Online censorship

The boundaries of Bolton’s revelations in China go beyond not covering the issue: there is controversy over the book being censored on the two largest platforms on the Chinese internet.

While users at Weibo, a Twitter-like service, complained that they could not comment on or share the book, posts on Bolton in China’s biggest messaging app, WeChat, seemed to be hidden or deleted. CNN was able to upload a screenshot of the book cover to WeChat, but no one could see the resulting publication.

It is unclear exactly what triggered censorship, as some publications about the book, including reports, are allowed in the Chinese media.

Yan Duan, an office worker in Beijing, said in a group message that he was locked out of the WeChat account after sharing the PDF of the book. “The current login has been disabled because this WeChat account is suspected to be spreading false information.”

“A friend of mine expressed interest in the book, so I thought I could forward the file directly,” he said from another contact with WeChat himself. “It looks like there is a censorship window. The file could have been shared before. But then I heard many events where the messages were hidden or the sender started like me.”

Representatives of Sina and Tencent, who operate Weibo and WeChat respectively, did not respond to the request for comments.

‘Ask the USA’

The Great Firewall – and Chinese censorship in general – is a black box, and it can be difficult to determine if the exact purpose of any block is a top-down order to control the work of censors or coverage.

This is especially true for a topic where some discussion is allowed, but some elements are limited.

According to Tetsushi Takahashi, managing director of the Chinese Nikkei newspaper, a report on Bolton about the Japanese public broadcaster NHK has been darkened in China. Foreign television channels, including CNN, are censored in this way.