Circumvent Censorship: Experiences from Publishing Political Commentaries

• In Event: China Under Xi Jinping: Internal and External Challenges

Abstract

The Chinese censorship today is quite different from that of the totalitarian period. Rather than having virtually all political discourses unified and centralized, the authoritarian state still manages to control the flow of self-produced information while allowing a certain degree of free expression. How does the censorship of self-media (自媒体) work in China? What is the logic and rationale behind the content screen mechanism? Are there strategies and tactics to circumvent the censorship? “Circumventing the censorship” is defined as using strategies and tactics during the editing phase so that previously censored contents become publishable, thus getting around the censorship.
In this research, we, as editors, created an online self-media with multiple platforms that publish political commentaries from more than 50 participating Chinese political scientists from outside of mainland China, primarily from the U.S., Japan, and Taiwan, but also including scholars from Europe, Hong Kong, and Macau. After editing over 300 political commentaries, we analyze the pattern and record of articles being published and/or censored, with particular attention to the experiences of tweaking certain words, changing the theme and/or publication time to turn a prohibited article into a published one.
We argue that the Chinese online censorship of self-media is dynamic, decentralized, and multi-layered, with a hardened core but flexible peripheries. We use specific case studies to demonstrate how a dynamic “banned keyword bank” would change at different times, how different platforms and key phrases would trigger different reactions, and how each layer of censorship – from auto-detection to manual approval to deletion of a published article – would function and react to different tactics. We also provide key takeaways about how to circumvent the censorship in China as a self-media. Interviews with staff members with censorship operation experiences will also be conducted to complement the editorial experiences.

Authors

• Taiyi Sun, Christopher Newport University

• Quansheng Zhao, American University-SIS