Editor's note: Readers, how are you? 2020 started off badly, if not badly. If there is a time machine, many people may want to restart it once. And this means that we must remember some things, not because of the forgetting of Chinese characteristics, no matter how much we pay, we still repeat the same mistakes. Some say 2019 was the worst year of the past decade, but could be the best year of the next decade. So, in this cold night of 2020, no matter what, we should not forget, 2019.

Author: Xu Le

Edit丨N Note

2020 has arrived, and the 20s have officially begun. What happened in the past 2019? We witness one public event after another, watch it appear and disappear. Some events, following the logic of beginning, process, and end, are gone when they are gone. But some events reflect a trend, or it's not over yet. We think it's important to present these events and follow their development. 2019 is not the end, it may just be the beginning.

whistleblower era

In 2019, the "big whistleblower era has come".

This is the title of an article in the public account "Mei Xiao" in May. The article attempts to point out such a point of view - the era of popular whistle-blowing has come, and neither you nor I can stop it. After this article was published, it quickly reached 100,000 plus, causing heated discussions on various social platforms. Soon, the article was deleted from the entire network, and the public account "Mei Xiao" was also banned for two months.

Looking back on 2019 as a whole, it seems like it did.

At the beginning of January, a notice titled "Notice on Carrying out Comprehensive Investigation of Constitutional Textbooks in Colleges and Universities" caused heated discussions on the Internet. The notice required provincial education departments to conduct a comprehensive investigation of constitutional law textbooks being used by college students. At the same time, some legal scholars said on Weibo that the matter was reported by Ke Huaqing, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, against books such as "Introduction to Constitutional Law - Principles and Application" written by Zhang Qianfan, a professor at Peking University, and pointed out that " "Introduction to Constitutional Law - Principles and Applications" has been removed from the Internet. Ke Huaqing denied the "report" when responding to the "Sing Tao Daily" interview at the time.

Zhang Qianfan himself said in an interview with NGOCN that he could not determine whether there was a "report", "a whistleblower is naturally a secret, and we have no way of knowing it." At the same time, he also said that his teaching work has not been affected.

But not everyone is like that.

In June, the Beijing Education Commission issued a document entitled "Guiding Opinions on Handling Teachers' Moral Anomie in Beijing Colleges and Universities". The document clarifies 11 kinds of anomie behaviors of college teachers, including undermining the authority of the Party Central Committee in teaching, publishing and forwarding wrong views through classroom networks, and expressing appeals in illegal ways. The opinion stipulates that if there are related anomie behaviors, serious ones may be disqualified from teaching.

In August this year, Zheng Wenfeng, an associate professor at Sichuan University of Electronic Science and Technology, said in a QQ group that "the four major inventions are not leading in the world", and then argued with students. Some students then posted screenshots of relevant remarks to Zhihu, after the incident attracted attention. Sichuan University of Electronic Science and Technology determined that Zheng Wenfeng had violated his teacher morality, and suspended his teaching work and postgraduate recruitment qualifications for a period of two years.

If this matter is strictly regarded as not a report, then the experience of Niu Jie, an associate professor at the School of Grammar and Law of Nanchang Aviation University, is more typical. The same is "Internet speech" - Niu Jie posted a comment on the current situation in Hong Kong in a WeChat group of 76 people: "The so-called thugs are children, they did not kill a single person"; the same is "Internet reporting"- —Someone posted a screenshot of his remarks on Weibo, and published his personal information through "Human Flesh", as well as Aite's official Weibo account of Nanchang Aviation University. Nanchang Aviation University soon issued an announcement saying that Niu Jie made "inappropriate remarks" and "will be dealt with strictly in accordance with regulations."

Outside the Internet, many colleges and universities have also begun to recruit "information officers" to monitor teachers' words and deeds. According to a document from Ankang College of Shaanxi Province titled "Regulations on the Work Management of Teaching Information Officers of Ankang College", the work responsibilities of the information officers include "discovering that teachers violate the socialist core values and ideological work discipline in the teaching process, disseminating Superstitions, cults, pornography, promotion of Western political values, opposition to the Four Cardinal Principles and the party’s reform and opening-up policy, etc., should be reported to schools in a timely manner.”

Lv Jia of Tsinghua University and Tang Yun of Chongqing Normal University are both "victims" of this system.

A New York Times report in November pointed out that some informants "also often talked to other students to collect their impressions of teachers, including their character, values, and patriotic stance."

