Country without Facebook: A dazzling social media world thrives in China - but the party is even chasing 'fetishes'
Created: 02/23/2022, 15:13
From: Foreign Policy
The smartphone is also present in China - without US social media and despite interventions by the party.
© Kyodo News/www.imago-images.de
A country without Facebook: what does the world's largest social media market look like after all major US platforms have left China?
The big western corporations no longer offer social media in China.
The result is a dazzling, all-encompassing offering.
But also a constant hunt by the Communist Party.
In this text, the journalist Christina Lu sheds light on the social media world of China, which is hardly known in the West.
This article is available in German for the first time – it was first published in
Foreign Policy
magazine on November 11, 2021 .
Washington, DC/Beijing - When LinkedIn, the last major US social media platform still active in China*, announced that it was leaving the country* in October, it was seen as a definitive break between US and Chinese social networks.
However, for the majority of social media users in China, LinkedIn's departure was not a major loss.
In its ten years of existence in China, the company has had a hard time building a loyal user base, in part because Chinese users had a plethora of other options.
For years, Beijing has sealed off its digital sphere - reflected in the censorship of Facebook and Twitter - and cultivated a vast, dynamic ecosystem of social media.
"I don't think most people have even remotely an accurate idea of what daily life in China is like."
Jeremy Daum, Paul Tsai China Center
US-China relations are increasingly viewed as geopolitical competition, and discussions on Chinese social media are therefore often politically coupled.
But researchers say that's just one side of the story, which doesn't take into account the innovative power of Chinese social media.
Today, social media is a space where Chinese citizens bypass ever-changing regulations — and censorship — to discuss anything and everything.
From the Netflix series
Squid Game
to toxic work culture.
"I don't think most people have even remotely close an idea of what daily life in China is like," says Jeremy Daum, a senior research scholar at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center.
"We tend to have a lot of fantasies about what's going on there."
China hosts the largest social media market in the world, which had an estimated 927 million users in 2020.
The social media landscape has changed dramatically in recent years.
In the past, it would be easy to match every social media app created in China with a Western counterpart.
But such comparisons are no longer always possible.
Because Chinese platforms have evolved in a way that allows them to be way ahead of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
China: "Super Apps" are springing up - all-encompassing offer on social media
"In China, social media is heavily and fundamentally integrated with many other platforms, whether for payments, food delivery, banking or route planning," says Silvia Lindtner, a professor at the University of Michigan.
This shift also includes the so-called super apps, one-stop platforms that allow users to easily perform multiple activities — shopping, texting, making money transfers and booking flights, to name a few — without the having to switch apps.
Take WeChat, China's giant messaging platform with more than a billion monthly users.
WeChat is owned by Tencent, a $69 billion Chinese conglomerate* that also has stakes in major Hollywood blockbusters and popular video games.
Although it's technically a messaging service, it's now almost all-encompassing.
In the WeChat world, users can also take out loans, shop at the supermarket, shop online, get groceries delivered, call ride-hailing services and book flights.
"WeChat has evolved into a very innovative system that encompasses pretty much everything you could ever need," said Cara Wallis, a professor at Texas A&M University.
Social media in China: "WeChat is used for everything"
“WeChat is used for everything.
It's more than a communication app.
It's a payment app.
It's a news app.
It's everything," says Daum.
“It has become its own kind of internet.
It's a small ecosystem unto itself... There's nothing like that in the US.”
The WeChat ecosystem is a pillar of an extensive social media architecture.
Would you like a date?
You have at least nine options.
Try Tantan, Momo or various other dating apps, some of which offer live streaming services, to better assess potential partners.
(Popular international options like Tinder can only be accessed in China via a virtual private network.)
For aimless scrolling there is Weibo, a popular microblogging platform, or Douyin, an app for short videos that has replaced its western counterpart TikTok* and is addictive.
Although both TikTok and Douyin are owned by Chinese developer ByteDance, Douyin is the more technologically advanced option as it embeds specialized e-commerce features.
Users can instantly buy products, book hotel rooms and visit places virtually after seeing them in videos.
The live streaming industry has also experienced an unprecedented boom in China, with hundreds of millions of people tuning in to live streams in search of intimacy and connection.
But the platforms are also the target of ever stricter restrictions.
They are part of Beijing's ongoing attempt to mold behavior and social norms down to the smallest detail.
Censorship on Chinese social media used to be slow and cumbersome, and by the late 2000s Weibo in particular was seen as heralding a more open media landscape.
Corrupt or abusive government officials have often been exposed in videos on Weibo, and sometimes punished.
China: Communist Party always on the trail of the debates - and the "fetishes"
That quickly changed, however, as authorities adjusted and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)* put more emphasis on ideological warfare and blocking Western ideas.
A crackdown on the "Big Vs," the Weibo equivalent of Twitter account verification, in 2013 effectively ended the Weibo debate.
When some of these political discussions shifted to private groups on WeChat, the government targeted them in 2017, blaming the organizers for any politically dissenting statements in the group.
For example, making fun of the CCP's war heroes on social media can get you jailed—and not just political content is controlled.
In recent years, regulations have become more and more personal, and seemingly harmless subjects have been censored.
Users relaxing with ASMR in the background or a
mukbang
, a form of overeating popular in South Korea, may be unlucky.
Both are considered inappropriate, vulgar fetish subjects and have been banned.
Live streaming has also become a constant target of government action since it became popular in 2014.
More recently, how influencers can dress and speak has even been mandated.
Social Media in China: Platforms also play referee here - ByteDance employs 20,000 moderators
As Beijing tightens its grip, these rules are constantly evolving.
Social media platforms are often made the arbiters of these changing regulations.
This creates an unforgiving environment that fuels self-censorship and affects the way people engage in public conversations.
When it comes to content regulation, apps often have to spend a lot of money and work to monitor user behavior.
In 2020, ByteDance employed an estimated 20,000 moderators to censor posts.
"You're never quite sure about the exact rules.
They change, they shift.
What is ok today is no longer ok tomorrow,” says Lindtner.
"It's a constant back and forth, with people trying to see how far they can go."
Privacy is also an important issue in China, although regulations are handled differently - and not everyone has to abide by the same rules.
Just as Facebook has come under scrutiny for its privacy policies and encouraging misinformation, Chinese platforms have also come under scrutiny as they expand and become more monopolized.
China and social media: "It's almost as if data protection is being reversed"
The new Chinese law on the protection of personal data now theoretically offers users better protection against technology companies.
As one of the world's toughest laws, companies are subject to severe restrictions on the information they can collect and share - although how strictly this law is applied in practice is uncertain.
The new legislation, which came into force in November, "takes big steps to protect personal data in a way that hasn't been done before," says Expert Daum.
He points out that Chinese companies now have comparatively fewer opportunities to collect personal data.
Of course, the same rules do not apply to state authorities.
“It's almost as if data protection is being reversed in China.
In the US, almost every law, including the Constitution, is about limiting government power,” Daum said.
"In China, the whole thing was sort of turned on its head."
By Christina Lu
Christina Lu
is a contributing editor at
Foreign Policy
.
Twitter: @christinafei
This article was first published in English in the magazine "ForeignPolicy.com" on November 11, 2022 - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to the readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals. *Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
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