The Chinese Communist Party’s Censorship Practices and Future Implications
Posted on Wednesday, April 26, 2017
by Emily David
By:
Emily David
Conventional wisdom surrounding the Chinese
Communist Party’s (CCP) censorship practices involve two main principles: 1) the
CCP aims to remove all negative commentary critiquing the Chinese government,
the Party, its leaders, or its policies, and 2) the CCP makes an effort to
introduce positive posts in order to counter negative narratives that may
emerge. Yet substantive research by Dr. Molly Roberts on censorship in China suggests otherwise. Co-authored with Gary King and Jennifer Pan, Dr. Roberts
has contributed to two main works that
challenge established views and provide significant contributions to our
general understanding of the CCP’s censorship apparatus.
Adding to the nuances of the Party’s
censorship practices, Dr. Roberts’ work on the CCP’s post-deletion practices [i] entitled, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences
Collective Expression,” concludes that the
CCP’s censorship is actually targeted towards posts which could lead to collective
action activities, rather than posts that criticize the government. Her work on
astroturfing (otherwise known as “reverse censorship”)[ii]
titled “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for
Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument,” asserts that the CCP inserts posts with the aim of
diverting attention, instead of cheerleading for or promoting the government.[iii]
Both of these findings provide important and novel insights into the Chinese
Communist Party’s interests and goals.
To expand upon these conclusions, the
Project 2049 Institute and Dr. Molly Roberts discussed the Chinese Communist
Party’s censorship practices and their implications for future CCP policies,
both foreign and domestic. Dr. Roberts is an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. Her
research interests include the intersection of political methodology and the
politics of information, with a specific focus on methods of automated content
analysis and the politics of censorship in China. She has published numerous papers
and is currently working on a book that explores the impacts of incomplete
censorship.
The
conclusions of both your works on post-deletion and astroturfing tactics in the
People's Republic of China (PRC) have a similar theme―the Chinese government,
on a general basis, tacitly allows posts that critique the Party, its leaders, and
its policies while strategically practicing a policy of non-engagement to
"correct" such criticisms. This demonstrates that the main threat to the Chinese
Communist Party is collective action, not negative commentary. While this
explains the Party's domestic interests, what do these conclusions reveal about
the PRC's foreign policy interests, strategies, and goals?
As you
mention, the Chinese government's censorship strategy is mostly focused on its
domestic interests as the censorship is aimed at a domestic audience. However, there are moments when the
PRC’s foreign policy and domestic interests overlap. For example, in the past, nationalism
and negative sentiment toward other countries have created protests in China,
which can be destabilizing. The
evidence from the leaked dataset suggests that while online propaganda in China
can be nationalistic, it doesn't seem to be focused on taunting foreign
countries, as some have speculated.
You have
noted in the past that in order for China’s post-deletion to be effective,
the government must control all websites, which includes blocking U.S. news
and social media sites in addition to their own. You pointed out that this could be problematic
given that such a process creates two completely differing views of
international relations in the U.S. and China. Have you completed any
additional research on this issue, or have you witnessed any negative
repercussions of this issue in U.S.-China relations?
While we
know that censorship has an impact on access to information in China, due to
the fact that relatively few people in China evade the Great Firewall, it's
very difficult to estimate its impact on beliefs about international relations
and the United States, especially over the long-term. This is partly because censorship
coincides with related phenomena, like increasingly nationalistic curricula,
that also have an influence on public opinion regarding international relations
in China. This makes it difficult
to know what U.S.-China relations would look like without censorship. More research needs to be done in this
area.
In your
work on astroturfing, you conclude that the goal of the CCP’s massive operation
is strategic distraction rather than engaged argument. How do these results fit
with what is known about the Party’s censorship program? And how do the results
alter our broader theoretical understanding of "common knowledge" and
information control in authoritarian regimes?
The work on astroturfing
and censorship highlights how the CCP uses a combination of methods to
"set the agenda" of the media environment in China. We know from experience living in a democracy
that one of the most effective strategies for politicians when asked a
difficult question is to change the subject. Our work shows that the CCP is also using this strategy to
reroute citizens toward topics and issues that reflect better on the
regime. It aligns with our
previous work on censorship in that the government is less focused on
manipulating sentiment on any particular topic, but is focused instead on
removing information about really dangerous topics (in particular collective
action), and distracting with others, to set the agenda.
