Last week, well-known content creator Hu Chenfeng had his social media accounts scrubbed of all posts. No-one knows why because Chinese officials gave no explanation. But it’s widely believed that this was in response to a viral comment that he had recently made, classifying people and items as either “Apple” or “Android” – with the latter used to describe things that are inferior to the former.<\/p>\n
“Yours is a typical Android logic, Android person, Android qualification,” he rattled off during a livestream that has since been widely shared online.<\/p>\n
While the gag was quickly embraced by many Chinese social media users, others accused Hu of sowing social divisions.<\/p>\n
Such obvious jokes about inequality, it seems, have become tricky territory – because they reinforce the divides that the Chinese Communist Party would rather people not dwell on.<\/p>\n
Censorship is not new to the Chinese internet. Anything that suggests criticism of the Party, its leaders, or touches on controversial topics that have political implications, quickly disappears.<\/p>\n
What is unusual about this campaign against pessimism is that it seems to target a range of online behaviour that could create or add to a sense of negativity.<\/p>\n
Zhang Xuefeng, a famous online tutor known for his fiery rhetoric on education and social issues, sparked controversy earlier this month when he pledged to donate at least 100 million Chinese yuan ($14m; \u00a310.4m) if Beijing decided to invade Taiwan. But it wasn’t until this week that he became the target of Chinese censors.<\/p>\n
His social media accounts – which have millions of followers – have been blocked from gaining new followers, local media reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
When asked about this, one of Mr Zhang’s employees told state-owned news outlet The Paper that he was “reflecting” on it.<\/p>\n
Again, it’s hard to know why he is being reprimanded but some have wondered if it’s the underlying message in his broadcasts – in an unfair world, you must make only practical choices. And many students and parents follow him for his brutally honest advice – instead of telling young people to follow their dreams, he often told them they must face the reality their exam scores and financial pressures dictated. His was a platform that may well have been ideal for despondency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, well-known content creator Hu Chenfeng had his social media accounts scrubbed of all posts. No-one knows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1638,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-160384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}