Internet control and political scandal: What the Bo Xilai affair tells us about Chinese Internet censorship

James Berrill — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:34:42 +0000

The downfall of the Princeling Bo Xilai is the most significant political scandal to hit China in recent years, and what little is known is mostly the result of the efforts of Chinese microbloggers. Not surprisingly, given their desire to present an image of government unity in this transition year, state media has provided as little detail as possible, and sought to suppress rumour and speculation online. Yet these attempts have shown the limitations of China’s Internet censorship.

Despite extensive content filtering and manual censorship of keywords, the flood of commentary on Weibo continues. Netizens have openly mocked the official statement that Wang Lijun, Bo’s former deputy whose apparent attempt to seek asylum at the US consulate exacerbated the scandal, is receiving ‘vacation-style treatment’ (health issues being the official reason for his demotion). Stronger action was taken when netizens turned their attention to the popular Bo. On 31 March six microbloggers were arrested for spreading rumours, and, under instruction, Tencent and Sina (Weibo’s parent) disabled the comment function on users’ posts for three days (The Economist 7/4/2012).

Meanwhile, the increase in keyword filtering has escalated the battle between netizens and censors over code words for discussing the scandal. China Digital Times’ compilation of current, if inconsistently, banned terms on Weibo highlights the increasing obscurity of the code words: ‘King of the Southwest’ for Bo is rather obvious, but ‘hotpot’, ‘not thin’ and ‘tomato’ less so. And these are banned terms, long since replaced.

While many, if not most, of the rumours on microblogs are or will prove to be false (a failed coup in Beijing by Bo, for example), their prevalence on Chinese microblogs is significant. To an extent speculation may have been allowed by the authorities to undermine Bo’s popularity, but the vast userbase makes censorship that little bit more difficult, both in practice and politically. It is also clear that people turned to online sources when the official media failed to satisfy their demand for news: microblogs offered information outside the control of the authorities.

In light of this, the Chinese censors’ new scheme of real-name registration for microblogs may prove an effective reassertion of control. Testing began in several cities on 16 March, as the extent of the scandal was breaking. To post on a microblog, users must now register with their real name and ID card. This is likely to lead to further self-censorship from netizens (see Tricia Wang and An Xiao Mina on Wired’s Threat Level) and the stifling of microblogs as a space for political discussion. It seems that netizens’ challenge to authority, evident in the current scandal, through microblogging, satire and code words is one that the Chinese government for now can adequately contain.