Whistleblowing doesn't just happen in colleges either. "Benefiting" from the convenience of the Internet, today's reports are no longer report letters and big-character posters, but "hang people" on the Internet. Hanging people, that is, publishing the words, deeds and even identity information of others or entities under a personal account. If it is a big V "hanging person" or forwarding the "hanging person", things will often have influence.

In 2019, many people or entities have become objects of "hanging". Among them, the article by Mei Xiao mentioned above mentioned the example of "Wang Chenyi withdrew from the competition". Wang Chenyi is a contestant of the variety show "Creation Camp 2019". During the competition, it was discovered that he had liked "meat jokes" and jokes involving flag raising many years ago. Someone posted screenshots of these information and asked him to retire. race. In the end, Wang Chenyi actually withdrew from the competition.

The examples don't stop there. Rockets general manager Daryl Morey's tweet was "hanged" back on the wall, Zhou Baihao was also "hanged" for Hong Kong independence because of his IG post, and stars who did not post blessings on Weibo on National Day were even "hanged" out of a list .

However, what we may see more often is a "bad information" report. According to the Illegal and Bad Information Reporting Center of the Cyberspace Administration of China, there are currently more than 2,600 websites that have bad information reporting hotlines, and more than 900 news websites and commercial websites have set up "online harmful information reporting areas". According to public data, the Illegal and Bad Information Reporting Center of the Cyberspace Administration of China receives about 10 million reports every month.

The largest proportion is Weibo. Taking November 2019 as an example, a total of 9.708 million reports were received nationwide, of which Weibo alone accounted for 3.12 million. Among them, the "credit" of Weibo supervisors is indispensable. According to Weibo Supervisor's official Weibo account, there are more than 2,000 full-time Weibo supervisors. In November alone, 3.87 million "complaints" were effectively handled, of which 2.6 million were pornographic and vulgar, and 1.27 million were illegal and harmful.

The time for whistleblowing has indeed come.

LGBTQ in China

For gay rights activists in China, 2019 may have been a year of ups and downs.

The most exciting news this year is, of course, that Taiwan has officially legalized same-sex marriage. From the joy of the justices' constitutional interpretation two years ago, to the frustration I felt at the same-sex marriage referendum last year, after ups and downs, same-sex marriage has finally come true.

The same-sex marriage law was officially passed by the Legislative Council on May 17, and the same-sex marriage law was officially implemented on May 24. In the past two days, whether it is in the circle of friends, Weibo or Douban, you can always see the joy of the supporters of the gay rights movement. As "Asia's No. 1", what Taiwan has given us is the reference of strategy and the encouragement of example. Even the overseas edition of the People's Daily posted the news on Twitter.

But when we turn our eyes back to the mainland, the reality is still stark.

On the afternoon of April 12th, the netizen @魚沘 posted such a Weibo - "Les's super talk has been blocked, socialism has no homosexuality." It turned out that as a super topic in the Weibo lesbian exchange area "les" was suddenly closed. The Weibo official did not make any statement. More than 20,000 netizens tried to apply for opening on Weibo, but were unsuccessful. NGOCN consulted the Weibo service staff at that time, and the reply received was "After verification by Chaohua's little secretary, the Chaohua you have applied for to open does not meet the opening standards due to the large amount of illegal information in this Chaohua."

At the same time, Douban's lesbian exchange group "" has also been made invisible - users who have not joined the group will not be able to find the group through the search function. "Les Sky" is a group that has a history of nearly 14 years, with nearly 250,000 members in the group. The members are used to calling it "Sky Group".

Some netizens suspect that the two incidents may be related to the special rectification of online vulgar information that began in April. The action was launched by the National Office of "Crackdown on Pornography and Illegals" and lasted for 8 months. The purpose is to "focus on solving outstanding problems that the masses have strongly reflected, and focus on cleaning up the Internet to spread pornography and other content that caters to low-level interests."

In the same month, Wu Wei, a civil servant, committed suicide at home after posting his book on Weibo. He disclosed his homosexuality in the book, saying that he was "pointed at" by his leadership because of his sexual orientation, and his parents said he was "disgraceful". Wu Wei survived because he was sent to the hospital in time for rescue.

In May, a 15-year-old junior high school student in Qingdao also left a "suicide note" on Weibo. He said on Weibo that because of his same-sex sexual orientation and gender temperament, he had suffered school bullying and domestic violence - "My teachers have expressed disgust, rejection, and even disgust on gay topics. Yu hollowed out, satirized, and abused." He left home that night, some netizens called the police, and thousands of netizens poured into Qingdao police's Weibo to leave messages. Eventually, the police found him safely.

If the two events had a decent outcome, a lesbian couple in Shanghai was not so lucky.

