Beijing Tightens Speech Control Ahead of 20th National Congress

On September 3rd, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission (OCCAC) initiated a three-month nationwide campaign to quote “clear up rumors and false information on the Internet.”

On the same day, OCCAC issued an announcement, stating that this campaign is “to clean up rumors and false information” regarding the CCP’s major conferences, eventful activities, important policies, heroes and martyrs, society and economy, natural disasters, etc. Violators will be punished in a rapid and severe manner. Meanwhile, to deter the spread of rumors, the CCP authorities introduced significant measures, including enhancing traceability, improving the rules of punishment, disclosing punishment information regularly, limiting cyberspace for rumors and false information, demanding platforms to improve their mechanism of disinformation prevention, and holding platforms accountable for users’ crimes.

According to the disclosed information from the OCCAC, since the launch of this campaign, more than 20 billion pieces of so-called “illegal” and “undesirable” information have been cleaned up. With nearly 1.4 billion accounts suspended, equivalent to an average of one suspended account per Chinese in Communist China.

The social media platforms of the CCP have been used as propaganda machines to spread false information brainwashing its people for decades. Freedom of speech was never existed in the Communist China. As the 20th National Congress of the CCP is around the corner, the extended tighten speech control further illustrates the people are having more dissatisfactions with Xi Jinping’s ruling under “Zero-COVID” policy and Xi’s effort to seek his third term in office.