Editor's note: Readers, how are you? The beginning of 2020 is not good, or even very bad. If there is a time machine, perhaps many people would like to restart. And this means that we must remember some things, rather than forgetting with Chinese characteristics, no matter how much we pay, we still repeat the same mistakes. Some people say that 2019 is the worst year in the past decade, but it may be the best year in the next decade. So, in this cold night of 2020, no matter what, we should not forget 2019.

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

Reporting Era

In 2019, the "era of big reporting has arrived."

This was the title of an article in May on the public account "Mei Xiao". The article attempted to point out that the era of popular reporting has arrived, and neither you nor I can stop it. After the article was published, it quickly reached over 100,000 views and sparked 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 at the whole of 2019, it seems to be true.

In early January, a notice titled "Notice on Conducting a Comprehensive Survey of Constitutional Law Textbooks in Colleges and Universities" sparked heated discussions online. The notice required provincial education departments to conduct a comprehensive survey of the constitutional law textbooks currently being used by college students. At the same time, a legal scholar said on Weibo that the incident was caused by Professor Ke Huaqing of China University of Political Science and Law reporting on books such as "Introduction to Constitutional Law - Principles and Applications" written by Professor Zhang Qianfan of Peking University, and pointed out that "Introduction to Constitutional Law - Principles and Applications" had been removed from the entire Internet. Ke Huaqing denied the "report" when responding to an interview with Sing Tao Daily at the time.

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

But that’s not the case for everyone.

In June, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission issued a document titled "Guiding Opinions on the Handling of Unethical Behaviors of Teachers in Beijing Universities". The document identified 11 types of unethical behaviors of university teachers, including undermining the authority of the Party Central Committee in teaching, publishing and forwarding erroneous views through classroom networks, and expressing demands in illegal ways. The opinions stipulate that if there are such unethical behaviors, the teacher's teaching qualifications may be revoked in serious cases.

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 great inventions are not leading in the world", and then had an argument with students. A student then posted a screenshot of the relevant remarks on Zhihu. After the incident attracted attention, Sichuan University of Electronic Science and Technology determined that Zheng Wenfeng had violated teacher ethics and suspended his teaching work and the qualification to recruit graduate students for two years.

If this incident is not strictly considered as a report, then the experience of Niu Jie, an associate professor at the School of Liberal Arts of Nanchang Hangkong University, is more typical. It was also "online speech" - Niu Jie posted a comment on the current situation in Hong Kong in a WeChat group of 76 people: "The so-called rioters are all children, and they didn't kill anyone"; it was also "online reporting" - someone took a screenshot of his speech and posted it on Weibo, and published his personal information through "human flesh", and tagged the official Weibo of Nanchang Hangkong University. Nanchang Hangkong University quickly issued a notice saying that Niu Jie made "inappropriate remarks" and "will be dealt with seriously in strict accordance with regulations."

Outside of the Internet, many universities have also begun to recruit "information officers" to monitor teachers' words and deeds. According to a document titled "Regulations on the Work Management of Student Teaching Information Officers at Ankang University in Shaanxi Province, " the job responsibilities of information officers include "reporting to the school in a timely manner if they discover that teachers violate the core socialist values ​​and ideological work discipline during teaching, spread superstition, cults, pornography, promote Western political values, oppose the Four Cardinal Principles and the Party's reform and opening-up policies, etc."

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

A New York Times report in November noted that informants "also often talk to other students to collect their impressions of their teachers, including their personalities, values ​​and patriotism."

Reporting is not limited to colleges and universities. Thanks to the convenience of the Internet, today's reporting is no longer in the form of letters of complaint or posters, but rather "shading people" on the Internet. Shading people means publishing the words, deeds and even identity information of others or entities under a personal account. If a big V "shades people" or reposts "shades people", the matter will often have an impact.

