After stabbings, China's social media firms face scrutiny over hate speech

Al Jazeera

23-01-2025

Taichung, Taiwan – For one user on the Chinese social media platform, Weibo, the problem was Americans.
'British people make me anxious too, but I hate Americans,' read the user's comment.
For another, it was Japanese.
'I really hope the Japanese die,' the user repeated 25 times in a post.
Xenophobic and hyper-nationalistic comments are easy to come by on Chinese social media platforms, even after some of the country's biggest tech firms last year pledged to crack down on hate speech following a series of knife attacks on Japanese and American nationals in the country.
Since the summer, there have been at least four stabbings of foreign nationals in China, including an incident in September in which a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy was killed in Shenzhen.
The attack, which took place on the anniversary of a false flag event orchestrated by Japanese military personnel to justify the invasion of Manchuria, prompted the Japanese government to demand an explanation from its Chinese counterpart as well as assurances that it would do more to protect Japanese nationals.
Following the incident, some Japanese companies offered to repatriate their staff and their families home.
Months earlier, a knife attack that injured four American college instructors in Jilin placed United States-China relations under strain, with US Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns accusing Chinese authorities of not being forthcoming with information about the incident, including the motive of the assailant.
Beijing, while expressing regret over the attacks and condolences to the families of the victims, has insisted the spate of stabbings were isolated incidents.
'Similar cases could happen in any country,' Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a regular media briefing after the attack in Shenzhen.
While China's Foreign Ministry and the Chinese embassy in Tokyo did not respond to requests for comment, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC said Chinese law 'clearly prohibits the use of the internet to spread extremism, ethnic hatred, discrimination, violence and other information'.
'The Chinese government has always opposed any form of discrimination and hate speech, and calls on all sectors of society to jointly maintain the order and security of cyberspace,' the spokesperson told Al Jazeera.
While violence against foreigners in China is rare, the apparent rise in attacks in 2024 and the prevalence of hate speech online has prompted concern within the country, said Wang Zichen, a former Chinese state media journalist and the founder of the newsletter Pekingnology.
'It has set into motion domestic discussions about this kind of speech and how to restrain it,' Wang told Al Jazeera.
Despite pledges by Chinese tech companies to crack down on hate speech against foreigners, policing such content is far from straightforward, according to Andrew Devine, a PhD student at Tulane University in the US who specialises in the authoritarian politics of China.
'Especially since the [tech] companies have incentives to not control hate speech,' Devine told Al Jazeera.
While the algorithms used by Chinese social media platforms to distribute content have been shared with the Chinese government, they have not been disclosed to the public, making it difficult to know the exact mechanism by which hate speech proliferates online.
Elena Yi-Ching Ho, an independent research analyst focusing on propaganda and social media in China, said the algorithms used by Chinese social media platforms are most likely not dissimilar to those used by platforms outside the country.
'They want to maximize engagement between users on their platforms, and they want users to stay on their platform for as long as possible,' Ho told Al Jazeera.
In the hunt for users' attention, it can be lucrative for Chinese influencers and vloggers to seek out controversy with hyper-nationalistic content, Ho said.
In today's China, a perceived lack of patriotism can draw public ire.
Last year, Chinese water bottle company Nongfu Spring had its bottles removed from stores en masse after social media users claimed that a company logo depicted Mount Fuji in Japan.
Online condemnation spread to the company's owner, Zhong Shanshan, who had his loyalty to China questioned, a charge amplified by the fact that his son holds American citizenship.
In 2023, a rock and eggs were thrown at two Japanese schools in Qingdao and Suzhou after Tokyo decided to release treated radioactive wastewater from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.
Wang said the proliferation of negative commentary about foreigners on Chinese social media has been partly a result of growing hostility between China and some other countries.
'Chinese relations with some countries have deteriorated quite significantly in recent years,' Wang said.
China and Japan have sparred over a number of historical and territorial disputes, including the status of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.
The US and China have also seen relations plummet in recent years amid disputes over topics ranging from trade and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic to Beijing's claims of ownership over self-ruled Taiwan.
But hate speech towards foreigners predates some of these recent clashes, according to Ho.
'And Japan and Japanese have been particular targets of it,' she said.
Some Chinese bloggers and social media users have traced the roots of negative sentiment towards Japanese people to what they term 'hate education' about Japan, including its imperial-era abuses in China.
Wang said Japan's actions during World War II deeply affected China's national psyche.
'Japan launched invasions in the Second World War where as many as tens of millions of Chinese people died, and that remains on a lot of Chinese people's minds today,' he said.
'For some people, there is a feeling that the Japanese haven't done enough to atone for that.'
Still, some Chinese citizens argue that Japan's atrocities should not be used to justify hateful sentiment towards Japanese people today.
'I think we need to change the way we are dealing with our past if we want to see less hate speech,' Tina Wu, a 29-year-old social media manager in Shanghai, told Al Jazeera.
While hate speech is not solely a problem on China's internet, Chinese social media platforms, unlike those in the US, operate in a heavily censored environment where crackdowns on sensitive topics are a semi-constant occurrence.
China has the world's least free internet environment along with Myanmar, according to a report on 72 countries by US-based nonprofit Freedom House.
In 2020, more than 35,000 words related to Chinese President Xi Jinping alone were subjected to censorship, according to the China Digital Times.
Devine said while some hateful commentary is subject to censorship, content that echoes the Chinese government's official position is less likely to be removed.
He said he does not believe that Chinese tech companies' promise of cracking down on xenophobia and hate speech will do much to change the proliferation of such content.
'At the same time, the tech companies want to avoid taking on the extra cost of policing it,' he said.
No matter the incentives, social media platforms with more than one billion active users cannot realistically stamp out every instance of hate speech, Wang said.
'There's so much information and more is constantly being added that there's simply no way to eradicate or eliminate all of it,' he said.
'Even Chinese moderation capacities have their limits.'
Wang said he is optimistic that China's friendly exchanges with some countries recently and the country's rising power and influence will lead to less anti-foreigner sentiment.
'China should have the confidence of walking into the future with a greater sense of security and confidence instead of still being haunted by the memories of the past,' he said.
Wu from Shanghai likewise said she hopes to see a reevaluation of some of the dominant narratives in China, particularly relating to foreigners.
'It's a big part of the Chinese story right now that we're constantly the victims of foreign aggression,' she said.
'And as long as that continues to be a strong message, I'm afraid there might be more attacks on foreigners in China.'