Microblogs and the party: China’s leaders try to steer online discussions using clever propaganda

On November 9th the official microblog of People’s Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party, posted a message about the party’s five-yearly congress to the account’s nearly 3m followers on Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter. It was by no means standard propaganda: “The ruling party must remember: the sense of crisis comes first, and reforms must race to stay ahead of crisis. Time is running out.”

On November 9th the official microblog of People’s Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party, posted a message about the party’s five-yearly congress to the account’s nearly 3m followers on Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter. It was by no means standard propaganda: “The ruling party must remember: the sense of crisis comes first, and reforms must race to stay ahead of crisis. Time is running out.”Six days later the party completed its first succession of top leaders in the era of microblogs, or even of mass public connection to the internet (there were only 50m internet users in China a decade ago, compared with more than 500m now). The turgid display of Leninism at the party congress met with obligatory enthusiasm from delegates, but this time also met with merciless cynicism online. When one congress delegate said she “wept five times” during President Hu Jintao’s opening speech, microbloggers traded jokes about having “wept five times” upon, for example, eating a spicy meal. Another delegate said she clapped so hard during the speech that she lost feeling in her hands. Microbloggers compared such comments to North Korean agitprop.
www.economist.com/news/china/21566684-chinas-leaders-try-steer-online-discussions-using-clever-propaganda-naked-emperor

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