[The Epoch Times, March 20, 2022]While Biden and Xi Jinping held a video conference, the CCP’s censorship agencies strictly managed relevant information to prevent voices different from the official ones. A former Weibo censor said the CCP’s standard practice is to “ban comments involving Xi Jinping.”
The video conference between Biden and Xi Jinping was held at 9:00 a.m. US time on March 19. This is their first meeting since November last year and after the Russian-Ukrainian war.
In the early days of the war, pro-Russian voices on the mainland’s Internet were allowed, while anti-war or pro-Ukrainian speeches were often censored. The CCP and the public opinion it controls see the West, led by the United States, as the instigator of the war. But before the call between Xi and Xi, there was no heated discussion about the meeting on the mainland’s Weibo account. None of the top 50 most searched topics on Weibo has anything to do with it.
Shortly after the talks started, a topic titled “China-US President Video Call” suddenly appeared at No. 6 on the trending search list. However, after searching for this topic, the blog posts that appeared were only from Xinhua News Agency, CCTV and other official CCP media, and the content was almost identical. Netizens’ microblogs are not displayed at all.
During the talks, the CCP’s official media released text fragments of Xi’s speech at the meeting, two of which quickly became hot topics, namely, “State relations cannot go to the stage of confrontation” and “Peace and security are the most important things in the international community.” Treasures to be treasured”. These two hot search topics are also strictly controlled. The search results only show Weibo of official media, and the comment area is also strictly filtered or closed.
Liu Lipeng, a former Weibo censor, told VOA that the censorship was very strict this time around, but it’s common for such topics to be heavily censored.
“First of all, Xi Jinping is involved in these news. If it involves Xi Jinping, this Weibo, or any news or any platform, must close the comments,” he said. It’s standard practice now.”
Liu Lipeng added that topics involving U.S.-China relations would also be subject to similar scrutiny.
Liu Lipeng noticed that in the past few days, the voices against the Ukrainian-Russian war on mainland social media have increased. He estimates that the Chinese Communist Party has loosened its censorship of such remarks.
Some Chinese state media coverage of the Ukrainian war is no longer as pro-Russian as it once was. This has sparked speculation of a change of stance at the top of the Chinese Communist Party.
James Palmer, deputy editor of Foreign Policy, told VOA that the CCP’s claim is quite reasonable for China, and that is ‘selfish neutrality'”, “It will not choose either side. “
China has long accused the United States and the West of being responsible for the Ukraine crisis. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on March 18 that since the conflict broke out, China has been committed to persuading peace and promoting talks with concrete actions. “China provided Ukraine with urgently needed humanitarian supplies such as food, children’s milk powder, sleeping bags, quilts, and moisture-proof mats. What the US provided was lethal weapons.”
Qin Gang, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, recently published an article in The Washington Post, claiming that the CCP did not know about Russia’s invasion plan in advance, and wrote: “It is impossible for the Chinese side to not dissuade it without knowing it.”
But the Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese version of the article was criticized by a large number of netizens on WeChat. Some commentators accuse the CCP of being the first and the second half of the world, saying good things are said, and bad things must be done.
Responsible editor: Fang Xiao