By Alyssa Abkowitz in the Wall St ?Journal, Nov. 6, 2017 9:00 a.m. ET
BEIJING—Online censorship of China’s powerful political gathering that took place last month began more than a year in advance—showing a new level of forethought by Chinese censors, according to a new study.
The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab found that the stepped-up surveillance was far reaching, and included even positive, nationalist slogans such as the “Chinese dream” and “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
The report, released Monday, was based on a review of censorship on the country’s most popular messaging app, WeChat , leading up to and during China’s 19th Communist Party Congress.
“It is not surprising to see a concentrated effort to block keywords related to the 19th Party Congress,” said Citizen Lab research manager Masashi Nishihata in an email. “What was surprising is to see keywords were being blocked over a year prior to the Congress and the wide scope of censorship, ranging from government criticism to generic to neutral terms.”
WeChat, which has more than 960 million monthly active users, is run by Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. Tencent didn’t respond to requests for comment. It and other online-content companies are required by regulations to censor their platforms.
To identify and test congress censorship, Citizen Lab researchers ran tests of keywords from front-page articles in Chinese-language state and international media between July 2016 and August 2017 and then again from Sept. 22 this year to Oct. 25.
During the congress, which took place Oct. 18 through Oct. 24, Chinese President Xi Jinping emerged as the country’s most powerful leader in decades, leading to speculation that he may remain in power beyond the traditional two, five-year terms.
Citizen Lab’s researchers found 241 unique keywords related to the congress blocked in chats on WeChat, with the earliest instance of censorship from their results occurring in July 2016 with the phrase “19th Party Congress Power Fight.”
Heightened scrutiny of online content often happens around sensitive events in China. Leading up to the party enclave, the country’s internet watchdog released heightened restrictions, which included pushing liability and penalizations down to individual users.
Some of the more interesting keyword combinations that were censored included criticism of the lack of female Communist Party representatives being able to “break the glass ceiling,” and if Sun Zhengcai, a high-ranking party official who was ousted in July, was a “political martyr.”
Even benign phrases, such as “19th Party Congress Power” and programs touted by Mr. Xi, including the Belt and Road initiative and his anticorruption campaign were blocked.
“The most surprising finding is our observations of general references to Xi and speculations over his consolidation of power blocked,” the researchers said in the report.
They added that Tencent may have been “proactively overblocking content” to avoid official reprimands.https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-censors-stepped-up-surveillance-a-year-before-party-congress-study-finds-1509976803
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