Online Scapegoating and Strategic Distraction in China’s Chaotic COVID Reopening

• In Event: Technology, Surveillance, and Artificial Intelligence in Global Health

Abstract

Key Words
Covid-19 Lockdown; Nationalism; Chinese Politics; Algorithm-based Censorship; Social Movements; Computational Analysis




Abstract

Strategic Distraction in the online contentious public sphere in China has been widely discussed in academia. Instead of total censorship, the Chinese state leaves intact certain elements in a controversial event, diverts public debates to less sensitive ones, and therefore prevents direct blame on the government. From December 2022 to January 2023, when Chinese states announced an abrupt turn from zero-covid policies after mass anti-lockdown demonstrations, leading to unprecedentedly rapid virus spread and paralyzing the national health system. While the mass demonstrations cast doubt on the zero-covid policy’s legitimacy, the sudden reopening and the public health crises draw more criticisms on the state itself. However, in spite of the initial chaos (during the first week of the reopening) where the state was blamed for its irresponsible decision-making process, it met little mass-scale challenges in the rest of the month, when the virus took most of its tolls. Three events were supposed to make the state apparatus particularly vulnerable to criticism: 1) the Chinese CDC tightened the criteria for calculating covid-related deaths and refused to disclose reliable data; 2) When Lianhua Qingwen, a highly controversial traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), was recommended while a scientifically proven reliable medicine Paxlovid by Pfizer was limited usage in Beijing; 3) The negotiation to cover Paxlovid in Chinese public insurance fell apart, barring potential public access to this medicine. However, despite an upsurge of discussions, scapegoats took the place of the state to suffer criticisms. Among them were advocates for reopening, also called Tangfei (gangsters of ‘lying-flat’), who were major participants in the anti-lockdown demonstrations. Other criticisms were diverted against foreign companies like Pfizer, drawing nationalist frenzies.
This paper scrapes and analyzes posts on Sina Weibo during this time period. The Trending Topics (Chinese Twitter Hashtags) on Weibo, normally monitored by an automated algorithm and refreshing themselves every minute, play an important part in the gatekeeping of breaking news. I also study the change of trending topics and their real-time ‘hotspot indexes’ recorded in a database. Although the posts collected have largely been tailored by censorship, research results can show the broader picture of the government-mediated public sphere during this chaotic period. The mediated content reveals during different time periods, the state, if not intentionally, has preserved and even intensified certain debates, in which the state was not the main target so that the public attention would be diverted.
This strategy is seen as a softened method compared with mass-scale censorship and arrestments of dissidents, which have been applied by the Chinese state in previous social movements like labor actions. This paper, containing a brief review of the mass demonstration that forced the reconsideration of the zero-covid policy, discusses the necessity of the state to adopt such a ‘soft’ method to avoid a larger scale social mobilization. I propose that facing a conflict has a higher mass mobilization potential, the Chinese state uses the strategic distraction to preserve its legitimacy and amid the chaotic reopening, this strategy has proven effective and makes the state almost untouched.

Author

• Zijian Ye, Oxford University