The girl named "Butterfly" was forced to separate from her girlfriend and lost her personal freedom. Netizens who care about them on the Internet formed a volunteer community and tried to get in touch with Butterfly offline, but they were almost imprisoned. In August, Butterfly's girlfriend "Kangaroo" posted a post saying, "To them (parents), those of us who oppose them are instead 'alien, pervert, liar, disgusting, and no tutor', That's the heart of the whole problem."

These events seem to be a silhouette, allowing us to see the living conditions of the gay community - they are always difficult to understand, tolerate and support.

At the policy level, the gay community once had a light. In July, the official account of Nanjing Notary Public Office released the article "Notarization of Intentional Guardianship: Building a Bridge of LGBT Love", which surprised the LGBT community. After all, the Nanjing Notary Public Office is also a semi-official institution. In the case that the government has always turned a blind eye to gay issues, such an article is enough to provide some comfort.

The article pointed out that LGBT groups can designate their partners as their future guardians through consent guardianship documents to deal with medical, property and other issues. "Promoting consent guardianship can fully protect the legitimate rights and interests of LGBT groups and maintain social stability."

Subsequently, gay community accounts such as the gay public welfare website "Danlan.com" posted discussions on the "willed guardianship" system. "Dan Lan" even called "voluntary guardianship" the "optimal solution" for same-sex relationships.

But in fact, we can't expect too much from this system. The "willed guardianship" system benefits from the "General Provisions of the Civil Law", which came into effect in October 2107, and its thirty-three provisions give adults the right to establish guardians in writing with individuals or organizations. The original intention of the policy was actually more of a solution for an aging society. Some people also bluntly said that this was an "unexpected joy" for the gay community.

Moreover, the notarization of intended guardianship requires a lot of economic expenditure, and there are many restrictions on the effective conditions and scope of action, not to mention that in fact, notary offices in many areas may be notarized when they learn that it is a same-sex partner who does notarization. Injuring public order and good morals” was refused.

By August, the public response of the Legal Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress really poured cold water on the gay community. At the first press conference of the spokesperson of the Legal Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress, the spokesperson Zang Tiewei said in response to the legalization of same-sex marriage: "The monogamy stipulated in China's current marriage law is based on one man and one woman. The marriage system on the basis of marriage is in line with China's national conditions and historical and cultural traditions. As far as I know, most countries in the world do not recognize the legality of same-sex marriage. Therefore, the Civil Code is drafted on marriage and family. It also maintains monogamy under the current marriage law.”

Perhaps because of this impact, comments were solicited in the subsequent draft of the Civil Code on Marriage and Family. The gay rights organization "Love a Family" called on more than 180,000 people to participate in the advocacy of "legalization of same-sex marriage", and more than 220,000 comments were made. This also caused the National People's Congress Legal Work Committee to mention the issue of comradeship in a non-negative manner for the first time at its December press conference - "Opinions mainly focus on improving the scope of close relatives, revising the revocation authority for revocable marriages, and further improving the joint debt of husband and wife. , legalization of same-sex marriage, etc.” Although more than 90% of the opinions are related to "legalization of same-sex marriage", the Legal Affairs Commission still only ranks it in fourth place, but this statement also makes many people in the community think that "it is a kind of progress".

At present, the "Civil Code (Draft)" is publicly soliciting comments. After leading the voice of more than 220,000 people, the gay rights advocacy platform "Aichengjia" recently called for comments on the draft to allow same-sex marriage to be included in the Civil Code. The end date of this call for comments is January 26, 2020. What is the final result? How will the Legal Affairs Commission respond? This deserves our attention.

Content censorship continues to penetrate

In the aforementioned issues, we can also vaguely see the shadow of content censorship - the cleaning of textbooks in colleges and universities, the censorship of gay novels on literary websites, and more intuitively let us feel this kind of censorship, it is movies and music. Rack and "castration".

"Withdrawal" and "technical reasons" have become the keywords that cannot be ignored in the film and television industry in 2019, and have also run through the entire 2019. In February, "You're Younger" and "One Second" withdrew from the Berlin Film Festival, and the official announcement of "One Second" also made "technical reasons" a hot topic. A reporter asked the spokesperson Hua Chunying at the press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At that time, Hua Chunying did not respond directly to the question, but suggested that the reporter watch "The Wandering Earth".

To some extent, this reply is a portrayal of Chinese movies in 2019- the movie turmoil of "sensitive issues" continues, and the theme movies are popular.

