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CHINADiscourse deferred: PRC netizens swap public microblogs for the not-soprivatedigital dinner tableDanweiHudson LockettDanwei.comIntroductionBefore the internet, complaints about sensitive issuesin mainland China were confined largely tosmall private gatherings – often around the dinnertable, away from prying cadres’ ears. Today, to betterunderstand the role that online surveillance maynow play in the People’s Republic of China (PRC),it must be analysed in the context of a broader informationcontrol apparatus and the mainland’sunique social media environment.With foreign social media platforms like Twitterblocked on the mainland, homegrown microblogs,or weibo ( 微 博 ), finally came into their own in theearly 2010s as a de facto public sphere. The rapidspread of information on Sina Corp’s Weibo ( 新 浪微 博 ) microblog platform concerning the 2011 Wenzhouhigh-speed rail crash (see GISWatch 2011), 1together with its subsequent role in the scandalleading to the ouster of top leadership candidate BoXilai (see GISWatch 2012), 2 drove that point furtherhome for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).Even Sina’s in-company censorship efforts seemedunable to quiet the beast it had birthed.Two new actors have since swung a pair ofsledgehammers to the knees of mainland microblogs,forever changing the country’s onlineecosystem. The first is the popular app WeChat(branded locally in Mandarin as Weixin 微 信 , or“micro-message”) developed by Tencent HoldingsLimited. WeChat began as a smartphone instantmessagingservice, but soon evolved into a versatileprivate social networking platform and communicationstool whose functions even included limitedpublic microblogging. By the end of 2013 it hadunseated Sina’s Weibo as the social networkingplatform of choice.The second actor is current CCP General Secretaryand PRC President Xi Jinping, who was1 www.giswatch.org/en/country-report/civil-society-participation/china2 www.giswatch.org/en/country-report/internet-and-corruption/chinaelevated to the former office in November 2012, andassumed the latter as a matter of course in March2013. Xi wasted little time in launching a renewedcrackdown on dissent – a key front of which was theunruly and critical online chatter that his predecessorshad left unquashed. He would confront it withgusto.BackgroundSurveillance of the internet’s Chinese-languagepublic face has become increasingly sophisticatedas the CCP has sought to use it both as a means tokeep tabs on public opinion and a tool to monitorand control speech. Officials are typically mum onthe more Orwellian aspects of this effort, but local,privately owned companies such as XD Tech ( 线 点科 技 ) openly offer mass surveillance, analysis andkeyword alert services to both central and localgovernments. XD Tech, which opened for businessin Beijing in 2005, lists two of the most importantparty organs among its clients: the General Officeof the CCP’s Central Committee, and the powerfuland secretive Central Organisation Departmentresponsible for choosing where Party officials areposted for every step in their careers. Other majorclients include the Public Security Department ofGuangdong Province, state-owned Bank of Chinaand all three mainland telecom operators (alsostate-owned).However, survey results published in March2014 commissioned by the BBC World Serviceshowed that 76% of Chinese respondents saidthey felt free from government monitoring – thehighest proportion of any country polled. 3 Unlikecensorship, the surveillance of private information,especially when stored server-side rather than onuser devices, can be difficult to verify. 4 Evidence ofgovernment surveillance of WeChat and other suchprivate communication platforms was previously3 Globescan. (2014, March 31). One-in-Two Say Internet Unsafe Placefor Expressing Views: Global Poll. Globescan. www.globescan.com/news-and-analysis/press-releases/press-releases-2014/307-one-in-two-say-internet-unsafe-place-for-expressing-views-globalpoll.html4 The Citizen Lab. (2013). Asia Chats: Analyzing Information Controlsand Privacy in Asian Messaging Applications. https://citizenlab.org/2013/11/asia-chats-analyzing-information-controls-privacyasian-messaging-applicationsharder to come by. But a few days before Xi Jinping’sascent to CCP leadership in late 2012, dissident HuJia posted on Twitter (translated):Tencent-developed “WeChat” is extraordinarilypopular on the mainland. Domestic SecurityPolice use it to investigate communications betweenmainland dissidents. The voice messages,text and pictures