In a remarkable interview, a censor for one of China’s biggest search engines described what gets deleted from the Chinese internet and how—as well as their perspective on the morality of their work. The interview was published by Mang Mang, an independent Chinese-language magazine that publishes on Substack.

It is rare for a censorship worker to speak so openly, even though China’s internet giants employ tens of thousands of them. ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, employs over 100,000 people, 20% of whom work as censors. At Bilibili, a Youtube-style video sharing site, the percentage of employees that work in censorship is 27%. Collectively, censors (alongside algorithms) control the information that reaches China’s over one billion internet users. Yet little is known about the people who do the work. Censors have been interviewed before—Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher interviewed a former censor for his YouTube channel in 2023, for example—but it is rare for one currently on the job to discuss their work.

CDT has selected extensive excerpts from the original Mang Mang piece for translation. The interviewee was born in 1997 and has been working as a censor since 2020. The translated selections range from discussion of forbidden words, to the quotidian concerns of salary and working conditions, and then conclude with an extended reflection on who bears responsibility for censorship in China:

On Political Censorship:

Q: Of all the content you must censor, which type is the highest priority?

A: [Anything related to] political security, of course. 

Q: What are the criteria for censoring political content? For example, what type of content is allowed, and what type gets censored?

A: We use the same criteria as domestic media, actually. Whatever they aren’t allowed to report on, we’re not allowed to let pass. The most obvious examples are content related to senior political officials and their family members, or to darker episodes in Communist Party history. We’re mandated to delete all of those. Also, every year around June 4, many people post content about it, all of which we must censor. As June 4 approaches, we even have to pull overtime just to handle all the work. 

Q: So, as censors, you have to be especially cautious on particular dates such as June 4 and October 1 National Day?

A: Of course! As soon as those dates come up, there are always some people who, for some reason, try to stir the public’s memory. As soon as the date draws near, they love to post about it. As we see it, June 4 has become a sort of “folk festival.” During those particular periods, censorship guidelines and tactics undergo a temporary shift. Usually, it’s “Let them post first; we’ll censor later.” But around sensitive dates it’s “Censor first.”

On Shutting Down Social Media Accounts

[…] Q: What is the process for shutting down accounts?

A: There is no process. If I feel that an account has published something problematic, I can just shut it down. Afterwards, I pass a list of those suspended accounts to my supervisors at our contracting company. 

Q: You just give them a list of suspended accounts? There’s no further review or evaluation required?

A: Nope. Shutting down accounts is simple. Sometimes you need to provide a reason why you shut it down—for example, maybe they mentioned June 4. But for the most part, I have the authority to decide whether it’s a permanent shuttering or a temporary suspension. 

On Salary and Hours: 

[…] Q: Are you willing to reveal your [monthly] salary as a censor?

A: At first, it was 4300 yuan [about $600, at current exchange rates], or about 4000 yuan [$560] after taxes. After my first year, it was raised to 6800 yuan [$950], or 6000 [$840] after insurance and taxes were deducted. 

Q: As a contractor, how long are your work days?

A: At first, they said it would be eight hours a day, but they didn’t say how much work there would be. Later I learned that the workload varies a lot. If you don’t finish within the allotted time, you have to work overtime with no extra pay. As the workload snowballed, I started to “touch fish” [slang for “slack off”]. 

On Forbidden Words

[…] Q: What sensitive words have you flagged?

A: A few come to mind: “egg hole” [a homophone for “bullet hole”] and “Satan fried rice.” [Both are puns mocking the death of Mao’s son during the Korean War. Internet legend has it that Mao Anying was killed by American bombers after he inadvertently revealed his position by lighting a fire to cook egg fried rice on the battlefield.] Also “new” and “frontier” and all of their various homophones—there are so many that they’re not worth mentioning. [This is a reference to Xinjiang.]

Q: How did they teach you about the Xinjiang labor camps?

A: They just showed us a documentary, which we watched, and that was it. The company’s goal isn’t to teach us the truth; it’s to make us delete things. The purpose isn’t the same, so the methods differ. In other words, they want us—as cogs in the censorship machine—to be aware that the topic is sensitive so that we’ll delete anything that touches on it, but they don’t care what we think or feel about it. 

Q: Can people mention the “People’s Liberation Army”?

