reversal between rightist and leftist microbloggers in their attitude toward the police, but government-affiliated Weibo accounts were also pitted against each other. Leftist police officers openly attacked their colleagues in Weihai, and disagreements between CYL Weibo accounts and the police became obvious.
The Hou incident drew a lot of attention because of the relatively large number of users who took part in the debate, but it is by no means the only time when government-affiliated Weibo did not speak with one voice.
In fact, the left-right divide is also detectable among government-affiliated Weibo accounts. Some civil servants who appear to be more liberal-minded or outspoken about problems like corruption have been at odds with those who are more left-leaning.
The Weibo accounts of state organs – even at a very local level — have also gotten into trouble from time to time for posting politically-incorrect content. Two months ago, the Zizhou county traffic police in northwest China’s Shaanxi province sent out a microblog post criticizing the land reform and collectivization campaign launched by the Party in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Later the Weibo manager responsible for the posting reportedly had his case transferred to judicial organs for criminal investigation, and a number of local officials, including head of the Zizhou traffic police, were punished. This underscores the risks faced by operators of government-affiliated Weibo if they deviate from the Party line.
Even the tactic of mobilizing young people to post pro-government comments online is not immune from backfiring. As Renmin University scholar Du Chuijian has written on his Weibo, some young “fifty-centers” say they have lost faith in the Party and the government after doing the job for some time, because they are unable to win arguments with regime critics and can only “resort to sophistry and perverted logic,” which makes them feel “inwardly guilty and confused.”
By encouraging the growth of government-affiliated Weibo, the Party has opened a new front for its propaganda operation, but this engagement with social media may produce unintended consequences. For instance, if these Weibo only recycle official propaganda and are not able to persuade through reasoning, might they not further undermine rather than improve netizens’ trust in the government? Might long-term exposure to pluralistic views and information not influence civil servants who manage government-affiliated Weibo accounts, making them more receptive to liberal ideas and democratic values?
For the time being, the Party appears determined to carry on with the strategy of engaging its critics on social media in order to help create a “clean cyberspace,” as President Xi Jinping has said.
However, as long as there is still a degree of freedom of expression online, and rightists are still allowed to debate with the leftists, the Party may find it very hard to make Chinese social media completely “clean.” Instead, the strategy of engaging with users on social media may well spring some surprises down the road.
Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, is currently working on a project to promote open government information in China. She is the author of “Non-Governmental Organisations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy” (Routledge 2008).
by denton.2 at osu.edu on October 29, 2015
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