"You're a Teenager" on the topic of school violence and "A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind" on the topic of demolition were released after being withdrawn and edited; three films telling the story of the Republic of China - "Eight Hundred", "The Back of the Blade" "Hiding" and "Lanxin Grand Theater" have both experienced the turmoil of withdrawal; "One Second" involving the theme of the Cultural Revolution has not yet been seen.

On the contrary, during the National Day schedule, the cumulative arrangement of the main theme films "My Motherland and Me", "The Climber" and "Captain of China" exceeded 90%. In the end, "My Motherland and Me" has now accumulated more than 3.1 billion box office, leaping into the top ten in China's box office.

There are more than these withdrawn videos, and there are also imported ones that have been deleted. The Oscar-winning film "Green Book" and the Golden Globe Award for the best drama film "Bohemian Rhapsody" have all deleted scenes depicting homosexuality. In addition, nudity scenes, violence and bloodshed, and "humiliating China" lines have all become reasons for deletion. Even "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" was required to be deleted because of the controversy it caused against Bruce Lee, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, director Quentin himself did not "compromise", and the film's screening plan was finally put on hold indefinitely.

In addition to movies, music censorship is of course indispensable. In June, the Cyberspace Administration of China and multiple departments jointly launched a special rectification action for online audio. According to the announcement of the Cyberspace Administration of China, the first batch of 26 frequency platforms that spread historical nihilism and obscene pornographic content were found to be suspected of violating laws and regulations. Among them, "some online music platforms spread the so-called 'color divine comedy', and promote 'two-dimensional culture' and 'subculture'; some audiobook platforms promote historical nihilism, spread horror, fairy ghosts, zombies, ghost marriages and other strange forces Chaos online novels, spreading feudal superstition." At the same time, the music platform NetEase Cloud Music and the podcast platform Himalaya FM were removed from the app store.

After the rectification, we found that there are many more "*" signs in the lyrics display of NetEase Cloud Music, and the blocked keywords include "make love", "fuck", "shit" and so on. Some netizens found that the sentence "It is difficult to be a lover, I also sympathize with your misfortune" in the song "I have and I love you" written by Lin Xi was also "harmonious" because of this.

And there are a few more artists like Lin Xi who have been removed from the Internet because of their words and deeds in 2019. The Hong Kong band Daming, My Little Airport, who were accused of supporting "Hong Kong independence", and Li Zhi, who was declared a "misbehaving" artist when they toured across the country in Sichuan.

Finally, in November, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television jointly issued the "Regulations on the Administration of Online Audio and Video Information Services", which requires audio and video platforms to "adhere to the correct political orientation, public opinion orientation and value orientation" . Audio and video platforms are no longer an "extra-legal place".

Of course, the Internet has no "outside the law." At the beginning of 2019, the China Online Audiovisual Program Service Association announced the "Online Short Video Platform Management Specifications" and "Online Short Video Content Review Standard Rules", which listed 100 prohibited contents that caused extensive discussion. Subsequently, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television announced the "Notice on the Upgrade of the Online Audio-Visual Program Information Filing System", which requires that key online dramas must be filed and reviewed in advance. under strict regulation. In the Cyberspace Administration of China, it is from the "Regulations on the Administration of Blockchain Information Services" at the beginning of the year, to the "Administrative Measures for the Credit Information of Seriously Untrustworthy Subjects of Internet Information Services (Draft for Comment)", and then to the "Regulations on the Administration of Online Audio and Video Information Services" and "Regulations on the Ecological Governance of Network Information Content".

Throughout 2019, emerging fields are being regulated one by one. At the same time, areas that have long been tightly regulated have not relaxed – in 2019, we sent away at least two well-known content producers.

One of them is the "Tudou commune". In September 2019, its official Weibo issued an announcement announcing that each platform would stop updating and clear the content. On September 18, Tudou Commune’s WeChat public account, Weibo, and Douban were all cancelled one after another, and the website content was also cleared and the domain name was cancelled. There is no public information to tell us the specific reason, but this ill-fated platform - the predecessor "Breaking Ground Studio" was forced to dissolve, and the official account of Tudou Commune was permanently banned in 2018 - disappeared.

The other is Curiosity Daily. Strictly speaking, "Curiosity Daily" has not left, but after two months of suspension and rectification, it has reduced the size of the content production team and reduced content columns . However, Curiosity Daily’s post announcing its return has been deleted from the entire network, and its mobile app is still not available for download.