A: Around sensitive dates, it is completely forbidden—even comments praising the government and the PLA for restoring order are verboten. The point of this censorship is not to channel public opinion in a certain direction. Whether it’s positive or negative is beside the point. The point is for censors to delete all evidence of an event in the hopes that the public will completely forget about it. 

Q: How many training sessions have you attended at your current company?

A: About seven. The Xinjiang labor camp training made a deep impression on me, even though the sessions are totally lame. You really don’t learn anything during them. The company just wants you to be aware of the existence of a certain thing or event, but we’re not expected to remember the specific details—forgetting those is fine. I actually believe the company hopes we will forget those after the training. 

On A Censor’s Moral Code

[…] Q: So, your purpose [in being a censor] is simply to make more money?

A: Yup. I’ve never felt guilty. It’s just a job. And if I’m going to do it, I should do it well. It’s really uncommon for anyone to “aim high.” [This is a reference to an apocryphal question from a presiding judge to an East German guard convicted of the last shooting of someone trying to flee over the Berlin Wall: “Couldn’t you just have aimed your rifle one inch higher?”] I doubt that really happened. It sounds like some intellectual dreamed it up. Could anything like that happen in real life?

That phrase “aim your rifle an inch higher” must have originated from the fall of the Berlin Wall, right? All day long, those guards were trained to do this or do that. That sort of environment must have completely eroded their sense of morality. There’s no way they’d ever shoot to miss. And if a soldier did dare shoot to miss, and got caught by a superior officer, can you imagine what they’d do to him? And how few people would even care?

Q: Does all this censorship and working with “negative” information have a negative impact on your mental health?

A: Nah. I don’t even feel politically pessimistic. To be honest, the only pressure from my job comes from worrying about mistakes. I’m very afraid of making a mistake, which is to say I’m afraid of not censoring bad content. As far as I can tell, none of my coworkers have any negative feelings either. Nobody cares about politics. These topics aren’t related to our daily lives. One of my colleagues is actually Mao Zedong’s biggest fan. Many see themselves as helping the nation avoid chaos and avoid societal instability. From that perspective, how could we feel pessimistic or worried about politics?

Q: Is there anything that makes you feel guilty?

A: Of course. For example, [content about] COVID and the Zhengzhou floods, as well as a piece called “Ten Days in Chang’an” written by someone called Jiang Xue. Deleting those made me feel very guilty. But of course, these were really obvious things. If I didn’t delete them, someone else would. They were too blatant. I couldn’t let them slip by if I tried. 

Q: How does your “guilt” manifest itself?

A: It makes me want to quit. But the people around me will console me by saying that if I hadn’t censored it, someone else would have. Some of my friends will also ask me what I’d do if I didn’t do this. Everyone knows that survival is the most important thing. Morality and ethics are secondary to survival.

Even so, 2021 was an extremely difficult year for me. The Xi’an [lockdown] and the Zhengzhou flood happened that year. That’s when my guilt peaked. I really wanted to leave the company and never work as a political censor again. But I couldn’t find any good opportunities. I feel conflicted about working as a political censor: it’s familiar work that keeps me fed, but on the other hand, it’s … painful. My guilt was even heavier during that time because I was living through the same things. 

Q: Do you think you deserve sympathy? If you were to step back and look at your work from an outsider’s perspective, what would you have to say about censors?
A: I’d say we do deserve some sympathy. If I were to judge us from the outside, I’d say we’re just a group of people struggling to make a living. It’s really that simple. There’s nothing that complex about it. As for questions of so-called “justice,” none of us think too deeply about it. If you can’t make a living, if you don’t have enough to eat, where’s the “justice” in that? Call it helplessness or call it tragedy, but for people on the bottom rung of society, we really don’t have any other choice.

I reject the moral judgements made about my job. Shouldn’t the middle class be the one subject to criticism? Why is criticism always heaped on those of us at the bottom? Instead, the question ought to be: Who created the position of censor? We’re just workers, after all. The problem isn’t the job; it’s the people who created this job. Critics should aim their barbs at the source of the problem, not at workers like us, who are just carrying out orders. Cogs in the machine are replaceable—if it weren’t us, they’d just find someone else to do the work.

I think there’s a phrase that sums this up well: responsibility should be commensurate with power and position. The common people shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of too much social responsibility. It’s already hard enough for ordinary people to survive, without having to bear the weight of so many expectations. [Chinese]