Restrictions that have been imposed on social media platforms have ranged from controls enacted by the state to the entirety of the internet in China to controls enacted on a far more local basis within Anshan Town itself. Some of the latter may even have originated with individ-uals or families who were concerned about the potential danger of the internet.
State- level controls: The Golden Shield
The Golden Shield Project (jindun gongcheng), colloquially referred to as the ‘Great Firewall of China’ ( fanghuo changcheng), is arguably the best- known mechanism of Chinese state control over the internet. The Golden Shield Project is a large, central government project adminis-tered by the Ministry of Public Security and enacted by the country’s ISPs. It is predominantly aimed at preventing local users from visiting particular websites and searching for a range of key terms. Many stud-ies, particularly by scholars based outside China, have revealed various aspects of the Golden Shield Project, such as how controls and blocks are applied in reaction to sensitive political events,6 the role of industry in developing the necessary technology,7 the increasing sophistication and reach of the network over time8 and countermeasures enacted by users in response to the restrictions.9 An altogether less frequently discussed (but equally pertinent) reason for the existence of controls limiting access to foreign social media platforms is to protect the high revenues of indigenous social media firms.10 Western social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were included among the inaccessi-ble platforms (at the time of writing).
The opaque nature of the system and its management by the Ministry of Public Security makes it difficult to fully discern the pro-cess that ultimately results in a decision to ban a particular overseas social media network. It has been suggested that a key motivation behind the Golden Shield is to limit the contact that domestic social media users have with foreign users and the information posted on
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social media networks. It is significant that blocks on social media platforms have often been enacted at specific moments related to political crises in China. For example, during the 2014 Hong Kong Protests the Golden Shield was extended to prevent users in main-land Chinese accessing the photo- sharing platform Instagram. Hong Kong’s Central district was filled with protestors, and large numbers of photographs of altercations between police and protestors were cir-culating on Instagram.11
When events such as this happen, how does the Golden Shield actually affect the lives of ordinary people in a place like Anshan Town?
The answer may be not very much – at least not in a way directly dis-cernible to townsfolk themselves. Although tech- savvy, cosmopolitan and globally aware residents in China’s urban cities may have experi-enced the sudden blocking of Instagram (and, prior to that, other social networks), the case was different in Anshan Town where use – and even awareness of – non- Chinese social media platforms is extremely limited.
The questionnaire conducted in Anshan Town showed only one individ-ual who possessed a Facebook account (a 25- year- old male Post Office clerk, who was from Bai Town), and no users of Twitter or Instagram.
I was often asked what social media platforms were used outside China, and whether people outside China used QQ.
Despite the barriers to using non- Chinese social media platforms, most university students and people in their twenties had at least heard of Facebook. Many knew of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, either through the film The Social Network (a dramatisation of the events surrounding the conception of the platform) or via the national news reports of his visits to China during which, some townsfolk noted, Zuckerberg had spoken in broken Chinese. During the entire period of field work only one participant – a hairdresser in the town – took the time to install a Virtual Private Network (VPN) program that allowed him to circumvent the Golden Shield. He subsequently joined Facebook and added me as a friend. A few days later he commented that Facebook was not as good as QQ and WeChat, because it ‘didn’t really have any-thing on it’ (understandable given the fact that I was his only friend on the network).
In general, the high level of interest the Golden Shield Project receives in non- Chinese reports and academic coverage of the Chinese internet12 is not reflected locally, where most people are unaware of its existence and those who are aware are largely unconcerned about it.
This reflects the fact that the Chinese government occupies a ‘default position’ of authority over the internet, in contrast to Euro- American
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governments which have to legislate in order to give themselves the right to exercise control over the internet.13
We should not assume that all users of social media in Anshan Town would be Facebook/ Twitter users by default if the constraints described above did not exist. This is clear when viewed from the other direction. There is absolutely nothing to stop European or American social media users from setting up a QQ or WeChat account (both plat-forms have English- language versions), yet in practice very few people have such accounts. Other factors are clearly at play, such as whether the platform is judged to be useful to the people who use it or whether their friends, family or other associates that they communicate with also happen to be members of the same social network.
Deleted posts and frozen accounts
The next level of control occurs within Chinese social media platforms themselves, where certain types of postings are actively monitored and deleted. As with the Golden Shield Project, the process of moderating posts lacks transparency. It has been suggested that social media com-panies work to monitor potentially objectionable content in response to demands by the Ministry of Public Security.14 Postings that are subject to moderation are not limited to those that are critical of the government, but include other content deemed inappropriate: pornography, fraud schemes and instances of account abuse, etc. Only two people I spoke to recalled having their account frozen. Jiao Yongqi, a 20- year- old shop worker, reported having his accounts frozen for a short period of time;
however he was unwilling to go into details of what he had posted that brought this about. Jiao Yongqi regarded this block as an inconvenience, rather than seeing it as especially oppressive. In a separate instance Liu Wei, a 28- year- old travelling salesman, had his account frozen for cheat-ing while playcheat-ing card games on QQ:
I have been reported [by another user]. What thing ended up with me being reported? My friend and I were playing doudizhu [the card game]. The two of us were working together to cheat that [third] person out of their ‘Happiness beans’ . . . The two of us knew each other’s cards. That person reported us, we were unable to play for a month. They shut down our accounts.
Although these threats of deletion or bans do deter users from certain behaviour, by far the most effective deterrent is self- censorship; most
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users understand that there are expectations about the kind of content that is appropriate for posting on these platforms. Chapter 3 showed that the vast majority of users’ postings on QQ were related to either offspring or romance and marriage, rather than political postings. For example Zhang Lin, a shopkeeper in the town, spoke about the need for caution when making such posts.