In 2019, many people or entities became the targets of "hook". Among them, the article written by Mei Xiao mentioned above mentioned the example of "Wang Chenyi's withdrawal from the competition". Wang Chenyi is a contestant of the variety show "Creation Camp 2019". During the competition, he was found to have liked Weibo posts such as "dirty jokes" and jokes involving flag raising many years ago. Someone took screenshots of this information and published it, asking him to withdraw from the competition. In the end, Wang Chenyi actually withdrew from the competition.

There are more examples. Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey's tweet was "posted" back to the Great Firewall, Pakho Chau was also "posted" for Hong Kong independence because of his IG post, and celebrities who did not post a blessing Weibo on National Day were even "posted" on a list.

However, we may be more familiar with "bad information" reports. According to the Cyberspace Administration of China's Illegal and Bad Information Reporting Center, there are currently more than 2,600 websites with bad information reporting hotlines, and more than 900 news websites and commercial websites have "online harmful information reporting areas." Public data shows that the Cyberspace Administration of China's Illegal and Bad Information Reporting Center receives about 10 million reports every month.

Weibo accounts for the largest proportion. 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. The "contribution" of Weibo supervisors is indispensable. According to the official Weibo of Weibo supervisors, 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 information, and 1.27 million were illegal and harmful information.

The era of whistleblowing has indeed arrived.

Gay rights movement in China

For China's gay rights activists, 2019 may be a year of mixed joy and sorrow.

The most exciting news this year is of course that Taiwan has officially legalized same-sex marriage. From the joy of the Supreme Court’s constitutional interpretation two years ago to the frustration of last year’s same-sex marriage referendum, after many twists and turns, same-sex marriage has finally been implemented.

On May 17, the same-sex marriage law was officially passed by the Legislative Council, and on May 24, it was officially implemented. On these two days, whether it was WeChat Moments, Weibo, or Douban, you could always see the jubilation of supporters of the gay rights movement. As the "No. 1 in Asia", Taiwan has given us strategic reference and encouragement as a role model. Even the overseas edition of the People's Daily posted this news on Twitter.

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

On the afternoon of April 12, netizen @食人貘 posted a Weibo post: "Les's super topic has been closed. There is no homosexuality in socialism." It turned out that the super topic "les" as a lesbian communication area on Weibo was suddenly closed. Weibo officials did not make any statement. More than 20,000 netizens tried to apply to Weibo for opening, but failed. NGOCN consulted Weibo customer service staff at the time and received a reply that "After verification by the super topic secretary, the super topic you applied to open does not meet the opening standards because there is a lot of illegal information in the super topic."

At the same time, Douban's lesbian communication group "Les Sky" 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 been around for nearly 14 years and has nearly 250,000 members. The members are accustomed to calling it the "Sky Group."

Some netizens suspect that the two incidents may be related to the special campaign to crack down on vulgar online information that began in April. The campaign was launched by the National Office for Combating Pornography and Illegal Publications and lasted for eight months. Its purpose was to "focus on solving prominent problems that the masses strongly complained about, and focus on cleaning up the spread of pornographic and other content that caters to low tastes on the Internet."

In the same month, civil servant Wu Wei committed suicide at home after posting a suicide note on Weibo. In his suicide note, he disclosed his homosexuality, saying that he was "criticized" by his superiors because of his sexual orientation, and his parents also said that he was "very embarrassed." Wu Wei survived because he was rushed 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 in his Weibo that because of his homosexual orientation and gender temperament issues, he had suffered school bullying and domestic violence - "My teachers have expressed disgust, slander, and even hollowing out, sarcasm, and abuse on the topic of gays." He left home that night, and some netizens called the police, and thousands of netizens flooded into the Qingdao police's Weibo to leave messages. In the end, the police found him safely.

If these two incidents had a relatively good outcome, a lesbian couple in Shanghai were not so lucky.

A girl named "Butterfly" was forced to separate from her girlfriend and lost her personal freedom. Netizens who cared about them formed a volunteer community and tried to contact Butterfly offline, but they almost ended up in jail. In August, Butterfly's girlfriend "Kangaroo" posted a post saying, "For them (parents), those of us who oppose them are 'weird, perverted, liars, disgusting, and uneducated', which is the core of the whole problem."

