Advertisement
China’s 20th Party Congress
ChinaPolitics

Web users in China told to report posts guilty of ‘historical nihilism’ against Communist Party line

  • ByteDance platforms Toutiao and Douyin announce five focuses for clean-up drive months ahead of 20th party congress
  • Criticism of Marx, Mao and Deng or China’s economic policies, and glorification of Western culture among online content targeted

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
12
People visit the museum in Shanghai of the first Communist Party national congress. Photo: AFP
Josephine Ma
China has intensified its campaign to clean up online posts seen as contradictory to the Communist Party narrative on history, as the country gears up for a landmark national congress later in the year.
Two media platforms owned by tech start-up ByteDance – Toutiao and Douyin – issued notices urging users to report posts containing “historical nihilism” – a party term for opinions or research challenging its official version of history.

Toutiao is an algorithm-driven news platform while Douyin is the mainland version of TikTok – a video-sharing app also owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.

The notices, sent out on Monday and Tuesday, laid out five focuses for the clean-up starting next month. They include provocative discussion of sensitive or trending topics on the history of the party, country or military; criticism of Marxism, Mao Zedong Thought and the theory of Deng Xiaoping; disputes over the party’s evolutionary history and China’s economic and open-door policies; content that vilifies the party and state leaders; as well as parodies of communist history or the whitewashing of “villains” in the official version of history.

The campaign also targets posts that discredit traditional Chinese culture, or socialist and revolutionary culture. Any content that glorifies Western culture or history and foreign colonialism will also be under scrutiny.

The notices are the latest in a clean-up campaign launched recently by several major media and social media platforms in China.

Advertisement