There’s no evidence to support the notion the Chinese government either tried to suppress criticism or pumped-up positive postings on social media in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in China.
That at least is the conclusion from an analysis of 5-million Sina Weibo posts from December 1st 2019 to February 27th 2020 conducted by Yingdan Lu (et al.) of Stanford University.
A belief that authoritarian regimes are often upended by external shocks (the paper notes that plague, perhaps, did for the Roman elites, likewise Chernobyl may have precipitated the end of the U.S.S.R.) led commentators to look [Gleefully? Ed.] for criticism of the Chinese government in the pandemic’s early days there.
No surprise, they found a lot of it; but hang on. There was a simultaneous bump of online comment supporting the administration which, in fact, significantly exceeded the griping.
The congenitally cynical will smell a rat here. Doesn’t China censor online comment and have a ‘Tencent-Army’ of cheer-leaders they deploy to big-up the government on a regular basis? Yes, indeed true, and partly true (the Tencent-Army is a myth, coordinated cheer-leading does occur though). However, the fact that China censors and puffs social media on occasion makes it easy to spot when it occurs.
What the researchers discovered in this case was that there was no systematic effort at either widespread censorship or systemic AstroTurfing (the process of making positive comments look like they’re from the grass-roots, when they’re not) by the authorities at this time.
As with all stories there are, in fact, two sides.
Critical (mostly Western) media like to focus on and find stories about how disaffected the Chinese citizenry are with their rulers; it fits a comfortable narrative readers are familiar with.
However, the other mostly untold side of the story is the high level of approval the Chinese government enjoys and how that translates often into expressions of genuine support. In this analysis we find critics and fans not just in balance but supporters way ahead of the critical minority.
Not a story the BBC, FT or CNN will run with anytime soon perhaps; but an observed fact, and in plain sight here, nonetheless.
The full paper has some other useful charts and you can get to it via this link Not As Simple As It Seems.
Happy Sunday.