At a recent high-level assembly of the Chinese Communist Party, senior vowed to “resolutely suppress” nationwide protests opposing the regime’s COVID-19 0 policy. The demonstrations, sparked through a chimney that killed 10 citizens of an Urumqi building, have ranged from protests against strict state lockdown policies to calls for President Xi Jinping’s resignation. And the state apparatus has pledged to quell the uproar across the country, adding a crackdown on virtual dissent.
Since then, the protests that began in Urumqi have spread across China, from Shanghai to Beijing to Wuhan, largely via the Internet, with demonstrators sharing photographs, videos and address maps, while employing virtual teams to coordinate demonstrations. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has been busy arresting protesters, especially those who refuse to delete photographs they have uploaded online. And along with physical arrests, China’s crackdown has been facilitated through general status on local social media platforms.
With Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp banned in China, citizens basically use Chinese platform forms like WeChat and Weibo for any social media activity, which has also been the case in the ongoing protests. However, the status on those forms of platform makes it difficult for users to use. those applications for any form of dissent.
Chinese social media users and protesters interviewed via the Daily Dot reveal that any reference to the protests leads to the freezing of WeChat and Weibo accounts.
“They delete our images, delete our videos and block our accounts just as we allude to anything similar to protests. Even mentioning the names of protest sites can result in the deletion of accounts,” said Li Hui*, a Wuhan-based scientist. the Daily Point.
Weibo, which users share text, images, videos and live streaming, is known as the “Chinese Twitter” with 850 million users logging into the app in 2021. WeChat, with 1. 2 billion users, is the most widely used social network. platform in China, providing users with many possibilities ranging from text messages to video chats, online grocery shopping, and appointment arrangement.
Users reveal that Chinese government censors immediately remove any media or text content similar to protests on those apps. This is further simplified by flagging protest-like keywords in searches.
Government-run social media platforms are described across the state as efforts to create an “internet with Chinese characteristics” that suits the local language and culture. However, local protesters insist that the autocratically imposed “Chinese” identity on the population is mere propaganda. arbitrarily to the nation.
“The rulers are not aware of the fate of the declining economic classes. They do not know what disorders the masses face. They only need others and they do so in the call to protect Chinese culture or safeguard national interests. “, or more recently, through COVID lockdowns,” Li said.
Li is among the many who shared an image, in which a face appears whose eyes are covered with the face mask and whose mouth is silenced with one hand, signifying the silence of voices in the call for COVID repression.
Many interviewees pointed to the scope of totalitarian technology that China has imposed and how this has made everyone paranoid about the repercussions they may face even for absolutely innocent online activities.
“The police called one of my friends for asking while speaking Arabic on WeChat. They asked him why he was talking to strangers. . . in Arabic and on the Koran. These police interrogations accentuate demonstrations, especially in Xinjiang, which are still under surveillance,” said Abeer Ahmad*, a student of foreign mass communication at a Beijing university.
“In Beijing, the police are [during COVID lockdowns], in subway stations, on roads, in communities. One day, I was telling my instructor that I wish I could spend the outdoors during COVID lockdowns. He pointed to my phone and said, ‘Leave it in your room and go outside,'” Abeer added.
The reach of Chinese surveillance and technology means that an increasing number of citizens are employing VPNs to connect to Facebook and Twitter to share their thoughts. before the XX Party Congress in October being covered internationally.
However, many in China insist that oblique connections to the rest of the world via VPN are not absolutely reliable or sustainable. They say it’s impractical to get a VPN every day, as many are blocked in China, with government authorization. He looks for them. For the masses, it’s also not affordable to buy VPNs frequently.
“It’s painful to get one and they’re closed. I have to renew mine on a daily basis and during the ‘sensitive’ times when the CCP holds its party meetings, virtually all VPNs don’t work,” Wu Tie*, a content producer, told the Daily Daily. Point.
However, those who manage to use VPNs are prodigiously expanding the global protest policy in China.
Analysts argue that China’s application of social media platforms hampers Chinese protesters’ ability to succeed in the rest of the world and want help raising awareness of their situation.
“Tools like Tor and VPNs manage to get news out of China,” Bryce Barros, China affairs analyst at the Alliance for Secure Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, said in an interview with the Daily Dot.
“The movements to unite dissidents in China with the rest of the world on social media are basically through projects funded through the Open Technology Fund [like] Tor and Signal,” he added.
In addition to restricting freedom of expression on its social media platforms, the Chinese state is in those spaces to further entrench its autocratic policies. This means that rather than being spaces for the open exchange of ideas, these platforms are largely spheres of propaganda, where dissent is autocratically suppressed.
“[Chinese leaders] are using social media and the web to talk to other people about the city’s position and warn the public to stay away from the protests,” said Zixue Tai of Internet in China: Cyberspace and Civil Society. he told the Daily Dot.
“The government is also scouring the web for symptoms of unrest and deploying police accordingly. Another use of the Internet through the state is to vote public opinion and plan its actions. It is a cat-and-mouse game that is being played between the state and the protesters,” he added.
Still, rights activists insist that China’s billion users cannot be arbitrarily controlled for too long, whether in the so-called protection or public health. They insist that the ongoing protests are broader than mere dissent and reflect a torrent of anger, frustration. , which has led to a collective refusal to settle for the draconian restrictions imposed by China’s leadership.
The Chinese population is effectively overcoming the parallel social networks imposed on them and the broader technological autocracy may lead to an existential challenge for Xi Jinping’s regime.
“The Chinese government is facing demanding situations for the legitimacy and stability of the regime posed through those protests in several cities that are now also turning into attacks on the central government and even naming the self-proclaimed ‘general’ of China’s war against COVID – Xi Jinping,” said Sharon Hom, China’s human rights director. in an interview with the Daily Dot.
“The same old social equipment of an authoritarian regime — online censorship, surveillance, intimidation, targeting and detention of protesters — would possibly not be effective in the long term in dealing with the explosion of online and offline expression and protest actions,” he said. additional. .
*Some names have been replaced by identity