Last month a 33-year-old woman in Xi’an, in central China, posted a video on social media that showed snowflakes falling on the ancient city. It was early in the year for such weather, so netizens shared the video widely. But it turned out to be fake. When China’s police found out, they detained the woman, accusing her of being an “evil influence” on society.
That might seem a little heavy-handed, but China’s police take online fibbing seriously. In July they detained a man in Hengyang, in southern China, after he boasted on social media that he had been the first person ever to ride the local Ferris wheel (he had not). In December they detained a woman in Liaocheng, in the east, after she shared a video showing her delivering junk food to her sick mother-in-law (it had been staged to generate outrage).
The police justify such actions by citing a sweeping law against “spreading rumours”. It allows them to hold someone for up to ten days without going through China’s court system. Between January and mid-September, they punished 31,000 people for the offence as part of a “special action to combat rumours”. The goal, officials say, is to make sure cyberspace stays “clear and bright”.
But another aim is to make sure cyberspace stays under the thumb of the Communist Party. While officials clean up genuine misinformation, they also label anything that contradicts the party line as such. China’s leaders fear that loosening control of the internet could threaten social stability. Crackdowns are a good way to remind the public that there are real-life consequences to posting the wrong thing.
The case of the woman in Xi’an caused much debate. Few people on Weibo, a social-media platform, seemed to think her punishment was deserved. A bold commenter asked if people still remembered the case of Li Wenliang. He was a doctor in the city of Wuhan who, in late 2019, sounded the alarm about a coronavirus outbreak before China’s government admitted there was a problem. Li, who eventually died of covid-19, was quickly detained by the police—for spreading rumours.
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