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accounts, some with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.On 15 March, the South China MorningPost reported that according to an unnamed industrysource, a team of government censors werestationed at Tencent’s Guangzhou office for a weekbefore the crackdown; censors instructed thecompany to practice self-censorship on accountsposting “sensitive content on national politics”, andnamed certain accounts that had to be shuttered.But as March dragged on a major labour disputein Southern China would provide contrastingexamples of WeChat’s potential in both grassrootsorganising and surveillance. Tens of thousands ofworkers for shoe manufacturer Yue Yuen used We-Chat to coordinate a crippling strike in Guangdongwithout help from their sanctioned, government-runprovincial union; meanwhile police detained labouradvocate Lin Dong from the Shenzhen ChunfengLabour Dispute Service Centre on the grounds thathe had posted inaccurate information online. Thecentre’s director Zhang Zhiru told the South ChinaMorning Post that Lin had only sent a private We-Chat group message to 11 people about the issue,and had noted the information was unverified.While the strike was ultimately successful and Linwas released after 30 days in custody, the biggestguns were still waiting in the wings.On the morning of 27 May authorities announceda social media crackdown one week beforethe 25th anniversary of the 4 June massacre thatended the Tiananmen Square protests.The specialmonth-long operation specifically targetingWeChat and similar apps would be carried out bymajor government organs including the State InternetInformation Office, the Ministry of Industry andInformation Technology, and the Ministry of PublicSecurity. Their stated focus was on public accountswith social mobilisation power. Less attention wasgiven to a new development in how Tencent wouldapproach the social feature that had long been oneof WeChat’s central conceits: private friend circles.After WeChat was explicitly named at thecrackdown’s outset, Tencent and six competitorsquickly published a list of 10 proposed industry“initiatives” to help create a “clean internet”; theseincluded a new commitment to further scrutiniseprivate groups. The companies called on industrypeers to “intensify management of friend circlesand regulate related functions, intensify the inspectionand management of friend circles’ content, andresolutely shut down accounts that transmit illegaland harmful information via friend circles.”Tencent then announced on 10 June that duringthe year’s first six months it had already shuttered20 million private WeChat accounts with the help ofauthorities, in addition to 30,000 public accounts ithad deemed fraudulent. In announcing the move,dubbed “Operation Thunder”, Tencent claimed theaccounts had been guilty of engaging in phishingschemes or prostitution. That day it also announcedthat the search engine Sogou ( 搜 狗 ) of the eponymouscompany it had acquired last year was nowcapable of searching public WeChat accounts, allowingusers to look them up and browse theirposts’ contents.Almost as an afterthought the campaign turnedits eyes to Apple: the Ministry of Industry and InformationTechnology announced it would take newmeasures to regulate the company’s iMessage service.A group chat function similar to WeChat’s friendcircles was added to the Apple instant-messagingapp in October 2011; Chinese tech industry newssite Techweb reported the new measures wouldinclude tools to monitor and prevent spam messages,which it claimed had cost users millions ofRMB. Finally, following a pro-democracy march inHong Kong on 1 July that drew a historic turnoutof hundreds of thousands according to organisers,messaging apps Line and KaoKao Talk beganexperiencing issues, with the former rendered completelyinaccessible.ConclusionsSurvey results indicate a widespread belief that surveillanceon the mainland does not affect or botherwith most people’s affairs. Until recently even experienceddissidents believed themselves free fromsnooping eyes and ears on WeChat. Hu and Wang’scases show us that assumptions about what isprivate online in the PRC do not always hold true,particularly when one uses a supposedly privatespace to organise. In mainland China the internetand everything in it can reasonably be viewed aspublic space – that is, ultimately belonging to thestate.Operation of online communications platformsby private companies is a privilege, not a right. Thethreat of its rescindment will compel corporationsto comply with state demands lest they lose permissionto stay online. Sina’s failure to effectivelyclamp down on recusant expression eventuallyprompted more severe government action, thoughuser migration to WeChat was already well underwaybefore this. By more promptly complying withgovernment directives and effectively dealing preemptivelywith areas of potential concern, Tencentmay be able to keep WeChat from coming to thesame grisly end.Much still depends on how netizens take advantageof WeChat’s many functions. The massiveMarch strike in Guangdong shows that even friendcircles limited to 100 members can spread informationrapidly enough between overlapping groups tomobilise tens of thousands, while labour advocateLin Dong’s detainment shows that even very smallscalegroup communication can serve as a pretextfor detention if one helps effectively focus and directthe momentum of such large-scale movements.But even Tencent’s in-company surveillance andcontrol efforts may not be as all-powerful as thepast year seems to imply. In light of how private PRCcompanies already provide surveillance services individuallyto different sectors of the government andParty, the publicly projected monolithic censorshipand surveillance effort of Xi’s administration maybelie an unseen and far more piecemeal approach.For now, though, critical conversations onlinehave taken refuge in a space that those around beforethe internet may find familiar: a sort of a digitaldinner table, albeit one where conversations aremuch more easily listened in on. Complaints willcontinue in semi-private, but this suits the CCP justfine: where before all eyes were struggling to followa flurry of public microblogs, now only the party haspotential access to a comprehensive view of onlinediscourse that could ultimately strengthen its holdon power. While it may not be able to fully stampout dissent, neither does the party seem likely toface a Snowden of its own any time soon.Of course, few saw the fall of Bo Xilai coming,either – aside perhaps from Bo’s former right-handman Wang Lijun, who fled to the closest US consulatewhen he feared his old boss might have himkilled, a stack of classified documents in hand foruse as a bargaining chip (see again GISWatch 2012).Action stepsThe following action steps can be suggested forChina:• The same basic precautions recommendedagainst National Security Agency (NSA) surveillanceall hold true in the PRC: cryptographicanonymity tools are necessary for true privacyin communication. However, unlike in the US,public debate and opposition to the state’s surveillanceof its own citizens appears impossiblewithout broader public consciousness of theseendeavours and systemic political changes.• Applications and online services made by PRCcompanies whose servers are on the mainlandcan be considered to be at least potentiallycompromised.• Mobile communication seems particularly vulnerableto surveillance, and likely cannot berelied on for anonymity; this is doubly true if auser is a dissident or known member of advocacyor activist groups that serve organisationalpurposes.• While not touched on above, foreign news organisationsand businesses are often subjectto state-directed hacking efforts in the PRC.WeChat and other such local networking apps,while convenient, essentially create a detailedrecord of user activity and contacts that canhelp undermine other efforts to maintain privacyand confidentiality.108 / Global Information Society Watch china / 109