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The war in Ukraine keeps Chinese censorship of social media busy

    A sign outside the Canadian embassy in Beijing in support of Ukraine. It was later defaced and posts about the incident were deleted from Chinese social media.
    enlarge † A sign outside the Canadian embassy in Beijing in support of Ukraine. It was later defaced and posts about the incident were deleted from Chinese social media.

    Kevin Strayer | Getty Images

    “Artillery fire lights the sky and breaks my heart. I hope my compatriots in Ukraine take care of themselves and their families,” said a user on Weibo, also known as China’s Twitter, on Feb. 27. The message was quickly blocked, according to Free Weibo, a service of Great Fire that censors online China.

    Two days later, a completely different message appeared on Weibo: “I support fighting! America and Taiwan have gone too far.” That too was blocked, according to Free Weibo.

    The posts – and their swift disappearance – show how Chinese social media platforms are in the crosshairs of the war between Russia and Ukraine. The platforms should definitely follow the official line amid subtle shifts in China’s position. Their responses could be an early test of new rules governing how companies use algorithms, making them responsible for trending topics and fake news appearing on their sites.

    In general, Chinese online platforms receive daily advice from the government about what kind of content to remove, said Yuqi Na, a researcher in media and communications at the University of Westminster.

    A hint of how that works emerged in the days leading up to the invasion. On February 22, a Chinese outlet called Horizon News briefly posted, probably accidentally, what appear to be internal instructions for how to run the Ukraine crisis on its official Weibo account. Under the presumed lines: “Do not post anything unfavorable to Russia or pro-Western.”