The Chinese government would prefer that everybody online always be jumping for joy about life in the People’s Republic of China and the many advantages of being ordered about by the party-state’s herds of despots. But netizens don’t always oblige.
CCP campaigns to push positivity on the Internet go back at least to the Clear and Bright campaign of 2016. In 2023 and again about a year ago, China was punishing posts which it regarded as overly larded with pessimism and despair, on the view that nothing makes the day brighter or can inspire a cheerier outlook than being kicked while you’re down.
The public mood
The censors had always targeted political dissent. In 2025 they were targeting, or again targeting, “the public mood itself—punishing bloggers and influencers whose weary posts are resonating widely in a country where optimism is fraying.” The New York Times had the story (October 7, 2025).
The authorities have punished two bloggers who advocated for a life of less work and less pressure; an influencer who said that it made financial sense not to marry and have children; and a commentator known for bluntly observing that China still lags behind Western countries in terms of quality of life.
These supposed cynics and skeptics, two of whom had tens of millions of followers, have had their accounts suspended or banned in recent weeks as China’s internet regulator conducts a new cleanup of Chinese social media. The two-month campaign, launched by the Cyberspace Administration of China in late September, is aimed at purging content that incites “excessively pessimistic sentiment” and panic or promotes defeatist ideas such as “hard work is useless,” according to a notice from the agency….
The internet regulator ordered platforms to root out posts that use isolated news events to point to broader social problems, a style of commentary that the authority condemned as “malicious misinterpretation” that fuels cynicism about society.
People in China often use such posts to vent frustration or share their fears and questions.
From this article we learn that the people in China often say things on the Internet to vent frustration and also to share their fears and questions. Unlike people everywhere else on earth, the Chinese unload these frustrations and fears and questions on the Internet!
The state broadcaster CCTV was all in favor of this latest anti-negativity campaign. Not too surprising, since all CCP propaganda outlets tend to be in favor of all CCP policies. At any rate, CCTV did its best to leaven censure with sympathy as it rationalized the censorship.
“In reality”—as opposed to nonreality, which is invalid—“we all experience fatigue and anxiety as a result of work and life, but these real [valid] emotions deserve respect and should not be deliberately amplified for traffic. The internet is not a dumping ground for negativity,” said CCTV.
Sure, life is tough at times. Buck up, however.
Fatigue, anxiety
CCTV skipped the part where the Chinese people might also experience fatigue and anxiety as a result of being subject to CCP repression and silly CCTV editorials.
The New York Times said: “Beijing is concerned that such pessimism doesn’t just discourage citizens from being productive members of society. It could turn into criticism of the ruling Communist Party.”
That’s a very real, legitimate, valid concern. Pessimism about conditions wrought by decades of oppressive and inept CCP policies could turn into criticism of the CCP itself! It could happen. It’s conceivable. One can imagine such an eventuality.
A year later, The New York Times has followed up, and one of its findings is online criticism (September 7, 2026).
The Chinese Communist Party has spent years trying to make “positive energy” the dominant mood of the country’s internet. Online platforms, it dictates, should amplify narratives of economic achievement, gratitude toward the party and confidence in China’s future.
Discontent has occasionally erupted after disasters, scandals or particularly brutal government actions. But something feels different lately. The pessimism is persistent. It has become part of the everyday social media feed, and can sometimes turn subversive….
Across RedNote, Douyin, Weibo and other popular platforms, you can scroll endless posts about meager wages, scarce jobs, falling property values and fear about the future. Some turn their hardships into dark humor. Others hijack official posts and hashtags and turn propaganda into spectacles of mockery.
China’s censorship apparatus still controls the internet. But prolonged economic distress is making it harder for the party to maintain its preferred account of how the country is doing.
Criticism may be stated without being stated. Some users “are deliberately using social media as a tool of dissent, and they subvert official propaganda to that purpose. A Douyin video proclaiming the Communist Party to be the world’s greatest party drew 41,000 roughly identical comments with rows of crying-face emojis punctuated by slashes and backslashes.”
China’s internet censorship has grown increasingly ruthless over the past decade. That makes the sheer volume of the pessimistic posts and sarcastic comments all the more striking. At the same time, it’s difficult to know why some posts survive long enough to go viral while others quickly disappear.
One possible explanation is that policing too aggressively could hurt traffic and advertising revenue. Another…is that recommendation algorithms allow scattered grievances to find one another.
Where there’s life, there’s hope.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “Pretending to Work in China”
