China’s Communist Party is increasingly imprisoning Chinese citizens who use foreign social media to criticize Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and his government in an effort to preserve its global image, and many of those imprisoned are ordinary people with little influence.
According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of court records and a database maintained by a free speech activist, more than 50 people have been sentenced in China in the past three years for using Twitter and other foreign platforms that are blocked in China for disrupting public order and bashing the Communist Party leadership.
The increasing use of sentencing as a tactic marks an escalation in China’s campaign to control online speech and stifle critical voices outside the relatively closed world of the Internet at Home. In the past, suppression of views on foreign social media was mainly enforced through arrests and harassment, and few people were sentenced, human rights activists said.
Court records cite a number of offending statements, ranging from criticism of national leaders and the Chinese Communist Party to discussions of Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan. Some of those whose Twitter accounts remained online or whose followership status was cited in court records typically had a few hundred or a few thousand followers, including one who had fewer than 30 followers at the Time of his arrest.
The Communist Party’s Ministry of Public Security did not respond to inquiries sent to it through the government’s press office.
Early last year, Zhou Shaoqing, an unemployed resident of the port city of Tianjin, was detained for criticizing the CCP and its handling of the new crown Epidemic on Twitter.
In a February 2020 tweet, Zhou Shaoqing said, “The CCP system is based on stability, and everyone protects themselves before big events.” He claimed that hospitals and health officials would intentionally or unintentionally underreport the number of confirmed cases.
Later that month, three men dressed as community volunteers showed up outside Zhou Shaoqing’s home, saying they wanted to discuss outbreak prevention and control. When he opened the door, he said, the men, along with seven uniformed police officers, rushed in and pinned him to the ground before taking him away for questioning about his use of Twitter.
Although Zhou Shaoqing said he had only about 300 followers when he was detained, a local court ruled in November that he had seriously disrupted public order and sentenced him to nine months in prison. He said he felt helpless and angry.
Huang Genba was jailed for 16 months for criticizing Communist Party leaders and the Communist Party on Twitter. Photo credit: HUANG GENBAO
Twitter has become a propaganda battleground for China as it seeks to boost its global image and influence. Beijing promotes its rhetoric on Twitter through an expanding array of diplomatic and official media accounts and what online policy analysts call state-sponsored Fifty Maoist parties. These 50 Maoist parties advocate the views of the Chinese government online and attack China’s critics.
Gabrielle Lim, a research fellow at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said China’s increased enforcement efforts coincide with a marked increase in Anti-Communist rhetoric on Twitter in recent years. Anti-communist rhetoric on Twitter has increased significantly in recent years, and exiled Americans such as Chinese businessman Guo Wengui have contributed to such rhetoric.
Wang Yaqiu, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the Chinese government knows from domestic experience that propaganda can only work if it is coupled with censorship of opposing views.
Court records seen by The Wall Street Journal show that at least 25 people have been sentenced directly for their activities on foreign social media in each of the past two years, compared with eight known cases in 2018. In one case in 2019, the sentence in question was suspended.
Most of the above cases involved Twitter, although some were also related to activity on Facebook Inc.(FB) and YouTube, both of which are also blocked in China. Some cases involved foreign social media services, as well as Chinese platforms such as WeChat (WeChat), Weibo (Weibo) and qq, which are widely used in China. Most of those sentenced to prison were convicted of provoking trouble, a vague charge often used against critics of the government, while others were convicted of defamation or inciting subversion of state power. Sentences ranged from six months to four years.
The Wall Street Journal identified 32 of the 58 cases through the government’s online database of court cases. For cases where the original court documents could not be found in the database or were inaccessible, the WSJ looked at copies either provided by lawyers or posted in an online database maintained by an anonymous activist that documents actions regarding restrictions on speech in China. Wang Yachou and legal scholar Chen Yujie of Academia Sinica in Taiwan reviewed the copies in the database and assessed their authenticity by comparing them to similar documents or through direct knowledge of the cases.
Lawyers involved in some of these cases also confirmed the authenticity of the relevant court documents to the Wall Street Journal. The activist who maintains the database, who was contacted via Twitter, declined to be identified.
Twitter and Facebook would not comment. Google Inc., which runs YouTube, did not return a request for comment.
Zhou Shaoqing, a Tianjin resident, is familiar with China’s censorship system. Zhou, 31, a former content censor at Chinese tech company Bytedance Inc. said he has removed politically sensitive information and obscene content from Bytedance’s popular news aggregation App “Today’s Headlines” and video-sharing platform Jieyin. Like many Chinese technology companies, ByteDance maintains a large content censorship team that is responsible for cleaning up content on the company’s online platforms according to internal guidelines and directives from Internet regulators.
Zhou Shaoqing said this experience in the industry has made him despise the Chinese Communist Party even more, a sentiment he has expressed on Twitter. Zhou Shaoqing worked in the company’s content review department in Tianjin from July 2018-January 2019 and was fired in January 2019 for poor performance, Bytespring said.
The prosecution alleges that Zhou Shaoqing published and retweeted more than 120 Twitter posts that were detrimental to China’s Communist Party and national leaders and the Chinese political system, as well as denigrating the response to the New crown outbreak, court records said. Last November, a court in Tianjin found Zhou Shaoqing guilty of “provoking and provoking trouble.
Court records say the government’s judicial psychiatrist assessed that Zhou Shaoqing was suffering from schizophrenia, but could still be held criminally responsible. Zhou Shaoqing admitted that he has had mental health problems in the past; Zhou said he believes government departments used those problems to discredit him. Zhou said he pleaded guilty at the trial in an effort to obtain a lesser punishment.
Tianjin government authorities did not respond to inquiries from reporters. Zhou’s lawyer, Sun Sheng, would not comment.
Sun Jiadong, 41, a resident of Zhengzhou, had only 27 followers on Twitter when he was arrested by police in late 2019. He was arrested on charges of spreading false information about China’s Communist Party, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang, according to the prosecution. The prosecution said the post in question received 168 “likes” and was retweeted by 10 users, as well as 95 user comments.
In an October 2019 tweet in response to an official Communist Party media outlet, Sun said, “Glory to Hong Kong, shame to the communists.” Court records show he was sentenced to 13 months in prison last December, counting time spent in police custody, and he served his sentence that month. Reporters were unable to reach Sun.
Some people have continued to post on Twitter since their release from prison. Court documents show that Huang Genbao, a member of the online activist group Rose China, was arrested in May 2019 and held in custody for 16 months for tweeting against Communist Party leaders and the Communist Party. “Before, it was just intimidation and making statements, but this time it was real, I didn’t expect it.”
After his release last September, Huang opened a new Twitter account and launched a petition asking a higher court to overturn a ruling against him, saying China’s Internet controls prevented most Chinese from seeing his tweets. He said he deleted that post after a request from police. He said he is now tweeting less and the content is less sensitive.
Huang Genbao was arrested in Xuzhou, and police in the city did not respond to questions about it.
Zhou Shaoqing also resumed posting on Twitter after he was released last December. He said, “There is no need to give in to abusers.” But he has been more careful. He said he would keep a low profile for some time.
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