WeChat has censored an article on a trending question on Douyin: “Why are jails packed this year?” The article, a short synthesis of a viral genre of short video, claimed that detention centers are overfilled due to China’s economic woes and increasingly aggressive policing:
1. Severe economic pressure. The frequency of crime in the “new economy” is attributable to the desperate measures many have resorted to. Many individuals have taken to industries that are illicit or semi-illicit: multi-level marketing, money laundering, and crypto-fraud. A number of businesses with falling revenues have also taken to falsifying invoices and faking contracts.
2. Strike Hard. This year, every public security and procuratorate agency has run a “strike hard” campaign, with key targets including prostitution, gambling, and “new economic crimes.”
3. “The criminalization of formerly legal activity and the harsh penalization of minor crimes.” For example, a few formerly non-criminal activities are now sometimes construed as crimes, and so side-hustles are viewed as “illegal economic activity” and playing mahjong is classified as “gambling.” [Chinese]
It is difficult to confirm whether the Douyin trend claiming that “jails are packed” is true. Chinese authorities have touted mass arrests this year as part of an effort to root out financial crime. In May, the Ministry of Public Security announced it had “investigated and solved” approximately 95,000 cases of economic crimes. Prosecutors have also vowed that a crackdown on organized crime that is entering its seventh year will continue at full force. In July, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced that it had approved the arrest of 367,000 people in total over the past half-year.
While it is unclear why censors took down the article, writing on China’s economic malaise has proven particularly sensitive over the past year. Hu Xijin, the former editor of Global Times who boasted tens of millions of Weibo followers, has been censored across all social media platforms in China since late July for his comments on the Third Plenum, a twice-per-decade Party meeting on the economy. Average netizens have also been muzzled. Censors have taken down some references to “the garbage time of history,” a newly coined phrase bemoaning China’s economic and political stagnation. Other censorship incidents of the past year include an essay taken down for comparing the Party’s economic management to that of gangsters and a literary magazine shuttered after its cover was construed as a satire of Xi Jinping pointing the economy off a cliff.