As for literature, there doesn't seem to be much turmoil. Long Yingtai’s name was blocked on multiple e-commerce platforms because of his “egg theory” published on Facebook, but related books can still be searched; The burning of "tendency" books at the entrance of the county-level library caused heated discussions; the author of the online article "Mr. Shen Hai" was sentenced to four years in prison and fined 120,000 yuan for the crime of illegal business operations. On top of that, there are "unexpected" omissions in published books, as in Snowden's autobiography The Permanent Record.

Will the trends reflected above change in 2020? At present, probably not.

#MeToo is still in China

If I had to choose the most impressive things about #MeToo in China this year, I would probably pick the following.

The first is the follow-up development of Liu Qiangdong's alleged sexual assault case. In April, a girl who earlier accused Liu Qiangdong of sexually assaulting her initiated a civil lawsuit against Liu Qiangdong in the United States. The subsequent development of the incident in the country can also be described as twists and turns. Initially, an anonymous account posted two recordings related to the incident on the Internet. The Southern Metropolis Daily later quoted it and published a report titled "Online Rumored Liu Qiangdong's "Mingzhou Case" Apartment Surveillance! Anonymous Recordings Expose Schoolgirls Asking Lawyers for Money" article. For a while, abuse of the girls involved was prevalent on the Internet. Immediately afterwards, a team of volunteers obtained and published a more complete version, saying that the anonymously released version was deliberately edited as many as 23 times.

By July, Minnesota police had released 149 pages of the file. However, it is unimaginable that this file has gained a lot of dissemination under the condition that the self-media "North American International Students Daily" carried keywords such as "kiss" and "bath with mandarin ducks". But the next day, the self-media apologized and admitted that he was a "title party". Caijing interviewed the girl herself. According to the girl's response, the behaviors alleged in the title of the North American International Students Daily were all unilateral statements made by Liu Qiangdong in the police report.

The second is the victory of the Liu Meng case. Also in July, the victim received a verdict from the Chengdu Wuhou District People's Court. The verdict found that Liu Meng had committed sexual harassment, ordered him to apologize to the victim, and dismissed his request for compensation of 50,000 yuan for mental damage. NGOCN wrote at the time that, "This is the first successful case in the #MeToo wave last year, and it is also the first case in China to be accepted and won with the "sexual harassment" case after the 'sexual harassment damage liability dispute' was written into a civil case at the end of last year. case". Although the court did not support all the victims' demands, winning the case alone can encourage victims and is a big step for #MeToo in China.

The third is the arrest of independent journalist Huang Xueqin. As an important promoter of China's #MeToo movement, Huang Xueqin participated in the reporting of two famous cases of Beihang Chen Xiaowu and Zhongda Zhang Peng. Ultimately, both perpetrators were punished. She launched the "Sexual Harassment Survey of Female Journalists in China", which can be said to have started the #MeToo movement in China. In October of this year, she was taken away by the Guangzhou police, who held her under criminal detention on the grounds of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." Earlier, it was reported that she had been detained her entry and exit documents for writing a record of her participation in the anti-extradition demonstrations, resulting in her being unable to study in Hong Kong.

As of today, Huang Xueqin has been out of contact for more than two months. It is reported that she has been transferred to designated residential surveillance. Other than that, no other news came out. Some supporters couldn't help asking "When can she come out?" on social media. (Note: According to the latest news, Huang was released on January 17 this year.)

Overall, #MeToo has had a mixed year in China. At the level of publicity, the exhibition was forced to be withdrawn in a hurry, relevant keywords became sensitive words, and relevant reports may also be deleted; but at the practical level, we have also seen people like Qian Fengsheng of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. case, the school responded quickly and dealt with it. The #MeToo movement has indeed inspired more people to stand up, and it has forced relevant people and institutions to respond positively. It can be said that #MeToo in China is "a wildfire that can't be burnt out, and the spring breeze blows again".

2019 has passed, and the 10s have said goodbye to us. In the brand new 2020, we care about those who have lost their liberty, those movies that are still being withdrawn, and those cases that are about to go to trial. When are they coming out? When is the movie coming out? Can we win? We don't know the answer, but we must pay attention.

2019 non-mainstream archives outside the N mark

We have prepared an archive, you can open the following link through your browser: https://mcusercontent.com/8951f653d66297b1cc91a1215/files/f311670f-43ca-4e5f-9219-1770d380f866/Noutside.01.pdf to read and save .

Archive directory:

event preservative

Looking back on 2019, ask this society a question

The media we want

China Internet Supervision Series

We are a non-profit, independent media that focuses on public issues such as the environment, education, gender/gender, and mental health, and provides responsible documentary content for the public.

Click the link to subscribe to our featured emails: https://jinshuju.net/f/sGicEk