December 8, 2021
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China Unleashed Its Propaganda Machine on Peng Shuai's #MeToo Accusation. Her Story Still Got Out.: Chinese propaganda officials have tried to shape the global discussion of the tennis player Peng Shuai's accusations and disappearance, but their top-down strategy has largely stumbled. (Paul Mozur, Muyi Xiao and Gray Beltran, The New York Times, and Jeff Kao, 12/08/21, ProPublica)
When inconvenient news erupts on the Chinese internet, the censors jump into action.Twenty minutes was all it took to mobilize after Peng Shuai, the tennis star and one of China's most famous athletes, went online and accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier, of sexual assault.The allegation reached the heights of Beijing's opaque political system, and officials turned to a tested playbook to stamp out discussion and shift the narrative. The tactics have helped Beijing weather a series of political crises at home in recent years, including the 2019 protests in Hong Kong and its initial response to COVID-19.This time, according to analyses by The New York Times and ProPublica, China began a multifaceted propaganda campaign that was at once sophisticated and clumsy. Inside the country, officials used internet controls to scrub almost all references to the accusation and restrict digital spaces where people might discuss it. At the same time, they activated a widely followed network of state-media commentators, backed by a chorus of fake Twitter accounts, to try to punch back at critics abroad, the analyses show.The effort didn't always succeed. This is how China reacted -- and how it stumbled along the way.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 8, 2021 12:00 AM