China’s digital authoritarian model has reached its limit and is now trapped in a loop, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said in the latest issue of its quarterly publication on the situation in China (大陸情勢季報).
The classification by Chinese authorities of actor Alan Yu’s (于朦朧) death after falling from a building in Beijing on Sept. 11 as an “accidental fall after drinking” drew widespread skepticism, which is indicative of the cracks forming in its digital authoritarian model, the MAC said.
Audio and video posted online that were purportedly recorded during the incident, as well as rumors linking the actor to Cai Qi (蔡奇), a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Politburo Standing Committee, prompted a flurry of speculation, the report said.
Photo: Screen grab from social media
Chinese authorities immediately initiated “stability maintenance” measures, deleting information and posts, and prohibiting further inquiries into the matter, it said.
The Cyberspace Administration of China summoned executives from social media platforms including Sina Weibo, Kuaishou and Douyin, the report said.
The agency fined the companies, ordered them to strictly manage trending topics and set a deadline to rectify the situation to ensure a “clear and bright cyberspace,” the MAC said.
China’s entertainment industry lacks autonomy, as artists can rapidly rise to stardom or be stripped of their influence by political players, the report said.
The reaction to Yu’s death has highlighted how the CCP’s attempts to stifle speech have backfired, with strict censorship only fueling the rapid dissemination of rumors, exposing persistent vulnerabilities in the digital authoritarian framework, it said.
In similar cases, police bureaus have rushed to close investigations and forbidden further probes, leading to a loss of trust in official reports among the Chinese public, it said.
The CCP is caught in a feedback loop — the stricter the censorship, the more prevalent the rumors, it said, paraphrasing a Sept. 30 article in Foreign Policy magazine — “The Chinese public is obsessing over a perceived celebrity cover-up,” by Kevin Hsu, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Censors are so reactive that stories can be buried for any number of reasons... Sometimes, the censorship itself becomes the story, sparking any number of conspiracies to explain why the news is being covered up,” Hsu wrote.
Many commenters on the Yu situation, as well as other censored issues, are bypassing Beijing’s controls by posting on social media platforms outside China, the MAC said, adding that some have organized protests in other countries to demand that the truth be reported, which has prompted reporting in international media.
The CCP’s digital authoritarianism is facing a severe resource strain and it is struggling to cover every front at once, the MAC said, adding that the same sort of situation is arising over its suppression of protests.
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