These events seem to be a silhouette, allowing us to see the current living conditions of the gay community - they are always difficult to be understood, tolerated and supported.

At the policy level, the gay community had a glimmer of hope. In July, the official WeChat account of Nanjing Notary Office published an article titled "Notarization of Intentional Guardianship: Building a Bridge of Love for the LGBT Community," which surprised the gay community. After all, Nanjing Notary Office is a semi-official institution, and given that the government has always turned a blind eye to gay issues, such an article is enough to provide some comfort.

The article points out that the LGBT community can designate their partner as their future guardian through voluntary guardianship documents to handle medical, property and other issues. "Promoting voluntary guardianship can fully protect the legitimate rights and interests of the LGBT community and maintain social stability."

Subsequently, gay public welfare website Danlan.com and other gay community accounts published discussions on the "voluntary guardianship" system. Danlan even called "voluntary guardianship" the "optimal solution" for same-sex relationships.

But in fact, we cannot expect too much from this system. The "voluntary guardianship" system benefits from the "General Provisions of the Civil Law" that came into effect in October 2017. Article 33 of the law gives adults the right to establish guardians in writing with individuals or organizations. The original intention of the policy was actually more of a solution to an aging society. Some people also said that this was a "surprise" for the gay community.

Moreover, the notarization of voluntary guardianship requires a lot of financial expenditure, and the conditions for effectiveness and the scope of application are also subject to many restrictions. Not to mention that in fact, when the notarization is learned to be done by a same-sex couple, the notary office in many regions may refuse to handle it on the grounds of "harming public order and good morals."

By August, the public response of the NPC Legal Affairs Committee had indeed poured cold water on the gay community. At the first press conference of the spokesperson of the NPC Legal Affairs Committee, spokesperson Zang Tiewei said the following in response to the question of legalizing same-sex marriage: "The monogamy system stipulated in the current marriage law of our country is a marriage system based on a man and a woman becoming husband and wife. This provision is in line with our national conditions and historical and cultural traditions. As far as I know, the vast majority of countries in the world do not recognize the legality of same-sex marriage. Therefore, the draft of the Civil Code Marriage and Family Code also maintains the monogamy system stipulated in the current marriage law."

Perhaps because of this impact, in the subsequent solicitation of opinions on the draft of the marriage and family section of the Civil Code, the gay rights organization "Love Family" called on more than 180,000 people to participate in the advocacy of "legalization of same-sex marriage", and more than 220,000 opinions were put forward. This also made the NPC Legal Affairs Committee mention the gay issue in a non-negative way for the first time at the press conference in December - "the opinions mainly focus on improving the scope of close relatives, modifying the revocation authority of revocable marriages, further improving the joint debts of husband and wife, and legalization of same-sex marriage." Although more than 90% of the opinions are about "legalization of same-sex marriage", the Legal Affairs Committee only put it in fourth place, but this statement also made many people in the community think that "it is a progress."

Currently, the Civil Code (Draft) is soliciting public opinions. After leading the voices of more than 220,000 people, the gay rights advocacy platform "Love Family" has recently called for comments on the draft to allow same-sex marriage to be included in the Civil Code. The deadline for soliciting opinions is January 26, 2020. What will be the final result? How will the Legislative Affairs Commission respond? These are all worthy of our attention.

Content censorship continues to penetrate

In the aforementioned topics, we can vaguely see the shadow of content censorship - the cleanup of textbooks by colleges and universities, and the censorship of homosexual novels by literary websites. But what makes us feel this censorship more intuitively is the removal and "castration" of movies and music.

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

This reply is, to some extent, a reflection of Chinese films in 2019— movies dealing with “sensitive issues” have been in constant turmoil, while mainstream films are very popular.

"Better Days", which deals with the issue of campus violence, and "A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind", which deals with the issue of demolition, were released after being withdrawn and edited. Three films telling stories from the Republic of China period - "Eight Hundred", "The Hidden Blade" and "Lanxin Theatre" - all experienced withdrawal from the schedule. "One Second", which deals with the theme of the Cultural Revolution, has not been seen to this day.

