“If people from other places come to Wuhan now, they will feel that nothing has ever happened here,” Ai Xiaoming said as she sat in the book study of her home in the city in the heart of China’s coronavirus outbreak last January. has.
“It feels like they know nothing about the feelings of the dead or the families,” said the 67-year-old writer and documentary producer. “The [Chinese] media rarely report on these issues. There is no room for these people to tell their stories. ”
Ai was one of three female writers censored for sharing diary entries on major Chinese social media platforms during the 76-day Covid-19 shutdown in Wuhan city center. They are still struggling to make their voices heard, almost a year later.
Ai and 65-year-old Fang Fang are often censored for their stern calls for freer speech and that local officials should be held accountable for keeping residents in the dark in the month before Wuhan was suddenly shut down on January 23, 2020.
However, most of their diary entries were only intended to share personal reflection and to raise awareness of the plight of neighbors, volunteers, and medical workers.
Another author, 29-year-old Guo Jing, was repeatedly censored for sharing content aimed at raising awareness about cases of domestic violence, isolation and the heavy burden of family duties that women faced during the period in the provincial capital of Hubei had.
Ai, who previously led to HIV-infected villagers and corruption that led to the collapse of schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake,’s WeChat account is on the ubiquitous social media platform owned by technology giant Tencent, permanently closed during shutdown.
Wang Fang, who writes under the pen name Fang Fang, is the best known of the three. Her Wuhan Diary was published in English in June last year, although it caused problems for her at home after hardcore nationalists chased her because she published the account abroad.
Her diary entries were initially read and redistributed by millions in China, but the entries began to censor. ‘Political correctness is so prevalent that even crying and mourning are considered when we are in crisis [to be] to bring shame on the land and to transfer the sword to the outside world, ”she said. Observer.
In her closing diary, the resident of Wuhan conveyed her ongoing battle with censors and commentators when she posted pieces of her diary to WeChat and Weibo, the social media platform owned by Sina. And while she was constantly censored, other voices that allowed her to attack were free rein.
Although Fang Fang’s WeChat and Weibo accounts have not been suspended, they are still blocked from time to time, she said.
The selective blocking of certain types of speech, while other ‘insane’ speeches can flourish, is an obstacle to further reform and opening up in China, she believes. “The consequences will obviously be dangerous,” she said.
Fang Fang said publishers in China have stopped releasing works for which she was contracted, including her latest novels, although previously published books are still available in bookstores.
“For a professional writer, it’s a very cruel punishment not to publish and release their work,” she said.
This sentence has, of course, faded compared to the four-year sentence handed down by a court in Shanghai to the 37-year-old lawyer, who became civil journalist Zhang Zhan on December 28. Zhang was sentenced for “selecting quarrels and causing trouble” by reporting a locked-in Wuhan and posting videos and snippets of information on YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms.
In China, the government requires journalists to carry state-of-the-art press cards, and bans most independent journalism. This is another layer of censorship that is not regularly challenged.
“Zhang Zhan showed with her actions that all the rules are ridiculous,” Ai said. “She does not care. In this sense, she represents a kind of personality that does not belong to this century or the previous century, but one from the future. She is so brave. ‘
For feminist author Guo Jing, who also had difficulty posting during and after the outbreak, censorship and fines for speaking out had the cumulative effect of changing people who thought they could discuss, as well as offline.
“I think the scary thing about censorship is that it brings about self-censorship, and everyone censors each other,” Guo said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, someone froze his account for posting this and that, maybe you should not post stuff like that,'” they say. “
The other important aspect was the ever-changing definition of what was sensitive or not, and the unclear rules about what could be said. “We never know what the standard is,” she said.
As for the guilt of China’s social media platforms in censorship, the authors agreed that they did play a major role, but ultimately it comes down to authorities taking orders to ask for removal or to discuss certain topics.
“Social media platforms want traffic, and it would also not be good to remove hot topics,” Guo said.
Asked by the Observer Tencent responded to the fact that the authors’ posts have been censored or are still censored: Tencent’s mission is to create platforms for users to connect and communicate openly. Tencent is governed by local laws relating to Internet content, and we comply with all regulations and laws in countries and markets in which we operate. ”
China has not responded to similar requests for comment.