“When people from other places come to Wuhan now, they will have the feeling that nothing has happened here,” said Ai Xiaoming, sitting in the study full of books from her home in the city at the center of China’s coronavirus outbreak last January.
“It looks like they don’t know anything about the dead or the feelings of families,” said the 67-year-old writer and documentary maker. “O [Chinese] the media rarely reports on these issues. There is no space for these people to tell their stories ”.
Ai was one of three writers censored for sharing diary entries on major Chinese social media platforms during the 76-day Covid-19 blockade in the Chinese city of Wuhan. They continue to fight for their voices to be heard, almost a year later.
Ai and Fang Fang, 65, were often blamed for their strident calls for freer speech and for local officials being held responsible for keeping residents in the dark in the month before Wuhan’s abrupt closure on January 23, 2020.
Most of the entries in his diary, however, were simply intended to share personal reflections and raise awareness of the situation of neighbors, volunteers and medical professionals.
Another writer, Guo Jing, 29, was repeatedly censored for sharing content with the aim of raising awareness about cases of domestic violence, isolation and the heavy burden of family duties that fell on women during the period in the provincial capital of Hubei .
Ai, who had previously chronicled HIV-infected residents and the corruption that led to the collapse of schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, had his account on WeChat – on the ubiquitous social media platform owned by the technology giant Tencent – permanently closed during blocking.
Wang Fang, who writes under the pen name Fang Fang, is the best known of the three. Her Wuhan’s Diary it was published in English in June last year, although it also caused problems for her at home, after radical nationalists harassed her for publishing the report abroad.
The posts in his diary were read and reshared by millions in China, but the entries began to be censored. “The politically correct is so prioritized that, when we are in a crisis, even crying and mourning are considered [to be] bringing shame to the country and delivering the sword to the outside world, “she told the Observer.
In her blocking diary, the Wuhan resident relayed her constant battle with censors and commentators by posting pieces of her diary on WeChat and Weibo, Sina’s owned social media platform. And while she was constantly censored, other voices that attacked her had free rein.
Although Fang Fang’s WeChat and Weibo accounts were not suspended, they were still occasionally blocked, she said.
The selective blocking of certain types of speech while allowing another “frantic” speech to flourish is an obstacle to further reform and opening up in China, she believes. “The consequences of this will naturally be dangerous,” she said.
Fang Fang said publishers in China have stopped releasing the works for which she was hired, including her most recent novels, although books already published can still be found in bookstores.
“For a professional writer, not being able to publish and release his work is a very cruel punishment,” she said.
This punishment, of course, pales in comparison to the four-year sentence imposed by a Shanghai court on the 37-year-old lawyer who became citizen journalist Zhang Zhan on December 28. Zhang was convicted of “creating fights and causing problems” when reporting from a blocked Wuhan and posting videos and snippets of information on YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms.
In China, the government requires journalists to carry press cards distributed by the state and prohibits most independent journalism. It is another layer of censorship that is not always contested.
“Zhang Zhan showed with his actions that all of these rules are ridiculous,” said Ai. “She doesn’t care about any of that. In that sense, she represents a kind of personality that does not belong to this century, nor to the past century, but to the future. She is so brave. “
For feminist writer Guo Jing, who also struggled to post stories during and after the outbreak, suffering censorship and penalties for speaking out had the cumulative effect of altering what people thought they could discuss both online and offline.
“I think what is scary about censorship is that it provokes self-censorship and everyone censors each other,” said Guo. “It’s like, ‘Hey, someone froze your account for posting this and that, maybe you shouldn’t post that kind of thing,’ they say.”
The other main aspect was the constantly changing definition of what was sensitive and what was not, and the unclear rules about what could be said. “We never know what the pattern is,” she said.
As for the culpability of China’s social media platforms in censorship, the writers agreed that they played an important role, but ultimately it was up to the authorities to order the removal or request that certain topics be policed.
“Social media platforms want traffic, so excluding important topics wouldn’t be good for them either,” said Guo.
Questioned by Observer to comment on why writers’ posts were censored or continued to be censored, Tencent replied: “Tencent’s mission is to create platforms for users to connect and communicate openly. Tencent is guided by local laws related to Internet content and we comply with all regulations and laws in the countries and markets where we operate. “
Sina did not respond to similar requests for comment.