How China censors bad economic news

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu of The New York Times write about how the Chinese government censors bad economics news.

Wakabayashi and Fu write, “Mr. Xiao, the research scientist, said he started noticing in the latter half of 2023 that Chinese censors were quicker to take down many financial news articles. Among them: a December article on the financial news site Yicai that cited research stating that 964 million Chinese people earned less than $280 a month.

“This month, a documentary from NetEase News about migrant workers enduring extremely low living standards was also taken down from the internet. Search results of the documentary, ‘Working Like This for 30 Years,’ were also restricted on Weibo, a social media site similar to X.

“Since June, Weibo has restricted dozens of accounts from posting after, it said, they ‘published remarks bad-mouthing the economy’ or ‘distorted’ or ‘smeared’ China’s economic, financial and real estate policies.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.