ANALYSIS: Social Control Can’t Halt CCP’s Downfall When China’s Economic Failure Takes Toll: Analysts

Delegates applaud during the third plenary session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 12, 2019. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

News Analysis

China’s cyber regulator has once again drawn a red line for “self-media” and rolled out 13 regulations to tighten their management, demanding that internet platforms exercise stringent control over the content and operations of independently operated social media accounts.

China experts point out that the regime’s heightened social control measures are intended to swiftly eliminate unstable factors. However, despite the omnipresent social control, they say the collapse of China’s economy will inevitably lead to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) downfall.

New Rules

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued 13 rules on July 10, targeting independent content creators who are not government-approved. These self-media accounts are required to identify their sources of information when posting certain topics related to current affairs, public policies, or social issues. The platforms must flag rumor tags promptly when any content deemed inappropriate is posted.

The CCP’s Ministry of Public Security said in a press conference on July 6 that in recent years, public security agents have taken comprehensive measures to safeguard network security and constructed an all-encompassing system that integrates “crackdown, prevention, and control.” As a result, the risk of “cybersecurity incidents” can be “nipped in the bud.”

According to the new rules, each user can register only one account, and a company can register a maximum of two accounts; anonymity is forbidden.

For self-media silenced by the platform for violating rules, their money-making rights would be suspended. For self-media that the platform defines as engaging in “malicious” marketing, their money-making rights would be canceled. Self-media that have caused “gross” impacts will be shut down, placed in the platform’s blacklist database, and reported to the CAC.

Previously, the CCP tightened control over self-media in early March by launching a special crackdown campaign called “Rectifying the Mess in Self-Media.” By the end of May, CAC announced that its subordinate departments at all levels had coordinated with public security, market supervision, and other departments to discipline self-media.

In less than three months, the regulators summoned 2,089 individuals, handed over 2,268 cases to the public security departments for further investigation, and exposed a number of “key cases” to the public.

Major platforms such as Weibo, Tencent, Douyin, and Kuaishou have cleaned up more than 1.4109 million cases related to so-called illegal information, taken disciplinary actions on more than 927,600 accounts, and permanently closed more than 66,600 accounts, according to CAC’s official announcement.

According to the 2007 Annual Report on China's Internet Network, the struggle for free online access by everyday Chinese Internet users is getting more desperate as the Chinese Communist regime has stepped up its control on the Internet. Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Influential Scholars Silenced

On June 26, well-known Chinese financial writer Wu Xiaobo, who had 4.7 million followers on his Weibo account, was banned from the platform. Weibo claimed that Mr. Wu exaggerated the unemployment rate, disseminated harmful information such as smearing the securities market, and published content that attacked the current policies.

On June 21, at the graduation ceremony of China Agricultural University, Dean of the College of Humanities and Development Ye Jingzhong delivered a speech in which he criticized the abuse of power by Chinese officials and reminded students to remain conscientious when they hold power.

“Some of the things that are happening in this era make me wake up every day as if I’ve never seen the world before. ... Renowned scholars are inciting narrow-minded nationalism, mainstream media are focusing on entertainment gossip, and the public sector is systematically fabricating false statistical data,” he said. “After you leave campus and enter society, you will immediately feel the omnipresence and omnipotence of power. You must keep a cool head when you possess a lot of power!”

Mr. Ye further elaborated that people can become obsessed with power, making them arrogant and lack sincerity.

Shortly after his speech was compiled into an article and posted online, Chinese censors removed it from all websites that republished it.

Migrant workers standing near signs advertising their skills as they wait by a street to be hired in Shenyang, in northeastern China's Liaoning Province, on Feb. 6, 2023. STR/AFP via Getty Images

Economic Collapse Will Lead to CCP’s Disintegration

Wen Zhao, a Chinese scholar and commentator residing in Canada, said in his YouTube program that in China, any social media account, as long as it is influential and not censored before publication, is considered a threat to the authorities; thus, they would have an iron grip over control of public opinion.

Mr. Wen has over 1 million followers on YouTube. He encourages fellow China analysts residing in the mainland to switch to overseas social media platforms.

“The living environment of self-media, especially those good at social news, news analysis, and opinions, will experience a major deterioration in China in the near future, and many such bloggers will be punished and will have no choice but to quit,” he said.

Lao Man, a well-known financial blogger in China, commented in a Twitter post that the Russian Wagner rebellion has made the CCP nervous. He said the Chinese regime then accelerated the full implementation of the “great oppression model”—ideology, culture, technology, and travel will all be tightly controlled under this model.

“I have been talking about this Great Oppression Model all along,” he wrote. “In the past, the public had been told to focus on economic development. But [China’s] economic development model is not sustainable. It can no longer provide commoners with new opportunities to get rich. Under such circumstances, the only alternative is to make a complete turnaround and adopt stringent social control measures to nip all signs of instability in the bud.”

On July 10, China’s Bureau of Statistics released economic data for June, showing that the consumer price index (CPI) remained unchanged year-on-year, the first zero growth in two and a half years. The producer price index (PPI) fell by 5.4 percent year-on-year, the largest drop in June in seven and a half years. The PPI had already experienced a continuous decline for nine consecutive months.

Richard C. Koo, chief economist at the Nomura Research Institute, said at the Soochow Securities (Hong Kong) Strategy Annual Conference that China may enter a balance sheet recession when its real estate bubble bursts. The challenges facing China may be greater than those faced by Japan 30 years ago, he said.

Ngan Shun-kau, a renowned writer and publisher in Hong Kong, said in his Facebook post that the determining factor for the CCP’s survival is not its military or social control but China’s economy.

If the CCP can find a way to save the current economic crisis, the CCP may separate China from the rest of the world—that is, the regime will likely follow the closed state of North Korea by combining its high-tech means of maintaining stability and closing the country to control public opinion, thus securing its authoritarian rule, he opined. However, when the economy completely collapses, he said there will be no money left to support various government agencies, including the military, social stability cannot be sustained, and the CCP regime will inevitably collapse at that stage.