A new report from The New York Times and ProPublica, based on thousands of leaked government directives and other sensitive documents, paints a terrifying picture of how China “staged-managed” news of the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic.
The report, published over the weekend, shows how Chinese authorities “shape[ed] online opinion” during the pandemic using government censors and an “army of paid internet trolls” to control the spread of information about the novel coronavirus, which, by all accounts, originated in Wuhan, both inside the country and abroad.
Triggered by the death of a doctor who risked arrest to warn of a new virus spreading through Wuhan, the Chinese government “ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion,” the report notes.
“Though China makes no secret of its belief in rigid internet controls, the documents convey just how much behind-the-scenes effort is involved in maintaining a tight grip,” ProPublica wrote. “It takes an enormous bureaucracy, armies of people, specialized technology made by private contractors, the constant monitoring of digital news outlets and social media platforms — and, presumably, lots of money.”
The two outlets reviewed thousands of documents and files pilfered by hackers from China’s Cyberspace Administration of China, a massive communications censorship program put in place by China’s current government. Although the agency has operated for years, the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic showed just how draconian the system could become in an emergency.
“At the start of February, a high-level meeting led by Xi called for tighter management of digital media, and the CAC’s offices across the country swung into action,” the report notes. “A directive in Zhejiang Province, whose capital is Hangzhou, said the agency should not only control the message within China but also seek to ‘actively influence international opinion.'”
The effort was largely successful, at least with the international community. Even as concern was growing in Europe and the United States, the World Health Organization parroted Chinese information about the virus, refusing to admit that the disease could transmit between humans.
“China has a politically weaponized system of censorship; it is refined, organized, coordinated, and supported by the state’s resources,” one research scientist told the two outlets. “It’s not just for deleting something. They also have a powerful apparatus to construct a narrative and aim it at any target with huge scale.”
WIRED Magazine has been tracking reports of Chinese censorship for months and noted, back in August, that the Chinese social media platform WeChat played a crucial role in censoring news about COVID-19 within China.
“Citizen Lab’s latest report, published earlier this week, finds that between January and May this year, more than 2,000 keywords related to the pandemic were suppressed on the Chinese messaging platform WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users in the country. Many of the censored terms referenced events and organizations in the United States,” according to WIRED.
In addition, China employes an army of “trolls,” the NYT says, employing “hundreds of thousands of people in China work part-time to post comments and share content that reinforces state ideology.”
It’s a massive endeavor that likely delayed response to the pandemic for days, if not weeks.
The full report on the effort is available from ProPublica.