There’s this strange phenomenon on the Chinese internet: during China’s biggest shopping festival (the Chinese version of Black Friday), no matter what social media platform you open it will jump straight to Taobao – China’s biggest online shopping platform. Every influencer’s video has a link to a product underneath, and everyone is promoting “you must buy this”. In today’s blog, I’m going to walk you through this platform collusion and discuss who the winners and losers are in this phenomenon.

Market-based media in China promote regime stability rather than challenging authoritarianism: as long as the media profit enormously from a protected and distorted market, they have no reason to make the risky move of challenging the supremacy of the Party-state.

Meng

Censorship, political apathy, and entertainment supremacy

Chinese traditional media and Chinese social media have strict censorship mechanisms, for example, the word “death” is not allowed to be said directly on Chinese TV programs nowadays, tattoos are not allowed, and hair coloring was banned for a short period of time. A week ago, I read a very intriguing quote on Chinese social media: “Chinese people who are ashamed to talk about sex have given birth to 1.4 billion people.” There is no education about life, death, sex, or love in our media …… Why are people ashamed to talk about so many things?

When serious topics are not allowed to be talked about, when life is getting more and more stressful, and when the economic situation is not favorable, China’s social media nowadays shows a strong tendency to be entertainment-oriented：the electronic economy overwhelms the real economy, new media overwhelms traditional media, and short videos overwhelm long videos. When I walk on the street, I can see delivery people watching live streaming, countless people swiping short videos on the underground, and people care less and less about current affairs in society, all of which worries me. As McChesney said:” Behind the lustrous glow of new technologies and electronic jargon, the media system has become increasingly concentrated and conglomerated into a relative handful of corporate hands. This concentration accentuates the core tendencies of a profit-driven, advertising-supported media system: hyper commercialism and denigration of journalism and public service. It is a poison pill for democracy.”

Who’s the loser anyway?

Above is a flowchart I created of an economic cycle where the platforms get the users and data, the merchants make money, and the users give their time, energy, attention, and money, and what do we get in return.？Nothing. Many people are unconsciously in this cycle, including myself.

I don’t think the emergence of any social platform has made China‘s society more democratic, but it has definitely made everyone more consumerist and materialistic. The solution to this problem, I think, is to get out into the offline world more, communicate with people honestly, read books instead of watching short videos, and perceive the richness of the world instead of letting social media take all the time and energy.