In contrast, during the National Day holiday, the main theme films "My Country, My Parents", "The Climbers" and "The Captain" accounted for more than 90% of the total screenings. Finally, "My Country, My Parents" has accumulated more than 3.1 billion yuan in box office revenue, making it one of the top ten Chinese box office hits.

These are not the only films that have been withdrawn from the schedule. Other imported films have also been edited. The Oscar-winning Green Book and the Golden Globe-winning Drama Bohemian Rhapsody both had scenes depicting homosexuality deleted. In addition, nudity, violence, and "Chinese-insulting" lines have all become reasons for deletion. Even Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was asked to be edited because it caused controversy about Bruce Lee. However, according to The Hollywood Reporter, director Quentin himself did not "compromise," and the film's screening plan was ultimately shelved indefinitely.

In addition to movies, music censorship is also inevitable. In June, the Cyberspace Administration of China and multiple departments jointly launched a special campaign to rectify online audio. According to the Cyberspace Administration of China’s press release, the first batch of 26 platforms that spread historical nihilism and obscene and pornographic content were found to be suspected of violating laws and regulations. These include "some online music platforms spreading so-called "colorful divine songs" and promoting "secondary culture" and "subculture"; some audio book platforms promote historical nihilism, spread horror, gods, ghosts, zombies, ghost marriages and other weird online novels, and spread feudal superstitions." At the same time, music platform NetEase Cloud Music and podcast platform Himalaya FM were removed from the app store.

After the rectification, we found that there were many more "*" signs in the lyrics display of NetEase Cloud Music, and the blocked keywords included "making love", "fuck", "shit", etc. Some netizens found that the line "It's hard to be a lover, I also sympathize with your misfortune" in the song "I Have You" written by Lin Xi was also "harmonized" because of this.

In 2019, there were several more artists like Lin Xi who were removed from the Internet because of their words and deeds. The Hong Kong bands Tat Ming Pair and My Little Airport were accused of supporting "Hong Kong independence", and Li Zhi was declared an artist with "improper behavior" when he stopped in Sichuan during his national tour.

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 Management of Online Audio and Video Information Services", which requires audio and video platforms to "adhere to the correct political direction, public opinion orientation and value orientation" . Audio and video platforms are no longer "outside the law".

Of course, there is no "lawless place" on the Internet. In early 2019, the China Internet Audiovisual Program Service Association announced the "Online Short Video Platform Management Specifications" and "Online Short Video Content Review Standards and Detailed Rules", and the 100 prohibited contents listed in it caused widespread discussion. Subsequently, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television announced the "Notice on the Upgrade of the Online Audiovisual Program Information Filing System", requiring key online dramas to be filed and reviewed in advance, and the "Notice on Strengthening the Management of Online Talk (Interview) Programs" put talk shows and other online variety shows under strict regulation. In the Cyberspace Administration of China, it was the "Blockchain Information Service Management Regulations" at the beginning of the year, to the "Internet Information Service Serious Dishonesty Subject Credit Information Management Measures (Draft for Comments)", and then to the "Online Audio and Video Information Service Management Regulations" and "Online Information Content Ecological Governance Regulations".

Throughout 2019, emerging fields are being regulated one by one. At the same time, the already strictly regulated fields have not been relaxed - in 2019, we said goodbye to at least two well-known content producers.

One of them is "Tudou Commune". In September 2019, its official Weibo account released an announcement, announcing that all platforms would stop updating and clear the content. On September 18, Tudou Commune's WeChat public account, Weibo, and Douban were successively cancelled, and the website content was also completely 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 "Potu Studio" was forced to disband, and the Tudou Commune public account was also permanently banned in 2018 - disappeared.

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

As for literature, there didn’t seem to be much trouble. Long Yingtai’s name was blocked on multiple e-commerce platforms because of her “egg theory” on Facebook, but related books can still be searched; the Ministry of Education launched a special campaign to review and clean up books in primary and secondary school libraries across the country, and a county-level library in Gansu burned “biased” books at the door, which caused heated discussions; the online writer “Mr. Deep Sea” was sentenced to four years in prison and fined 120,000 yuan for illegal business operations. In addition, there are “expected” deletions in published books, such as Snowden’s autobiography “Permanent Record”.

