This has turned into a pissfest both here and on twitter, and everyone fancies themselves a China Internet Expert today, so here’s a bit of a clarifier, especially in regards to a) and the notes and b) the above, second twitter thread, which leaves a bad taste in my mouth as well:
1) This isn’t about you. To those people in the notes who are using this to talk about anti-culture and purity culture: please fucking shut up and show some goddamn respect, there is more to play here than your stupid goddamn anti/anti-anti dichtonomy. If you’re not Chinese, if you don’t live in mainland China currently, the world doesn’t need your opinion on something that probably won’t affect you and the Chinese fanbase doesn’t need you weaponising them and forgetting about them in 2 days time. They don’t need westerners on any side of the “anti” fandom war to speak for them.
Stop infatilising Chinese fandom and the fanbase. This goes for people on both side of the “anti” discourse, you really don’t need to run your mouth on this if you haven’t had extensive exposure and interaction with Chinese internet communities and censorship regulations. I don’t care which side you’re on regarding the “anti” discourse this isn’t about you and your crusade. This shit has real-life consequences to the Chinese lgbt communities online and westerners adding their unneeded two cents doesn’t help. Like, I am B E G G I N G you all, stop making this about your dumb feud.
1.5) It’s not really about the Hugo’s either. Any speculation about what triggered it and how “it must have been in the works for a long time”, especially how exposure from Hugo’s made them a target (as hinted at in the twitter thread), etc. etc. is….literally about as accurate as tea-leaf reading, because internet censorship in China is reactive, not pro-active, and there’s way more things they need to waste spend their time on that Ao3. I know American-centric egotism is a hell of a drug, but Western fan culture is just……really not high enough on the priority list. The government is more interested in weaponising (and monitoring) its own homegrown fandom culture.
If they wanted to ban it after Hugo’s, they would have banned it after the Hugo’s, there would be no need to wait until new regulations took force.
2) It is about the government. Like, this seems to be forgotten in the conversation. The ultimate enforcer and oppressor are the people in power. This is about moral outrage and how it plays out in an authoritarian state, but it’s not just about that. Fans of the actor are probably genuinely concerned that his being associated with queerness and explicit works would be detrimental to his career (which it is, because Chinese media landscape is unforgiving and scrupulous), and acted accordingly. It’s combination of state-perpetuated and culturally normative homophobia and a fandom’s reaction to that. But, on the flipside, the fanbase knew that they could weaponise the government’s party line regarding homosexuality, they knew this could have reach.
It was an overzealous government that took action, and used a harsh measures to enact it. The government reaction is what happens when moral purity is enacted on a state level and enforced with power.
3) It’s not just about the regulations. The new regulations are likely one of the causes for that the ban was implemented, it’s likely not the root cause in and of itself, because that’s also not how the Chinese internet regulations work. If it was reported 3 months earlier, it would have been banned 3 months earlier. New regulations always target Chinese websites as first priority, and they act as the party line for which China-based platforms like Weibo, Sina, Douban, etc. are allowed to operate and host public discourse. They can’t take down Weibo and WeChat without crippling literally the entire Chinese infrastructure, so these regulations are meant to tell a company’s internal censors what to go after in the comments sections and public posts.
Western platforms don’t have the luxury of that, so when it goes, it all goes. Most major news outlets are straight-up blocked, so is all popular social media. TikTok can be regulated from within China, so it gets to stay up while it selectively self-censors.
4) Yes, it was (probably) about sex. It’s hard to determine the root cause of it because it’s not like the propaganda bureau is going to release a report on this specific action - but Ao3 was likely banned because of someone made a note of it’s sexually explicit and queer content. It is in part related to the regulations, but this has been in place long before that.
The fans who reported Ao3 knew what they were doing. They know their government. So again, this took time and effort - let me remind you censors are up to their teeth right now, suppressing public outrage about the COVID outbreak, and just a few weeks ago there calls for freedom of speech and unregulated internet related to the death of a whistleblower. This was a deliberate attempt, and it boils down to how government views cultural morality in relation to homosexually and the stigmatization of queerness and sex.
6) No, they can’t just use VPN. VPNs and Proxies used to be widely available, but unless you’re an expat, their usage is becoming less and less frequent, and less and less reliable. They’re subject to harsh regulations, blocks and intercepts. Most people within the Firewall don’t use VPNs, despite what you may think.
The fallout is still playing out across Chinese social media. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know where people will migrate to next, I don’t know how to they’ll maintain connection to international fans, but Chinese netizens are crafty and they’ve evaded censorship before.
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