I do [post about news], but I still have a few scruples. I have a class-mate who doesn’t have a single bit of common sense. He used to be a teacher, and then he became a businessman. He is more rad-ical than me. He will be filled with righteous indignation at some unfair things in society. He will share these things [online], I’ll also comment. But eight out of ten times it’s not possible to publish.
Sometimes you can’t even publish a curse.
However, there was no evidence that Anshan Town people shy away from making overtly political postings because they are afraid of puni-tive measures by the government or social media companies. Instead, users seem to regard QQ and WeChat as outlets that are appropriate only for more positive kinds of posts. When it comes to posting mes-sages online, people are far more concerned with whether the posts will provoke the disapproval of friends and family, rather than the state, law enforcement bodies or the social media companies. As such, social media was generally felt to be an inappropriate locale for posts regard-ing news, politics and current affairs.
The above examples of Jiao Yongqi, Liu Wei and Zhang Lin are interesting in that they reveal the way in which controls over accept-able content often become codified into cultural norms. This may explain why users’ responses frequently shift between expressing feelings of constraint over what it is possible to post to claims that they do not want to make political postings on social media anyway.
I believe that such reactions can be understood as ways that towns-folk form a strategy for coping with inflexible controls that they are otherwise unable to influence. It should be noted that this aversion towards political postings does not mean that townsfolk are entirely opposed to intense political discussions. I witnessed numerous ani-mated debates over tea drinking sessions, at dinner tables or in homes, regarding all manner of issues from China’s foreign policy to local land allocation and issues of corruption. The key point is that both families and the state were active in conspiring to keep such postings outside of social media.
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Limiting youth access
The social media use of young people in Anshan Town was an area of particular concern for townsfolk, who were often worried about the potential corrupting influence of such technologies. This is a partic-ularly significant area, as efforts by both the state and local families often overlap in seeking to limit young people’s access to social media.
For example, social media companies imposed limits on the amount of time that users were permitted continuously to play games. Users were required to confirm their age by registering with a valid national iden-tity card number. For users under the age of 18 years, playing in excess of three hours per day would halve their ‘profit’ in the game (i.e. virtual points, experience or currency); playing in excess of five hours would reduce it to zero.15 Young people in Anshan Town found a way to circum-vent this by entering someone else’s identity card number (their parents’
ID card numbers – either with or without their knowledge – were usually felt to be a good choice). Some users registered a second QQ account that they could continue to use once their first account had reached the time limit. Once again, these controls were targeted at young people, in part due to criticism of social media companies concerning young people’s
‘addiction’ to gaming. The state needed to be seen to respond seriously to such widely held family concerns.
In addition to nationwide controls implemented by the government or social media companies, there were a number of measures that were, to varying degrees, enacted locally. For example, there is nationwide prohibition on under- 18s using internet cafés, which is half- heartedly implemented in the town’s only such café. Throughout China a national identity card is required to use any internet café. The front desk of every internet café is fitted with a card reader and users must swipe their cards on arriving and when leaving. In addition to logging time spent online, and ensuring the customer is billed correctly, this measure is designed to make café owners ensure the users are of the legal age. Regular, unannounced inspections by the county- level Cultural Bureau and other government departments are supposed to check that café owners are fulfilling this requirement to prevent underage use.16
However, in Anshan Town’s internet café the manager kept a supply of spare ID cards (borrowed from friends and extended fam-ily) in a locked drawer at the front desk. When under- 18s without ID cards came to the café, the manager would swipe one of these tempo-rary cards in lieu of the youngster’s. The underage users were usually accommodated in two ‘secret’ rooms at the back of the café, away from
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the street and out of view of family members and inspectors. Despite only 2 per cent of the surveyed middle schoolchildren identifying the internet café as their main place of internet use,17 these schoolchil-dren seemed to be the most common customers in the café. By pro-viding access to schoolchildren, the internet café owner was aware of the resulting low social standing he had in the town.18 In compar-ison urban areas, where internet cafés were open 24 hours a day,19 in Anshan Town the café limited its opening hours to between 07.00 am and 10.00 pm daily.
Rural internet cafés are more community- based than their urban counterparts, which further raises their status as a ‘commons’ for their users. In this respect, they fulfil a wider function than urban internet cafés which can be seen more as entertainment centres and therefore more likely to be subject to government clampdowns.20
Restrictions on mobile phone use for young people in the town were a further example of the kinds of controls that affected social media use. Parents believed that mobile phones had an adverse affect on their child’s educational achievement, so many would refuse their offspring’s requests for phones until they went to university or college.
Schools were also complicit in enforcing a ban on mobile phones within classrooms.21
The cases discussed in this chapter show that the regimes creat-ing and enforccreat-ing these control systems are organised at the state and local levels and by internet service providers, social media companies and even local businesses and schools. The controls which receive the greatest attention outside China – the Great Firewall and deletion of social media posts – are the ones that typically concern local peo-ple the least. However, other systems of control – such as checking users’ ages and restricting access for young people – that act at a local level are immediately visible and very important to townsfolk. Some of these measures come from people’s own convictions about the appropriate use of social media, rather than just from state- imposed restrictions.
By looking at the various measures of control enacted over social media use at different levels, this section has emphasised the degree of collaboration that exists between the Chinese state and families in shaping appropriate use of social media. Many of the interventions dis-cussed, whether implemented by the state or by individuals, are guided by moral concerns regarding the potential dangers of social media use for families or the state, or sometimes both.
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