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68 Things You Cannot Say on China’s Internet

Song Jie, a writer of online romance novels who has to work around China’s censors, at her home in Wuhan.Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

BEIJING — Song Jie, a writer in central China, knows what she can and cannot write in the romance novels she publishes online. Words that describe explicit sexual acts are out, of course. So are those for sexual organs. Even euphemisms like “behind” or “bottom” can trigger censorship by automatic software filters or a website’s employees.

“Basically,” she said, “the sex scenes cannot be too detailed.”

Other prohibitions inside China’s Great Firewall, the country’s system of internet filters and controls, are trickier to navigate, in part because they are subjective and even contradictory. And there are more and more of them.

While China has long sought to block access to political material online, a flurry of new regulatory actions aims to establish a more expansive blockade, recalling an earlier era of public morality enforced by the ruling Communist Party.

In a directive circulated this summer, the state-controlled association that polices China’s fast-growing digital media sector set out 68 categories of material that should be censored, covering a broad swath of what the world’s largest online audience might find interesting to read or watch.

The guidelines ban material that depicts excessive drinking or gambling; that sensationalizes “bizarre or grotesque” criminal cases; that ridicules China’s historical revolutionary leaders, or current members of the army, police or judiciary; or that “publicizes the luxury life.”

“Detailed” plots involving prostitution, rape and masturbation are also forbidden. So are displays of “unhealthy marital values,” which the guidelines catalog as affairs, one-night stands, partner swapping and, simply but vaguely, “sexual liberation.”

Despite the efforts of censors, the internet has long been the most freewheeling of China’s mass media, a platform where authors and artists — as well as entertainment studios — could reach audiences largely free of the Propaganda Department’s traditional controls on broadcasting, publishing, cinema and stage.

But the new restrictions — which expanded and updated a set of prohibitions issued five years ago — reflect an ambitious effort by President Xi Jinping’s government to impose discipline and rein in the web.

They were issued by the China Netcasting Services Association, which includes as members more than 600 companies, including the official Xinhua News Agency, the social media giants Sina and Tencent, the dominant search engine Baidu and the news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.

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How China Is Changing Your Internet

What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse of the future — and American companies are taking notice.

