Even as China moves to strip away media outlets from Jack Ma’s (馬雲) Alibaba Group Holding, authorities are allowing several patriotic upstarts to blossom in one of the world’s most restrictive media spaces.
One of the main voices is Chairman Rabbit (兔主席) — the social media moniker for Harvard University-educated princeling Ren Yi (任意), whose popularity partly stems from Chinese residents’ fatigue with what they view as constant China-bashing at Western media outlets.
A former assistant to the late renowned Sinologist Ezra Vogel, Chairman Rabbit has built a following of more than 2 million fans on social media platforms Sina Weibo and WeChat.
The media needs to have “social responsibility” and think about public sentiment, Ren said in a telephone interview, adding that China is still trying to find a balance between allowing different points of view, while ensuring that the public does not lose confidence in political institutions.
Ren’s success helps show where the line for permissible speech is under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who has further restricted space for dissenting and critical voices since taking power in 2012.
Beyond booting out some foreign journalists and pressuring Ma to sell properties such as the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, China frequently moves to quash new media platforms not under its control.
Last month, authorities quickly blocked Clubhouse after it emerged as a venue where Internet users, including those in China, gathered to discuss treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and Taiwanese independence — topics deemed too sensitive for open discussion on China’s Internet.
Around the same time, social media users and bloggers were required to obtain a license to post about current events, making it virtually impossible for anyone to operate outside China’s censorship system.
However, some of those embracing the restrictions are finding big audiences among Chinese residents who are skeptical of Western narratives and state-run mouthpieces, such as the People’s Daily or China Central Television.
Ren’s writing took off during the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, when he won over well-educated readers who were not fully persuaded by the accounts presented by mainstream Chinese media.
Ren said that the demonstrators were driven by identity politics, and would never support mainland authorities regardless of the economic incentives offered.
He compared Hong Kong young people wearing black T-shirts to the Ku Klux Klan, while saying that the territory’s leaders were infiltrated by the “deep state” and needed to be screened for their political views — a notion that Xi implemented this year with rules that only “patriots” can govern the territory.
China’s need for a positive narrative beyond official sources — including aggressive diplomats referred to as “Wolf Warriors” in the West — was made all the more apparent following criticism for how it handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the past year, Beijing has increasingly been on the defensive in the face of widespread criticism over how it treats mostly Muslim ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang and democracy advocates in Hong Kong.
Xi has long called for Chinese media workers and academics to do a better job “telling China’s stories to the world.”
Some have been sent to study with Zhang Weiwei (張維為) at Fudan University’s Chunqiu Institute, two people who attended the sessions said.
Zhang, a staunch and vocal advocate for how China’s governance model is superior to Western democracies, is reputed to be among Xi’s favorite scholars, one of the people said.
Chinese academics are trying to find ways to explain China in a way that is understandable to the West.
Wang Yiwei (王義桅), director of Renmin University’s Institute of International Affairs and a former Chinese diplomat, said that decoupling was the result of the US not being able to annihilate or assimilate China.
“The US has a very religious way of thinking — they want to bring you into their sphere,” said Wang, who is working on a book that he says is China’s counterargument to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
“If they can’t, they will demonize you and try to destroy you,” he added.
Wang Zichen (王子辰) was so dismayed with how Western journalists cover China that he decided to publish his own newsletter.
Almost a year later, Pekingnology has quickly garnered about 1,600 subscribers — including diplomats in Beijing, journalists and investors — with in-depth dives on everything from who really owns Huawei Technologies Co to the fuzzier elements of Chinese politics, such as the “spirit of the Fifth Plenum.”
“It shows that telling a Chinese story from a Chinese perspective, deeply rooted in Chinese practice, is of great value to those in the West and can be appreciated by them,” Wang Zichen said.
Like Chairman Rabbit, Wang Zichen presents himself as an independent voice, even though he works by day as a reporter with state-run Xinhua news agency.
He said that his bosses have given him a tacit nod of approval to pursue his side project, but that he is acting alone.
“It’s a one man shop,” he said. “There is no outside help, intervention or guidance.”
Wang Zichen counts prominent China observer Bill Bishop as an inspiration, especially in showing that China punditry can be financially lucrative.
Pekingnology is published on the Substack platform, in which Bishop is an investor.
Wang Zichen also admires Hu Xijin (胡錫進), editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party-backed Global Times, for being one of the first to defend China on Twitter.
“I love my country deeply,” Wang Zichen said. “I think that having people understand more of China in its own, intended original meaning — that’s the purpose of people in my profession.”
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