Major News Site Suspended in China

The Chinese government suspended some channels of a major news outlet on September 26, citing violations of internet rules, according to South China Morning Post. The outlet, Ifeng, is owned by Phoenix New Media, a major media conglomerate in China.

According to the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the agency responsible for regulating Chinese internet access, Ifeng had “disseminated illegal and harmful information, distorted news headlines, and shared news information in violation of rules.”

The CAC ordered a “thorough and in-depth rectification,” which Phoenix New Media has agreed to. Through its Investor Relations page, Phoenix New Media has shared plans to “strengthen its content review teams and establish more comprehensive guidelines for its internal content review process.”

According to China Daily, Ifeng’s mobile news application, mobile website, and news and finance channels are suspended for two weeks. The technology channel on Ifeng.com is suspended for 30 days.

The suspension comes just over a week after the CAC’s new director, Zhuang Rongwen, wrote in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) flagship bi-monthly political theory journal, Seeking Truth. In his article, Zhuang stressed the need to promote “positive energy,” while suppressing “negative elements,” such as “wrong ideological trends,” the South China Morning Post reports.

Zhuang’s stricter control of Chinese internet access should come as no surprise. Chinese President Xi Jinping has long advocated tighter control over the internet through what is commonly called the Great Firewall. Under Xi’s administration, the Chinese government has cracked down on a staggering number of websites. According to the South China Morning Post, the CAC and its affiliates shut down 1,888 websites and 720,000 accounts for rule violations in the second quarter of 2018 alone.

The increased censorship of the Internet can be attributed to the calls for unity against Western, anti-Chinese forces. The Chinese government often leans on this narrative as a scapegoat when addressing negative local news coverage like the imprisonment of the Uyghur minority in the western Xinjiang province.

Margaret Roberts, an assistant professor at University of California San Diego and expert on the Great Firewall, published research revealing that most internet users do not know about the Great Firewall. Based on that research, only 30 percent of Chinese internet users are aware of the Firewall’s existence, the South China Morning Post says.

Despite such a popular website being shut down, that statistic, alongside the CAC’s tightening grip on internet access, implies that there may be no major reaction by the Chinese population.

When it first emerged, many Western experts saw the internet as a potentially destabilizing force for the CCP, according to the South China Morning Post. They thought free exchange of ideas, the exposure to other ways of thinking, and access to the news all would contribute to opposition against the authoritarian regime.

However, the South China Morning Post suggests that China’s tight control of the internet has been largely successful in silencing political opposition, spreading state-supported social values, and limiting access to news contradicting the CCP’s view of events. This recent suspension of Ifeng is but the latest example of the Chinese government’s efforts to stymie the tide of politically and socially objectionable online content.