we use WeChat to send all godirectly into Domestic Security’s technical investigationsystem, and are just as easily monitoredas phone calls and text messages.That week Hu Jia told the South China Morning Postthat he had long expected his phone calls and textmessages to be tapped by state-owned telecomproviders, but previously assumed that WeChatwas not compromised. Now he claimed DomesticSecurity officers had recited, word for word, privatevoice-message exchanges between him and hisfriends shortly after they had occurred on WeChat.He said friends had also been interrogated aboutWeChat conversations that took place only an hourearlier, and gave an example of Domestic Securityofficers using information from voice messages totrack him in real time when he and a friend tried tochange a meeting’s venue at the last minute.Part 1: Twilight of the microblogs (2013)Once Xi became general secretary his administrationwasted little time in launching vigorouscrackdowns on both official corruption and dissent.The two drives conflicted when a group called theNew Citizens’ Movement pushed for officials to declaretheir assets and follow rule of law as outlinedin the PRC’s constitution. These calls, online and off,were silenced, and the group’s leaders detained orarrested and brought to trial under various pretexts.That August, one year since WeChat’s userbase had surpassed Sina Weibo’s, Tencent addedmicroblog-like “public” accounts to its now flagshipservice/software. Standard private accountswere still limited in how many people could join agiven “friend circle” (100, as of this writing), but allusers could now follow unlimited public accounts,each of which could send one message a day to allsubscribers.Then, on 10 September, the Supreme People’sCourt and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate issueda landmark joint interpretation of PRC criminallaw that gave further firepower to censorship efforts:authors of any Weibo or WeChat posts thathad been “re-tweeted” 500 times or viewed 5,000times would be legally liable for any misinformationor illicit content authorities found therein.While such rulings are not binding precedents thatdetermine subsequent court decisions in the PRC,the message was clear: posts containing unsanctionedinformation or opinions could result in realpunishment.In fact, a name-and-shame campaign targetingSina Weibo’s most influential verified users (“BigVs”) was already underway. In late August, Chinese-American angel investor and Weibo heavyweightCharles Xue was arrested in Beijing on charges ofsoliciting a prostitute. But in an on-air confessionbroadcast nationwide, a handcuffed Xue spokeonly of his regret over abusing his power to spreadmisinformation and rumours among his 12 millionfollowers. This intensified crackdown added momentumto already powerful market forces: Weiboactivity further waned as WeChat’s moon waxedgibbous.Critical online discourse went to ground at theapparently more private WeChat, but the Octoberarrest of venture capitalist Wang Gongquan, a backerof the New Citizens Movement, soon called theplatform’s privacy into question. When Sina shutteredhis Weibo account with 1.5 million followersin 2012, Wang shifted to a standard WeChat accountto continue his activism. However, the more privatenature of this venue did not stop authorities fromdetaining and then formally arresting Wang the followingyear on charges of disturbing public order.A report by the Public Opinion Monitoring Centreof the state-run People’s Daily announced on30 October that the campaign against Big V’s hadsucceeded – the government had retaken onlinespace for the Party. The state-run Beijing YouthDaily capped the year off on 13 November by claimingSina had taken action against 103,673 accountsfor flouting online behaviour guidelines announcedthat summer, through measures ranging fromtemporarily restricting users’ ability to post to permanentaccount deletion.Part 2: Dawn of the digital dinner table (2014)After a few months’ lull, Xinhua reported on 27February that Xi Jinping was now heading “a centralinternet security and informatisation leadinggroup” and had that day presided over its firstmeeting. (Xi has become the leader of other such internalleadership committees since his ascent, andhas established other new ones for policy changeand domestic security.) A same-day report on CCTVsaid Xi had emphasised the need for a firm hold onthe guidance of public opinion online.Then on 13 March, WeChat saw its first realpurge: Tencent deleted at least 40 critical public106 / Global Information Society Watch china / 107