How a triple whammy of censorship, Covid and Big Tech cuts left China’s media on its knees
- At the peak of the country’s tech boom, the biggest tech firms began to aggressively build up media portfolios but they are now beating a hasty retreat
- It is the latest blow to a sector struggling from the impact of the pandemic and an ever more restrictive atmosphere
Ji Siqi and Yuanyue Dang in Beijing
South China Morning Post
Published: 6:00am, 24 Apr, 2023
On the first Friday of this month, around 80 video reporters and editors attended a meeting on the sixth floor of The Beijing News building near the heart of the Chinese capital.
They had been summoned to witness the end of a six-year joint venture between what was formerly one of China’s most outspoken daily newspapers and the technology giant Tencent.
The official explanation given for the break-up was business restructuring, with daily management of the Wevideo team being returned to the state-owned paper. The team’s bold coverage had already been reined in as the authorities further consolidated their grip on the domestic media.
But, according to several people close to the matter, the direct cause was the withdrawal of investment from Tencent, which meant a quarter of the team’s workforce had to leave. The Beijing News and Tencent have yet to respond to requests for comment.
For the industry, many of the problems have already been there for 10 years, and they have kept worsening, especially in the past three yearsBeijing-based news editor
Wevideo’s fate tolled yet another bell for China’s media industry, which has been sinking rapidly in the past few years amid intensified censorship and an exodus of capital.
Many industries – especially in the private sector – have been weakened by regulatory crackdowns and the effects of a strict zero-Covid strategy that lasted for almost three years, but while some anticipate better times, for many Chinese media workers any talk of recovery is just wishful thinking.
“For the industry, many of the problems have already been there for 10 years, and they have kept worsening, especially in the past three years,” said a Beijing-based news editor who has been in the industry for 20 years. “Now it’s already the epilogue.”
While the pandemic added to the woes of the media industry around the world – from content creators to distributors – as advertising revenue dwindled further, stifling censorship has further accelerated the death of the market-oriented segment of the industry in China, where most news outlets are completely reliant on state funding and serve as propaganda tools.
It was also compounded by a slew of cost-cutting actions by China’s biggest technology firms in the face of economic headwinds, including exiting noncore businesses.
“The censorship has greatly exacerbated the dilemma,” the Beijing-based news editor said. “Capital has more and more concerns when entering the industry.
“If no capital is willing to enter any more, the industry will only wane.”
Eleven days after the Wevideo restructuring, the biggest fire in Beijing in decades broke out at a hospital, killing at least 29 people.
But in the following eight hours, not a single Chinese media outlet reported on the incident, and the army of online censors stamped out any mention on social media platforms.
Patients and doctors climb out windows to flee deadly fire at Beijing hospital
One former journalist, using the pseudonym Lilian Yang, said it was another level of censorship compared to her experience when covering another deadly fire that broke out in a building converted into tiny flats on the outskirts of Beijing in 2017.
Back then, videos about the fire started to trend on social media within minutes, and she and a few colleagues at the newspaper were sent to the scene immediately. Though she was asked to return to the office halfway through the day as the local authorities began to apply pressure, her colleagues managed to get a story published.
Similar pressure surfaced more frequently in the following two years, with more “red lines” about what could be reported gradually emerging. But the sharpest tightening began months after the Covid-19 pandemic began in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province.
“More and more topics were not allowed to be covered, and because we had fewer stories to do, our remuneration declined sharply,” she said.
She decided to join an exodus of reporters from the newspaper and, after a few attempts, found work at an online media outlet specialising in feature stories.
Unlike Chinese newspapers or magazines, all of which must be overseen by a government agency, online media outlets that distribute their content on social media platforms and news aggregation apps do not receive direct orders from the authorities, but the lack of state backing also means they face the risk of suspension or permanent closure if any content crosses the line set by the authorities.
About a year after she joined the new company, its accounts were banned by a range of platforms – with no reason given – and the team was later disbanded.
Such bans were “destructive” for content distributors, the Beijing-based news editor said, as their old names, or any new names including key elements from the old brands, were not allowed to be used if they tried to recreate their accounts.
That means more than 90 per cent of their old readers would be lostBeijing-based news editor
“That means more than 90 per cent of their old readers would be lost,” he said.
Meanwhile, the reasons behind suspensions or shutdowns were usually vague, and that led to more self-censorship.
“That means there is always a sword of Damocles hanging over your head, and sometimes self-censorship is stricter than external censorship,” he said.
“Because you don’t want to touch the ceiling of censorship, you always want to be a little farther away from the ceiling. But the point is, where is the ceiling? No one knows. So the self-censorship will only be stricter and stricter.”
In August, an influential health platform with tens of millions of followers called Dingxiang Yuan – also known as DXY – was suspended from publishing articles on all Chinese social media platforms for a month.
Regular employees at the science-based platform – also backed by Tencent – were not told the reasons for its suspension, said former staff writer Oscar Zhang – another pseudonym.
Previously, it had closely followed up pandemic lockdowns, debunked Covid-19 misinformation and criticised the government’s promotion of a traditional medicine called Lianhua Qingwen to treat the respiratory disease.
A month after the ban was lifted, Zhang was laid off and the features team he worked for dissolved, substantiating a rumour he had heard before the ban.
“Because DXY is also a tech company, it had to cut costs against the background of economic headwinds,” he said. “It was very difficult to bring the company direct benefits through pure content creation, thus teams like ours would bear the brunt.”
At the peak of the Chinese tech boom around 2016, tech giants such as Tencent and Alibaba began to aggressively build up media portfolios in the news and entertainment sectors. They are now beating a hasty retreat.
Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba, began to withdraw investments from various influential Chinese media outlets, including the financial magazine Caixin and tech news site 36Kr, in late 2021.
Apart from cost-cutting, a key driver behind the moves was a document issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, in October 2021 that reiterated a ban on private enterprise investment in news organisations – a ban that had been enforced relatively laxly.
Tencent has also been downsizing its media-related workforce as it has pulled resources out of noncore business.
A staff writer for a Tencent News original content curation team focusing on in-depth analysis of the entertainment industry said she was laid off in the summer of 2022 along with all her teammates. On the same afternoon, a few other similar content creation teams working on different projects were also wiped out.
Everyone was very nervous, and all departments felt that they were going to be gone soonTencent News staff writer
There had been some signs of hardship months before, she said, as more project ideas were rejected because they were “unprofitable”.
“But in the past, the company would not think about it this way, as long as the content had social value the idea would be passed.” she said.
Then, at the beginning of the year, a few colleagues on her team were forced to leave due to unsatisfactory performance, and in the following months, as she anxiously watched the company gradually cut employee benefits – from masks to paper towels – she knew what was awaiting her.
“Everyone was very nervous, and all departments felt that they were going to be gone soon,” she said.