China censors microblogging site to silence online critics
BEIJI NG — China has succeeded in neutering the country’s most free-flowing and important source of news and opinion, according to research which shows a dramatic drop in activity on the microblogging website Sina Weibo.
Research commissioned by The Daily Telegraph shows that the number of posts on the successful site, which is China’s answer to Twitter, may have fallen by as much as 70 per cent in the wake of an aggressive campaign by the Communist Party to intimidate influential users.
Once an important public space for news and opinion, which censors struggled to contain, it now seems to have been reduced to a wasteland of celebrity endorsements, government propaganda and corporate jingles.
At its peak, Weibo was indispensable to almost every young Chinese person,generatinghugefanbases.In an attempt to reach out to the Chinese market, global stars and politicians joined Weibo. But the findings from the research will be a blow to those who hoped that Weibo would weaken the Communist Party’s monopoly on information.
Researchers analyzed a sample of 1.6 million Weibo users from the start of 2011 to the end of last year. They tracked the number of posts made each day, which gradually swelled to a peak in March 2012 when that sample group alone made a total of 83.8 million posts.
But that was the month that the Communist Party struck its first major blow against Weibo, requiring users to register their real names with the service. From that point, those wishing to criticize the party had to do so without the comforting blanket of anonymity and users started to rein in their comments.
In the following months, the party tightened its censorship, deleting the accounts of activists and instituting a “five strikes and out rule,” which suspended the accounts of anyone posting five “sensitive” tweets for 48 hours.
But Weibo remained resilient; it was still the only way for the Chinese public to air grievances and absorb information which had not come from state media.
Last June the party changed tack. To great effect, it began arresting hundreds of users posting “rumours” on Weibo.
The authorities succeeded in terrifying users into submission. The prominent bloggers He Weifang, a liberal law professor, Zhang Lifan, a historian, and Liu Ou, an investigative journalist, either quit or were driven from the service.
In March 2012, there were almost 430,000 people posting 40 times a day, almost every day. By last December, there were 114,000, a fall of 73 per cent. These active users also registered a huge drop in activity, from a peak of almost 68 million posts in March 2012 to 17.9 million by the end of last year, a 74 per cent fall.