Will the trends reflected in the above change in 2020? From the current perspective, I am afraid not.

#MeToo is still going strong in China

If I were asked to choose the most impressive #MeToo events in China this year, I would probably choose the following.

The first is the follow-up development of Liu Qiangdong's alleged sexual assault case. In April, the girl who had previously accused Liu Qiangdong of sexually assaulting her filed a civil lawsuit against Liu Qiangdong in the United States. The subsequent development of the incident in China can be described as twists and turns. Initially, an anonymous account on the Internet released two recordings related to the incident. Southern Metropolis Daily then quoted it and published an article titled "Online rumor of Liu Qiangdong's "Minnesota case" apartment surveillance! Anonymous recordings expose female students asking lawyers for money." For a while, insults against the girl in question were prevalent on the Internet. Immediately afterwards, a volunteer team obtained and published a more complete version, saying that the anonymous version was deliberately edited as many as 23 times.

By July, the Minnesota police released a 149-page file. However, what is unimaginable is that this file was widely circulated after being used by the self-media "North American International Student Daily" with keywords such as "passionate kiss" and "couple bath". However, the next day, the self-media apologized and admitted that it was a "clickbait". Caijing interviewed the girl herself. According to the girl's response, the actions referred to in the headline of the North American International Student Daily were all unilateral statements made by Liu Qiangdong in the police report.

The second case was the victory of Liu Meng. In July, the victim received a judgment from the People's Court of Wuhou District, Chengdu. The judgment found that Liu Meng had committed sexual harassment and ordered him to apologize to the victim, while rejecting the request for 50,000 yuan in mental damages. NGOCN wrote at the time that "this was the first case to win in the #MeToo wave last year, and it was also the first case in China to be accepted and won using the cause of "sexual harassment" after the "sexual harassment damage liability dispute" was written into the civil cause of action at the end of last year." Although the court did not support all of the victim's claims, the victory itself can give encouragement to the victim and is also a big step for #MeToo in China.

The third case is the arrest of independent journalist Huang Xueqin. As an important promoter of the #MeToo movement in China, Huang Xueqin participated in the reporting of two famous cases against Chen Xiaowu of Beihang University and Zhang Peng of Zhongda University. In the end, both perpetrators were punished. The "Sexual Harassment Investigation of Chinese Female Journalists" she initiated can be said to have started the #MeToo movement in China. In October this year, she was taken away by the Guangzhou police, who detained her on the grounds of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." Earlier, there was news that her entry and exit documents were confiscated for writing a record of her participation in the anti-extradition march, which prevented her from studying in Hong Kong.

As of today, Huang Xueqin has been out of contact for more than two months. There are reports that she has been transferred to a designated residence for residential surveillance. Apart from this, no other news has been released. Some supporters can't help but ask on social media, "When can she be released?" (Note: The latest news is that Huang was released on January 17 this year.)

In general, this year of #MeToo in China was a mixed bag. On the publicity level, the relevant exhibitions were forced to be hastily withdrawn, the relevant keywords became sensitive words, and the relevant reports were likely to be deleted; but on the practical level, we also saw cases like Qian Fengsheng from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, where the school responded and dealt with it quickly. The #MeToo movement has indeed inspired more people to stand up, and has also forced relevant people and institutions to respond positively. It can be said that #MeToo in China is like "wildfire that cannot be extinguished, spring breeze blows and it will spring up again."

2019 has passed, and the 2010s have said goodbye to us. In the new year of 2020, we care about those who have lost their freedom, those movies that are still being withdrawn, and those cases that are about to go to court. When will they come out? When will the movie be released? Can we win? We don't know the answer, but we must pay attention.

N mark 2019 non-mainstream archive

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

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Event preservatives

Looking back at 2019, I ask this society a question

The media we want

China Internet Regulation Series

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