Xi is watching you

The country with the largest population in the world also has the most colossal protective walls: the Great Wall of China towers to the north and west. In virtual reality, the “Great Firewall” encompasses everything.

Censorship of all online content shields the Middle Kingdom from the digital outside world and allows for almost limitless internal control. China has perfected online censorship. Unwanted messages are deleted. President Xi Jinping controls public opinion as he pleases. Last week, however, came a historic breakthrough. Critical articles circulated en masse on Chinese websites. Videos of protesters were also shown.

Largest protests since 1989

China was experiencing its biggest protests since the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, with citizens taking to the streets outside dozens of universities and in several cities. The reason was the fire in a residential building in the city of Ürümqi in western China, in which many people died. The escape routes may have been blocked by the lockdown.

A video of the tragedy circulated online. It aroused the anger of the people. They reclaimed their little liberties from before the zero-Covid policy. The general dissatisfaction of the population was also visible. The economy is stagnating and many young people are unemployed. The government tried to appease the protesters and announced new vaccination strategies and lockdown rules for the coming weeks.

China’s Cyberspace Administration is actually responsible for keeping the protests from spreading. The staff of this government agency uses algorithms to monitor the internet. Normally, the electronic procedures immediately identify and block unwanted messages.

Massive deluge of messages

However, in recent protests, censors have been hit with a massive deluge of critical messages. Videos from different angles and with many topics made their work difficult. In order for the algorithms to reliably filter content from the web, they must be constantly updated. This is time consuming, expensive and labour-intensive.

Sometimes the censors were clearly overwhelmed. But as the week progressed, the defiant online posts quickly dwindled. Simona Grano, professor at the Asia-Oriental Institute of the University of Zurich, expected this development: “It is not impossible to circumvent censorship. But it is difficult to sustain such actions over a longer period of time.” Authorities and citizens of the vast empire have been playing a cat-and-mouse game for years, according to Grano.

“Censorship is lagging”

Brian Carlson of the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich shares the same view: “The censors are always behind, but they adapt and respond quickly.” Carlson therefore considers the formation of a real opposition impossible.

And yet: without a change in the Covid policy, the protesters’ displeasure will not disappear, says the China expert. Whether and how much we find out depends on the censorship mechanisms. If these work well, little or nothing of the protest will be seen abroad. So far they have served their purpose, although the censors initially reached their limits: “The Chinese authorities can never censor everything. But you don’t have to. All you have to do is keep enough people in the dark. Then protests can be knocked down at an early stage,” says Carlson.

A week ago nationwide protests broke out in China. But the critical voices are already quiet again – at least on the national internet.