Public anger has flared online before, but it had never coalesced into widespread physical protests, like the ones seen in recent weeks
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskYet his account, “Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher”, became a critical conduit for information about the protests against covid-19 restrictions that erupted across China last month . Participants and spectators sent him loads of images and eyewitness accounts by direct message. By reposting many, he played an important role in conveying the scale of the unrest to others, in China and abroad.
One reason for last month’s breach was the sheer volume of people involved. The great firewall automatically blocks politically sensitive terms and many foreign sites, including news outlets, search engines and social media. China also mandates domestic technology firms to employ armies of censors who screen user-generated content using frequently updated lists of restricted words and images.
Eric Liu, a former Weibo censor, says that China’s bureaucracy is so centralised that when unfamiliar threats arise, sensitive information can spread widely while censors await official orders. “With this level of protest every bureaucrat is afraid to make a decision for himself,” he says. Then there are foreign social-media accounts like Teacher Li’s, which aggregate and amplify information sent from China. While Chinese authorities and their proxies cite that as evidence of “foreign forces” fomenting unrest, researchers suggest it is driven more by Chinese nationals abroad, especially students, and people within China who use virtual private networks to circumvent the great firewall.s.
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