For years, Chinese censors have used familiar tools to control the internet in the country. They deleted posts, suspended accounts, blocked passwords and detained the most critical internet users.
Now they’re trying a new trick: displaying social media users’ locations under their posts.
Authorities say the automatically displayed location tags will help bring to light disinformation campaigns launched from abroad with the aim of destabilizing the country.
In practice, they have provided ammunition for virtual disputes that increasingly link the geographic location of Chinese citizens to their national allegiance. Chinese posting from outside the country, or even from provinces seen as unpatriotic, have become easy targets for online attacks by nationalist influencers.
The tags are based on a user’s IP (internet protocol) address, which can reveal where the person is located. They were initially applied to posts that mentioned the Ukrainian War, a topic that officials said was being manipulated with foreign propaganda. Now its use is being extended to most content on social networks, further weakening free expression on a Chinese internet dominated by censorship and isolated from the world.
The initiative marks a new step in an effort Chinese authorities have been making for a decade to end online anonymity and tighten controls over Internet use in the country.
In recent months, censors have struggled to control demonstrations against lockdowns to contain Covid-19 infections.
The move is intended to counter complaints and ensure a more “uniform” online narrative, said Zhan Jiang, a retired professor of journalism and communications at Beijing University of International Studies.
The government has often resorted to nationalist trolls, profiles that make attacks and provocative comments and end up dominating the discourse on Chinese social networks.
People writing from Shanghai, where poorly managed lockdowns have resulted in food shortages, are branded as selfish. People who criticize the government and are in other coastal provinces close to Taiwan and Hong Kong have been branded as separatists and coup plotters.
People who seem to write from abroad are treated as foreign agitators and spies. After being reported by trolls, some accounts are deleted by platforms for violating “community regulations”.
Chinese student Blau Wang, who lives in Germany, said that since the changes took effect, she has refrained from posting critical opinions, in part for fear of being denounced by trolls and being banned by Weibo, a Chinese social network similar to Twitter.
“I haven’t posted anything for a while,” she said. “The environment is geared towards attacking foreign users.”
Blau feared reprisals from accounts such as Li Yi Bar, a nationalist group with more than 1 million followers that publicly listed dozens of critical users with overseas IP addresses.
Its user pages were covered in insults from an army of trolls. Many of those attacked disabled comments, changed their usernames or simply stopped posting. Few responded openly to the accusations, although one wrote that studying abroad did not prevent her from caring about China.
“More and more people are guessing other users’ motivations based solely on their IP addresses,” said Fang Kecheng, a professor of media at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “That makes open dialogue increasingly difficult.”
Away from the online brawls, many are expressing concern about the new policy. The strategy eliminates the pretense of privacy that seems to prevail online in China, despite the fact that the government has spent years doing everything it can to identify the real person responsible for any anonymous accounts.
A hashtag calling for the location tag to be revoked promptly racked up 8,000 posts and was viewed over 100 million times before being censored in late April. In March, a university student in Zhejiang province sued Chinese social platform Weibo for leaking personal data without his consent when the platform automatically showed his location. Other users drew attention to the hypocrisy of the practice, given that celebrities, government accounts and the chief executive of Weibo were exempt from location tags.
Despite the reactions, the authorities indicated that the changes are likely to be maintained. An article in the state publication China Comment argued that the tags are necessary “to sever the black hand that manipulates the narratives behind the internet cable”.
An interim rule by the Chinese Cyberspace Administration, which regulates the internet in the country, stipulates that users’ IP addresses must be displayed “prominently”.
“If censorship targets the messages and those who send the messages, this mechanism is really influencing the public,” commented Han Rongbin, professor of media and politics at the University of Georgia.
With US-China relations deteriorating and political propaganda attributing dissatisfaction in China to evil foreign forces, Han said the new policy could be effective in eliminating criticism.
“The concern to avoid foreign interference is a trend right now. That’s why location tags work better than censorship,” he said. “People believe.”
