Some people went to jail for selling VPNs, and others were fined for merely using them. The government also tightened its ideological grip over universities and schools.
Some professors, including foreigners, were punished for making comments critical of the government. Perhaps the most devastating form of censorship is physical. Authorities have silenced numerous leading writers, rights lawyers and activists who served as the conscience of the nation: aforementioned Ai Weiwei is in exile, Xu Zhiyong has been forcibly disappeared , and Liu Xiaobo died three years ago in state custody.
In July , authorities rounded up and interrogated without counsel about rights lawyers, legal assistants, and activists across the country, many of whom were subjected to torture and other ill treatment and a few are still in prison today. Police jailed some Twitter users while forcing others to close their accounts. When so few have alternative sources of information, government propaganda becomes more believable: The coronavirus was brought to China by the U.
Inside China, people are living in an information bubble that the government is getting better at controlling. In some cases, this is almost leading to a generational split. In my cohort—those who experienced a relatively free internet as young people—many strongly resent the Great Firewall. Among people who started college after Xi took power, however, there is a strong impulse to defend it. Having grown up never hearing of or using international platforms such as Twitter and Google, they believe the Firewall has protected them from false information and the country from social instability.
But while the U. The way the state media depicts the U. Some examples of this new nationalism are absurd but largely harmless, like a storm of criticism that erupted around a famed infectious disease doctor for suggesting that Chinese children should have protein-rich eggs and milk for breakfast, rather than rice porridge. But some nationalistic fervor has the potential for real-world harm. Recently, there have been renewed calls for the Chinese government to seize the opportunity created by the pandemic to take Taiwan by force.
Videos and photos have also emerged of people, including children , warning or wishing for the deaths of Americans. Of course, not all youth are strident nationalists. While rising nationalism in China is a reality and policymakers should take it seriously, they should also keep in mind that many in and from China live in silent fear, struggling with guilt for not speaking up.
At minimum, countries around the world should keep their universities, institutions and open societies supportive of and welcoming to those who want to learn and debate. Governments and institutions should also invest in overseas independent Chinese-language media—many young people inside the Great Firewall quietly find ways to jump over the wall to look for information—and technological tools that can be used to circumvent and even dismantle censorship.
Finally, they need to keep supporting journalists, writers and activists inside the country—the real agents of change. Get updates on human rights issues from around the globe.
Join our movement today. Help us continue to fight human rights abuses. Please give now to support our work. Human Rights Watch. Donate Now. Take Action. Join Us. Give Now. Click to expand Image. Your tax deductible gift can help stop human rights violations and save lives around the world. Topic Technology and Rights. More Reading. August 14, Commentary. For US and other western internet giants, the hope of getting a piece of the huge China market is increasingly a pipe dream.
In the first half of this year, the internet regulator Cyber Administration of China said it had shut down or revoked the licenses of more than 3, websites. Yet US internet giants are still trying. And last month, Facebook gained approval to open a subsidiary in the eastern province of Zhejiang — only to see the approval quickly withdrawn. Two economists from Peking University and Stanford University concluded this year, after an month survey, that Chinese college students were indifferent about having access to uncensored, politically sensitive information.
They had given nearly 1, students at two Beijing universities free tools to bypass censorship, but found that nearly half the students did not use them.
Among those who did, almost none spent time browsing foreign news websites that were blocked. The attitude is a departure even from those born in China in the s. When that generation was coming of age a decade or so ago, some were rebels. One of the most famous was Han Han, a blogger who questioned the Chinese political system and traditional values.
He sold millions of copies of books and has more than 40 million followers on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. Now there are no Chinese like Han who are in their teens or 20s. Even Han, now 35, is no longer his former self. He mainly posts about his businesses on Weibo, which include making films and race cars. Many young people in China instead consume apps and services like Baidu, the social media service WeChat and the short video platform Tik Tok.
Often, they spout consumerism and nationalism. In March, when social media giant Tencent surveyed more than 10, users who were born in or after, nearly eight in 10 said they thought China was either in its best time in history or was becoming a better country each day.
Nearly the same percentage said they were very optimistic or quite optimistic about their future. One who describes herself as patriotic, optimistic and outgoing is Shen Yanan.
Shen, 28, works in the operations department at a real estate website in Baoding, a city of roughly 3 million people near Beijing. She believes China is a great country and will do her best to make it stronger, she says.
Every evening, she watches one to two hours of South Korean soap operas on her phone. She does not have any news apps on her smartphone because, she said, she is not interested in politics. She has travelled to Japan a few times and has used Google Maps there, but otherwise did not visit any blocked foreign sites.
She reads news sometimes on the news app Jinri Toutiao but found that many countries were embroiled in wars and riots. Wen Shengjian, 14, wants to become a rapper and idolises Drake and Kanye West. Shengjian, whose family moved in July from Beijing to Dongying, an oil town in eastern Shandong province, said he had noticed that American rappers were very vocal about social issues and that some even criticised the president in their music.
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