China’s Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission has announced a three-month campaign to “clear up and rectify” illegal publishing by online news services (Nikkei Asia, October 4, 2024).
The crackdown targets news deemed false, exaggerated headlines designed to sway public opinion away from the official line, and unauthorized dissemination of news.
Also covered are seeking improper benefits and illegally transferring internet news service licenses.
The commission has instructed regional branches to strictly enforce the bans. The crackdown appears to be an extension of the 2021 decision to launch full-fledged efforts to clean up cyberspace.
In early 2023, a similar campaign against online things deviating from Chinese Communist Party strictures reportedly led to the shutdown of “more than 4,200 sites” and the removal of “55 apps from app stores for various violations, including providing unauthorized news services….”
During that campaign, the Cyberspace Administration ordered the managers of more than 2,200 websites to rectify content. Major platforms subject to a fine and/or stern talking-to included “Microsoft’s search engine Bing.com, top search engine Baidu, the Twitter-like microblogging platform Sina Weibo, livestreaming platform Douyu, and Douban, which is known as a haven for relatively liberal online discussions.”
The death knell of Douban was already being sounded in 2019, when Quartz reported that users feared that its days were numbered.
Users last week [in October 2019] found that Douban’s “broadcast” function—a way for users to follow one another directly, similar to Facebook’s news feed—had been disabled. The site now automatically turns user updates into private posts, which can’t be seen by anyone else. Users described the change in terms of a disaster: an “earthquake,” “massive power outage,” or the “collapse of a building.”
“I feel like I’ve been thrown into outer space, none of my thoughts can be heard by others,” wrote Douban user Huo Niao on Matters, a Medium-like Chinese website. “The whole internet is now covered in darkness. Why have we suddenly become cyber refugees? Why couldn’t we have this little corner even online?”
In April 2022, the South China Morning Post reported that Douban was now requiring overseas users “to provide a mainland mobile phone number or an official identity document to continue using the site, as it comes under growing pressure from Beijing to strengthen content control…. Having a mainland phone number on file is equivalent to real-name registration, as everyone is required to present identity documents when registering for a mainland mobile number.”
