June 30, 2016
From left, Lu Wei, the gatekeeper of China’s internet; Xi Jinping, China’s president; and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, during a meeting last year at Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, Washington.
Pool photo by Ted S. Warren
BEIJING — The outspoken gatekeeper of China’s internet, who led a global push for the country’s growing state surveillance and online censorship, is relinquishing his post, state news media reported on Wednesday.
The move by Lu Wei, best known as China’s internet czar, came as a surprise to analysts. But it is unlikely to lead to any significant pullback from restrictive domestic internet controls and aggressive policies meant to wean the country off its reliance on Western technology firms.
Given the opacity of the Chinese government, it was not clear whether Mr. Lu was in trouble or in line for a promotion.
In recent years, he has become emblematic of China’s assertive stance on blocking websites, censoring content and tracking users within its borders.
In speeches at home and abroad, he publicly lectured American internet companies and politicians alike. During visits to the United States, he was celebrated by some of its best-known technology executives, including Tim Cook of Apple and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. In welcoming him to Facebook’s campus, Mark Zuckerberg showed off his copy of the speeches of China’s president, Xi Jinping.
Mr. Lu’s public appearances and travels made him stand out at home in a political scene dominated by muted bureaucrats. His frequent flamboyance also made him controversial. Since he was put in charge of the government internet information department in 2013, rumors about his fall from power have occasionally swirled, even amid what other observers pointed to as signs that he was a rising star.
One indication of his influence is that he has been the director of a powerful Chinese Communist Party committee set up to form internet policy. He has also headed the Cyberspace Administration of China since it was created by Mr. Xi in 2014.
Mr. Lu will hand over his position as head of the Cyberspace Administration to its deputy director, Xu Lin, who worked directly under Mr. Xi when the president was made the Shanghai party secretary in 2007 after a corruption scandal. A number of officials who worked with Mr. Xi during his seven months in Shanghai have been promoted in recent years.
At that time, Xinhua called Mr. Xu a “political star.” In the same report, Mr. Xi praised Mr. Xu, pointing out that he was the youngest member of the city’s standing committee and also had experience working in Tibet.
If his new appointment undoubtedly makes Mr. Xu a figure to watch, Mr. Lu’s fate is less clear. Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the fact that Mr. Lu had retained his title as the deputy head of China’s propaganda department meant it was not clear whether his departure from the Cyberspace Administration was a demotion.
“It’s too early to draw the conclusion that he’s out,” Mr. Lam said.
“He might end up getting a promotion in another area of the bureaucracy,” he said. “It’s not uncommon for these important positions to be moved around frequently.”
As head of the Cyberspace Administration, Mr. Lu personally led the charge to rein in some of China’s most outspoken social media stars. He also helped create laws dealing with technology and worked to bring China’s largest internet companies, all of them private, into closer cooperation with Beijing.
Abroad, he vocally supported China’s right to block foreign websites and censor the internet. So confrontational was he with some foreign technology companies that they complained to top government officials, like Vice Premier Wang Yang, about his heavy hand, according to an adviser to several Western technology companies who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak officially.
“Lu Wei is not exactly welcomed overseas in his attitude; this could be interpreted as a sort of conciliatory note,” said Mr. Lam, adding that it would nonetheless be unlikely to reduce the pressure Western companies are under in the Chinese market. “It doesn’t look as though Xi Jinping will take a softer line.”
Still, others expressed skepticism that such complaints would have any major impact on Chinese government personnel moves. Rogier Creemers, a researcher in Chinese law and governance at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said he believed the next move for Mr. Lu would most likely be a promotion in the propaganda department or perhaps a position running a Chinese province.
“I think we would have seen different signs if he had been taken out,” Mr. Creemers said. “Generally there would be more rumors about it. Pretty much every senior leader who has been taken out has been preceded by rumors, and we haven’t really seen anything big about Lu Wei.”
Citing a recent decline in the influence of China’s propaganda arm, Mr. Creemers said Mr. Lu might well be given the task of reinvigorating it, especially given how quickly he was able to establish the Cyberspace Administration’s control of the internet in the country.
“Lu Wei’s biggest victory was he took the government from a place where they feared technology and were behind to one where they were in control of it,” he said. “He nailed Jell-O to the wall.”
