Suzanne Nossel

"In China, where all internet companies operate at the pleasure of the Chinese Communist Party, authorities have been systematically purging vast swaths of the internet. A 2024 post on WeChat revealed that nearly all information posted online between late 1990s and mid-2000s had been expunged. The post itself was soon censored and vanished.

"Events like the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, which killed more than 68,000 people and prompted a ferocious online debate over China’s shoddy building standards, have been almost entirely scrubbed from China’s online realm. Recent scandals, including one involving the transportation of cooking oil in unsanitary tankers, are also routinely suppressed. Discussion of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising is still considered so taboo that many young Chinese are unaware until they travel overseas and have unfettered access to the internet and history books.

"Intensifying censorship under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rule over the last 12 years has led Chinese internet companies to wipe out content that could get them in trouble, leading to a sharp reduction in the total number of websites available on the mainland. Award-winning Chinese American filmmaker Nanfu Wang, who has focused on controversial topics like the brutal tactics used to implement China’s one-child policy, has seen her films made inaccessible and her presence in directories and film sites obliterated.

"Online accounts of dissidents and independent journalists have similarly disappeared, wiping away reams of content and expression. Artificial intelligence and automation will further facilitate these efforts; it is already making it possible to efficiently expunge specific words and topics from the digital realm while promoting others that match preferred government messages."