2014-08-26
A Chinese netizen uses Weibo, the Twitter-like microblogging service of Sina, in a rural village in southwest China’s Guizhou province, Dec. 15, 2012.
Imaginechina
Chinese authorities have employed some two million people as “Internet opinion analysts,” more than the total payroll of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), official media reported, amid accusations that the web monitors manipulate online opinion.
Distinct from the less well-paid “50-cent army” hired by Internet service providers, government agencies and academic bodies to make pro-government comments and delete posts, these “opinion analysts” feed back to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, educational institutions and government agencies condensed reports on vast amounts of social media postings.
But they have also been implicated in attempts to manipulate online opinion, according to a recently leaked document detailing online debate at Peking University surrounding plans for a controversial new building.
The university’s Youth Research Center, a branch of the Communist Party’s Youth League, reportedly tried to influence that debate by attacking those who objected to the plans, the document shows.
“Public opinion analysts are better qualified, get more money and slightly higher status than the ’50-cent army’,” Zhejiang-based rights lawyer Yuan Gulai, who has a special interest in online freedom of speech, told RFA.
“Opinion analysts will regularly have dealings with party leaders and government departments at every level.”
According to former Peking University journalism professor Jiao Guobiao, the role is fast becoming professionalized in China.
“Opinion analysis is actually a form of social research, similar to that undertaken by sociologists in a university,” Jiao said.
“They are using a professional form of a pretty basic research method.”
But Yuan said the analysts are also heavily involved in governance.
“All Chinese cities, large or small, have a special working group for ‘public opinion leadership’,” he said.
“Their job is to analyze, but also to take action.”
He said the government regards the newly created profession as highly sensitive, however, and few details see the light of day.
“Recently, I saw some photos online of training programs for public opinion analysts … but they later got deleted,” Yuan said.
“I think [the government] regards the Internet as the place of greatest strategic advantage.”
Fake accounts
According to the leaked document, the Youth Research Center, party office and university officials colluded to set up fake accounts on the college’s internal bulletin board system (BBS), which they used to hit back at overwhelming criticism of the Yenching project.
