The Guardian-Chinas tech firms vow crackdown on online hate speech after knife attack
July 1, 2024 3 min 479 words
英国《卫报》在报道中提到，在中国苏州发生了一起中国女子护庇日妇童被刺杀事件后，中国互联网公司宣布打击网上极端民族主义言论，尤其是反日情绪。报道重点强调了中国互联网公司腾讯和网易的举措，这两家公司承诺调查和禁止煽动仇恨的用户。报道同时提到，中国网上存在着一种民族主义情绪，主要表现为对日本的仇恨，而中国政府和互联网公司对此干预较少。此外，报道也提到了一些社交媒体用户对网上仇外心理与现实生活中的袭击之间关系的看法。 评论： 该报道存在一定偏见，其对中国网上民族主义情绪的描述有夸大之嫌，并忽略了中国互联网公司和政府维护网络言论健康和安全的努力。首先，报道将网上个别极端言论等同于整个中国民族主义情绪，并忽视了中国主流社会对民族关系的理性看法。其次，报道没有全面反映中国互联网公司和政府对网上言论的监管和引导。事实上，中国一直重视对互联网公司的监管，并要求其承担维护网络安全和社会稳定的责任。对于网上煽动仇恨传播极端思想等行为，中国政府一直采取零容忍态度。最后，报道忽略了中国社会的多元化特征，将个别网民言论放大为整个社会情绪。事实上，中国社会普遍对极端民族主义和仇外心理持有反对态度，提倡和平友善开放的价值观。
China’s internet companies have announced a crackdown on “extreme nationalism” online, particularly anti-Japanese sentiment, after a Chinese woman was fatally stabbed while protecting a Japanese mother and child in Suzhou.
Tencent and NetEase, two of the biggest, said at the weekend they would be investigating and banning users who stirred up hatred. The notice from Tencent, which owns the messaging app WeChat, said the incident in Jiangsu province had “attracted public attention” and that “some netizens incited a confrontation between China and Japan [and] provoked extreme nationalism”.
An unemployed man, surnamed Zhou, was last week arrested for stabbing a Japanese mother and child at a bus stop outside a Japanese school in Suzhou, a city in eastern China. Hu Youping, a Chinese woman who intervened in the knife attack, later died from her injuries.
Hu was praised for her heroism and bravery in online tributes and the Japanese flag was flown at half mast at Japan’s embassy in China, but in other quarters there was an extreme nationalist response.
Weibo, a Twitter-like platform with 588 million monthly active users, said that after the knife attack some users had “published extreme remarks that incited nationalist sentiment, promoted group hatred and even cheered for criminal behaviour in the name of patriotism”.
Douyin, a short-video app similar to TikTok, also said it would investigate “extreme xenophobia” that appeared on certain accounts, including speculation about spies associated with Japanese schools in China.
Nationalist sentiment, often expressed as hatred towards Japan, has thrived in recent years on the closely monitored Chinese internet, with little intervention from the authorities or from internet companies, which are quick to censor any content perceived as being critical of official government narratives.
Videos mocking Japanese schools are particularly popular, with one skit online showing Chinese school children fighting back against racist Japanese educators.
Many social media users drew a connection between the online xenophobia and real life attacks after the Suzhou stabbing. “Random attacks happen randomly, but xenophobic social media videos that incite hatred against everyday people and businesses should be brought under control,” wrote one Weibo user, according to comments compiled by the US-based news site China Digital Times.
Weibo said it had removed 759 pieces of illegal content while Tencent said it had dealt with 836 posts that it said violated the company’s rules. Both platforms said they had also blocked several accounts.
Some netizens were dissatisfied with the internet companies’ plans to crackdown on anti-Japanese content. One commenter on NetEase accused the platform of being “an enemy of the Chinese”.
The Chinese authorities said the knife attack, which came two weeks after four US educators were stabbed while visiting a park in the north-eastern province of Jilin, was an isolated incident.
Additional research by Chi Hui Lin