Video Title: How China Is Changing Your Internet Video Description: In China, a sheltered internet has given rise to a new breed of app, and American companies are taking notice. What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse at the future. PART I: Intro 1. If you are sitting in the United States or Europe right now, you’ve probably never used a Chinese app, but the reality is, if you want to know how the internet will develop, China, the land once known for its cheap rip-offs, has actually become a guide to the future. PART II: The creation of the Chinese Swamp Monster 2.1 You know, the internet is the internet, but for China the internet is more like an intranet. It’s largely walled off from the Western world by this incredible complex system of filters and blocks that we call the Great Firewall. And basically the Great Firewall blocks any foreign site the Communist Party doesn’t think it can control. 2.2 So that means there is no Facebook, no Twitter, no Google. Instead, what filled the internet vacuum was a generation of Chinese copycats that have grown into huge companies. 2.3 So for Google, you had Baidu; for YouTube, you had Youku; for Twitter, you had Sina Weibo, and the list goes on and on. 2.4 It’s almost as if the Chinese internet is a lagoon as an aside to the greater ocean of the internet, and in that lagoon there are these swamp monster apps that bear some resemblance to the creatures in the ocean but are mutated in some ways because they evolved in a different kind of environment. PART III: The Chinese Swamp Monster Leaves the Pond 3.1 But things have started to shift, in the sense that before, no one outside of the lagoon really cared about the swamp monsters. But now all of a sudden, some of the features they’ve developed are so amazing that Western apps are trying to copy them. And the greatest example of this is WeChat. 3.2 WeChat is an example of, for lack of a better word, a super-app. It’s a Swiss Army knife that basically does everything for you. 3.3 It’s your WhatsApp, Facebook, Skype and Uber. It’s your Amazon, Instagram, Venmo and Tinder. But it’s other things we don’t even have apps for. There are hospitals that have built out whole appointment booking systems. There are investment services. There are even heat maps that show how crowded a place is, be it your favorite shopping mall or a popular tourist site. The list of services goes on basically forever. 3.4 But it’s not the variety of things you can do on WeChat that makes it so powerful, it’s the fact that they’re all in one app. So why does that matter? PART IV: The Power of the Super-App 4.0 These are real people. Using the app in real ways. (We just made up the story.) 4.1 Hypothetically, imagine you’re sitting at home and one day you notice your corgi is dirty. You open WeChat, hit a few buttons and a few hours later a man shows up at your door with some shampoo and a big vacuum. Your dog gets cleaned, and he looks great. You take a photo. You share it with your friends and tag the dog cleaning business. You haven’t left the app. 4.2 Your friend who likes Hello Kitty and works a boring office job is slacking off at work and looking at WeChat. She sees the photo of your clean corgi. She decides she wants her poodle cleaned. She clicks the tag on your photo and orders the same service. Within seconds the man with the big vacuum is on his way to her house. She pays him, and he’s happy because he got paid instantly on WeChat. She starts chatting with you to thank you. Neither of you have left the app. 4.3 While chatting, she tells you about a new, hip noodle joint. She says, “You have to come.” It’s a shlep, but you accept. She orders food while still at her desk. You order a taxi. She pays for the food. On the way to her house, the man with the big vacuum invests the money he earned from both of you into a wealth management product that’s probably a little too risky. Neither of you, nor the man with the big vacuum, have left the app. 4.4 Both of you arrive, and the app tells the kitchen you’re there. Your WeChat profile photo pops up on the wall. Its an old photo from that year you had that weird part in your hair. Of course, she makes a comment. Your food is served. You notice your meat is a bit overcooked, so you snap a photo and post a disparaging restaurant review. You’re already on your phone, and you remember you still owe your friend money because she paid. You transfer her money. Neither of you, the man with the big vacuum, nor the restaurant, have left the app. 4.5 At the restaurant: There are no menus. There are no waiters. There is no cashier. There is only WeChat. 4.6 By rolling so many functions into one single app, it’s altered the concept of virality. It’s no longer just videos or images or tweets that can go viral — it’s a dog washer, noodles, all sorts of companies and products that get the push of a social network. 4.7 Here in China, that network is 700 million people. Part V: The Costs of the Super-App 5.1 Sounds great, right? Well it is, but using a single app to find a date, schedule an oil change or notarize a document also enables WeChat to collect a staggering volume of personal data. 5.2 They know what you talk about, who you talk about it with, what you read, where you go, why you’re going there, who’s there, how you spend money when you’re online, how you spend money when you’re offline. The list goes on indefinitely. 5.3 For advertisers, this is miracle: It’s the combined data of Facebook, Amazon, Google and PayPal, all in one place. The problem is, all of the data is information Chinese companies are forced to share with the Chinese government, which has a long record of human rights violations and isn’t exactly shy about stalking its citizens. Part VI: Outro 6.1 So if you’re not in China, why does this matter? It matters because we’re starting to see a number of Western tech companies attempt to replicate super-apps like WeChat. 6.2 For the companies, it’s incredibly powerful, and for you and me it’s a convenient and even transformative technology. 6.3 But of course, it could also be problematic. Concentrating so much data in so few hands could lay the groundwork for an Orwellian world where companies and governments can track every single movement you make.

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What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse of the future — and American companies are taking notice.CreditCredit...Damir Sagolj/Reuters

David Bandurski, an analyst and editor for the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, said the association’s rules created the illusion of industry consensus as the company’s acquiesced to what party officials call “self-discipline.”

“Many of these companies are private, so it’s important for the leadership to have a means of bringing them together and creating a means of applying pressure on the collective,” he wrote in an email. “It is a tactic of co-option.”

Writers, filmmakers, podcasters and others attributed the guidelines and other measures to a new prim and paternalistic ideology taking shape under Mr. Xi, who has called on party members to be “paragons of morality” in pursuit of what he calls the “China Dream.”