In the
same article, you briefly explore how the Chinese government’s general
cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or
other symbols of the regime could create a general sense of optimism towards
the country's development, which transfers to optimism towards public outlook
of the Party. While you argued that it is not a valid conclusion to be drawn
from your research, can you share your thoughts generally on the relationship
between the cheerleading posts submitted by the government and the Chinese
people’s view of China and China’s place in the world?
The overwhelming
positivity of the posts is striking and is consistent with what seems to be a
larger effort of the Chinese propaganda system to promote positivity in the
media environment. We see this in
authoritarian systems around the world. Particularly during sensitive time
periods, governments emphasize positive stories in the media to offset the
influence of other challenges faced by the regime. Again, this is part of an agenda-setting strategy; these
posts tend to remind citizens of the good aspects of their life and of symbols
that reflect the CCP's successes.
As you
have suggested, the Chinese government’s strategy of allowing negative posts to
remain in tact is fairly effective because it allows the CCP to better
understand the people’s grievances and gives the government the opportunity to react and
change if necessary, thus helping to maintain their hold on power. What does
the effectiveness of China’s censorship and information control apparatus
demonstrate about the CCP’s regime institutionalization and longevity? What of
their insecurities, if any?
The
Internet has undoubtedly helped governance in China by allowing citizens to communicate
their needs in a public forum. What
is often overlooked, is that the Chinese government has in part embraced this;
the CCP has set up websites for citizen feedback, required local governments to
respond to concerns citizens voice online, and used the Internet as a means for
checking local government performance. Top leaders in the CCP have repeatedly
emphasized publicly that the government should use the Internet to respond to
and resolve citizen complaints.
Rather than censoring criticism, it's clear that the government has
realized that it's often more effective to identify and respond to it.
How does
your upcoming book on the impacts of incomplete censorship add to the
conversation regarding the censorship practices of the Chinese Communist Party
and its global impact?
The book
proposes a framework for understanding the approaches governments take to
censorship in a digital environment, and explores, more broadly, how citizens
react to censorship. Censorship in
China is rarely complete -- censorship typically frustrates, but does not
completely prevent, access to information.
Citizens can typically find ways around it. However, we know from
surveys and from social media data that very few Chinese citizens evade
it. Conventional wisdom would
suggest that people may be afraid to evade censorship, but I show in the book
that this is not typically the case.
Costs of access, even really small ones like a slow webpage or a pay
wall, have big effects on what information people consume on the Internet. Instead of being afraid, many people in
China have no reason or find it too bothersome to spend the time to evade
censorship. While there are cases
when many people are willing to evade censorship, like during crises, for
example, or when their habits are disrupted (see this
paper with William Hobbs on what happened when China blocked Instagram),
these are the exception rather than the rule. The book suggests that we have to think of censorship in
broader terms: small frictions or even flooding like astroturfing can have
large impacts on the consumption of information, particularly in the age of the
Internet.
What
issue areas do you believe are important to explore further? What needs
additional research in order to better inform our knowledge of China, the
Chinese Communist Party, and its current role in the world?
An area
that needs further examination is the economic impact of censorship. A way to think about censorship's
effect on the U.S.-China relationship is to think about censorship in the
context of international trade. By blocking some U.S. websites and making them
more difficult to access, censorship acts as a tax or a tariff on foreign information.
Domestically, this protects some companies in China that would compete with
blocked U.S. websites, but hurts many businesses, and likely stymies innovation
in China because entrepreneurs have more difficulty accessing information. In addition, it hurts students who have
less access to information, and, therefore, probably has negative long-term
effects on human capital. More
research should be done to estimate these impacts. This would help us better understand the cost the CCP is
willing to pay for censorship, and it would also help to identify the domestic
losers and winners created by censorship policies.
Emily David is a Fellow at the Project 2049 Institute. She completed her Master's in Chinese Politics, Foreign Policy, and International Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. The author would like to thank Rachael Burton and Annabel Virella for their contributions.
[i] Dr. Roberts
presented on her research at the following conference, “China as a Responsible
Stakeholder? A Decade Later,” Project
2049 Institute, March 23, 2016 at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36SfwXfSKuE.