Chinese Soft Power and Media Discussion and Updates
- Thread starter tankphobia
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The key factor which differentiates Douyin and Tiktok is the presence of filtration, moderation and regulation. The Chinese authorities regularly and proactively do just that all the time with Douyin, which constitutes as part of the Great Internet Firewall.
However, this key factor is absent for Tiktok which serves the rest of the world, frankly speaking.
In fact, Tiktok is merely recommending stuffs that are top hits among its audiences through algorithm and programming, which works in practically similar ways to any other Western social media.
Hence, it is totally unfair to blame whatever contents that Tiktok is presenting to the audiences, if the authorities of countries do not step in to moderate and regulate Tiktok contents. This is especially when Tiktok even offered authorities and parents with options that would help to regulate and moderate Tiktok contents for their nation's and children's audiences.
Besides, you have Twitter and Reddit allowing outright p0rn and adult contents on their sites, yet you don't see governments complaining about them. Why? Because they are Western-made social media.
Therefore, firewall and censorship must not be taken down, but they should be further optimized and perfected compared to what they are now.
It's not that simple，there is a view that the biggest obstacle is CPC's lack of adequate awareness of the publicity effect in the Internet era.
In recent years, they have made some progress, but they are still clumsy and rough, and act without rules. Campaign-style law enforcement is still a normal state，every time they "clean" the Internet, they always arbitrarily ban something irrelevant in order to meet the indicators.
CPC is good at pushing ordinary people who don't ask politics to the opposite. Looking less won't kill them, will it? But life has been so difficult, why do they want to make people unhappy? Every time such "management" is to provide soldiers for those discontented political opposition.
It would be counterproductive to define some unimportant things as "contraband" by administrative instructions, the more things prohibited, the more they hurt the authority of the prohibition and the law.
This critic believes that the current management determines that China cannot have any cultural achievements. It may be "safe" for CPC, but it is not interesting.
Network creation is subject to the most severe restrictions (or basically not allowed to depict the reality of China); The publication number is managed by 27 departments, and the content of the animation episode introduced was cut in half (the most extreme case). Many people commented that this was "retrogression".
These two days are also the news that the clothes in the game are "too exposed" and ordered to be rectified. I would not be surprised if the story of jeans and rock music in the cold war era were staged again one day.
Add: But it's not surprising to think that China is about to become a country with more serious aging than Japan, which means that the whole country will inevitably become more conservative.
I would define this separately.
The Chinese government doesn't need to use any technical means to regulate Douyin content or operations. They just issue a regulation or law and Douyin has to comply.
In comparison, websites or apps hosted abroad are not subject to Chinese laws or regulations, therefore the Great Firewall is the only solution available.
Unless I'm missing something, the current method the government used to control internal discussion seem multifaceted, from lowest level (most crude) to highest level (highly sophisticated)
1. Turning on/off communication (rarely/never used and ancient, only used before better tools were developed, China is not a tinpot dictatorship)
2. Mass banning/keyword censorship (somewhat common, difficult due to Chinese puns easily used to fool direct text censor, i.e always fighting wack-a-mole against moderately literate people)
3. Official source messaging to counter rumor milling and fake news (CCTV/CPC official)
4. External government owned media companies to spread message aboard (CGTN, Global times etc)
5. Coordinated social media campaign via government affiliated groups (Various public facing viral personalities used to spread message, i.e "grass roots" influencer operation)
I don't think people are giving credit to how complex the propaganda department's actual operation is, it rivals any Russian/US influence operations in terms of scope and capabilities, there's something to be said about the high level of unity within the general populace and it's not just the economic prosperity brough on by good governance, it's also that you make sure people understand none of this would happen without the government.
Of all of these the most effective option is the grass roots option, but it requires a huge amount of coordination to ensure that the core message retains integrity across many different platforms, personality and even languages. Its effectiveness is causing pushback as you can see from all the accusations of Chinese bots across the internet, but nonetheless effective in steering the discourse towards a pro-China stance, it's of course of limited used against people with entrenched anti-Chinese sentiment, which is also prevalent on the west dominated internet.
All this is buoyed by the fact that internet discourse means nada in terms of real-world consequences unless you have the hard power to back it up, so don't read too much into it.
Define cultural achievement? If it means those half naked scene, boobies, and boys love dramas would make China a cultural powerhouse, then I don't see it that way. Critics and losers are blaming their failures on the government without even considering why they failed so badly.
Just look at those movies that cost a few hundreds millions to make and why they failed. These are garbage movies that used for money laundering. A-list movie stars that paid with an outrageous amount of money but sound and visual effects that got little investment. Storyline that is weak and pathetic. Movie director that was busy banging the actress. You think this is the future of the Chinese culture and entertainment industry.
Not arguing that some restrictions are absurd but it is those fake historical and go back in time dramas that got the most heat.
I have recently gone through some Chinese manga and games. I would say many of them are spending too much time to depict half naked girls. It is fine with some exposure but when all game and manga have this same tendency then the industries have a problem. Manga and games are more than just some sex and violent. Sex and violent do sell but shouldn't be the main theme.
Political correctness in the West is even more threatening. Those political correctness movies and dramas are even more scary. I do hope China to refine its restrictions but China should never go down the road of the West.
Wait. That's your evidence?!?
F*** why did I even take what you said seriously. Lol
Hahaha
Yes sure Chinese people want Democracy so bad and to be like India, where the GDP, life expectancy, technology, industry, military, quality of life indicators etc are all lower.
I think it's Indiana's who need an authorization government to get better. They are trying with modi but he is failing to make big changes and screwed up the economy with switching the currency.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Chinese people want democracy so bad you need to pay them (or in this case, pretend to pay them) to show up at a riot for COVID loosening and then label that as a protest for democracy.