Many also attributed the tightening of controls to official nervousness ahead of a major Communist Party congress scheduled for October. The congress is expected to reshuffle the country’s leadership and consolidate President Xi’s already formidable power.

“I feel like people say all the time that after the big congress, things will be O.K.,” said Fan Popo, a documentary filmmaker whose work has run afoul of online censorship because it explores the country’s conflicted views about homosexuality. But then he noted how online censorship has also spiked ahead of important state holidays and following unexpected events like the death of the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

“It’s still going on,” he said, “and it’s getting worse.”

In June, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television announced a new rating system for online bookstores and publishers based on criteria that included upholding moral values.

The powerful Cyberspace Administration — the ultimate authority over what is online in China — also shut down dozens of blogs and social media accounts for covering celebrity news and gossip that month.

Regulators also ordered two popular video streaming sites, AcFun and Bilibili, to stop showing hundreds of foreign television programs, while other state agencies issued a new rule this month prohibiting video sites from streaming even domestically produced shows without a license.

That essentially subjects online programs — often considered edgier — to the same restrictions governing what is broadcast on television, which critics say is dominated by trifles and propaganda.

The directive also ordered online producers to submit plans for creating new dramas between now and 2021 that “praise the party, the nation and heroes so as to set a good example.”

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Fan Popo, a young Chinese filmmaker who is leaving China for Germany because of China’s growing censorship, at his apartment as he was packing for a flight to Berlin.Credit...Bryan Denton for The New York Times

The new industry regulations provoked outrage — online, of course.

The country’s leading scholar of sexuality, Li Yinhe, wrote in a scathing commentary on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, that the new regulations violated two basic freedoms. “The first is a citizen’s constitutionally protected right to freedom of creativity; the second is the constitutionally protected right to sexual freedom of sexual minorities.”

When Ms. Li called on people to “work toward abolishing screening and censorship rules,” her posts were deleted, too.

Much of the online discussion has focused on the new prohibitions of sexual content and the inclusion of homosexuality among a list of “abnormal sexual relations” that also included incest and sexual assault. Critics said the regulation appeared to contradict the government’s own position on homosexuality, which it decriminalized in 1997 and removed from an official list of mental disorders in 2001.

China’s censorship agencies exercise overlapping jurisdiction over the internet and often employ policies that create confusion. The result has been a layered system of control that begins with self-censorship by those who create online content, followed by policing by web platforms, which are often private enterprises, and finally, when necessary, intervention by government regulators or the police.

Some regulations are explicit — no depiction of killing endangered species or underage drinking, for example. Others are imprecise. One, for example, prohibits blurring the lines between “truth and falsity, good and evil, beauty and ugliness.”

Critics say the rules are meant to be so vague that the authorities can justify blocking anything, as circumstances dictate.

“The tightening of content censorship is the general trend, but for content creators, they never know where exactly the lines lie,” said Gao Ming, who until recently produced a satirical podcast on current affairs called Radio HiLight.

Like others, Mr. Gao acknowledged softening his commentaries to avoid trouble, trying to work around, or one step ahead of, the censors. For profit or in pursuit of art, many performers and producers have learn to live with the party’s limitations.

Ms. Song, the writer, works mostly in a literary genre known as danmei that has become hugely popular among young women. Taking its inspiration from Japanese stories and manga, it typically involves homoerotic romances. Ms. Song’s work is often serialized, with readers paying for new chapters as they are posted on one of the biggest publishing sites, Jinjiang Literature City.

“If I want to publish it,” she said of her work, “then I need to follow the rules.”

Ms. Song, who lives in Wuhan, an enormous city in central China, said some of her chapters have been blocked because “sensitive keywords appeared in high frequency.” Usually, she then edits enough of those words out to get her writing past the censors and to her readers.

Ms. Song said she was not particularly worried about the new regulations. “Authors cannot use their works to encourage or incite criminal acts, especially among younger readers,” she said. “Literature, after all, has a guiding effect.”

Paul Mozur contributed reporting from Shanghai.

Follow Steven Lee Myers on Twitter: @stevenleemyers.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: China Expands Its Internal Web of Online Censors and Forbidden Topics. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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