After the outbreak in Wuhan, China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been tightly covering up the truth about the epidemic from top to bottom. The U.S. media obtained a large number of classified documents showing that the CCP began restricting information about the outbreak in early January.
The New York Times Chinese website reported on Dec. 19 that it had obtained thousands of confidential instructions and other documents from the Chinese government. The documents reveal in detail how the Internet Information Office helped the Communist Party authorities shape online public opinion during the epidemic.
The newspaper reported that the CCP’s Internet Information Office began controlling information about the outbreak in the first week of January. A directive from the agency asked news sites to use only government caliber and not to compare the outbreak to the deadly SARS epidemic that emerged in China and elsewhere in 2002, even though the World health Organization had pointed out the similarities.
In early February, Xi Jinping called for tighter management of digital media at a high-level meeting, and offices of the Communist Party’s Internet Information Office across the country moved to control not only domestic information but also to “positively influence international public opinion.
The Communist Party instructed that “headlines such as ‘incurable’ and ‘fatal’ should not be used to prevent social panic. Another directive stated that the term “blockade” should not be used when reporting on restrictions on movement and travel. Several directives emphasized that negative news about the virus should not be publicized.
When the outbreak broke out in prisons, the Communist Party’s State Internet Information Office asked its local Internet Information Offices to monitor the matter closely to prevent “drawing attention from outside the country,” among other things.
When overseas donations of medical supplies were made to China, the CCP instructed the mainland media to avoid creating the “false impression” that the CCP “relies on foreign donations.
When whistle-blower Li Wenliang died in Wuhan on the night of Feb. 6, it sent emotions spilling out and put social media in danger of falling out of the control of the Internet Information Office.
The report said the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship apparatus has intensified. Its secret instructions to local propagandists and news organizations warned that Li Wenliang’s death posed an “unprecedented challenge” that could trigger a “butterfly effect” and that officials must work to suppress negative news and regain control of the discourse.
They ordered news sites not to send push notifications of Li’s death to readers. They asked social media platforms to gradually remove Li Wenliang’s name from their trending topics pages. They also unleashed a large number of fake online commentators to flood social media sites with distracting remarks and stressed the need to act with caution: “In the struggle to guide the process, online commentators should be careful to conceal their identities, refrain from any form of low-level red or high-level black, and reflect the effect of moistening the battlefield.”
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