A funny thing happened when I published my first HuffPost blog entry. My blog dealt with subsidies from the Chinese government to its paper industry, with suggestions for US policy. Before HuffPost informed me that my entry had gone online, someone had posted comments to my blog. The commentator did not agree with my views and was not amused. In two lengthy, initial posts, the commentator questioned my data and US policy on China as a whole, and then presented an alternative view for readers of my blog to consider. Although I did not know at the time, I had received my first communication from China's Fifty Cent Party. The commentator continued to respond around the clock to every positive comment on my blog, eventually posting about two dozen comments.
Chinese Internet users first coined the term "Fifty Cent Party" for undercover Internet commentators that the Chinese government paid to influence public opinion. Fifty cents refers to the alleged pay the Internet commentators received per post. Currently, the term describes anyone who actively and publicly posts opinions online that defend or support Chinese government policy. Party organizations train the fifty centers to safeguard the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) interests and to neutralize undesirable public opinion by pushing pro-Party views. Qualifications for a fifty center include the "need to possess relatively good political and professional qualities... have a pioneering and enterprising spirit... and [the ability] to react quickly." In China, fifty centers report dangerous content to authorities; outside China, they work with Chinese news organizations and Chinese embassies. For an external observer of China, the fifty centers offer insights into what President Hu Jintao called "a new pattern of public-opinion guidance."
China is not the only country in the world to employ cyber police. However, the scale of China's efforts is staggering. The social media now comprises the dominant online activity for the Chinese. Currently, user-generated content provides the greatest component of China's online content. Noticing these trends two years ago, President Hu called on the CCP's members to "assert supremacy over online public opinion, raise the level and study the art of online guidance and actively use new technologies to increase the strength of positive propaganda." After Hu's speech, the State Council advertised for "comrades of good ideological and political character, high capability and familiarity with the Internet to form teams of Web commentators... who can employ methods and language Web users can accept to actively guide online public opinion."
The CCP has responded to the growth of Internet blogs by employing more fifty centers. By some estimates, China employs about 300,000 people to police the web in China, and an additional few thousand freelancers around the world. China's cyber police have special sections in every local, Chinese Public Security Bureau. Supervisory bodies for the Chinese Internet include:
Until last year, the fifty centers focused their attention on Chinese netizens. However, in 2009, the Chinese government announced a "Going Out" or zou chu qu media policy. The government pumped about 45 billion yuan into the mega project labeled China's Media Aircraft Carrier. China National Radio, China Central Television, People's Daily and Xinhua have restructured to boost China's global reputation. Through its Media Aircraft Carrier, China hopes to wield soft power more effectively in the global media which often ignores Beijing's positions. The fifty centers form the foot soldiers in this global battle to establish Chinese credibility. They provide the CCP's alternative voice on developments in China and around the world, without the official stigma.
Zhu Liangcai, Secretary of the Zhoukou Communist Youth League Committee, indicated some of the instructions that fifty centers received from the CCP:
The reason we don't use our true identity while communicating with netizens is because by not revealing our identity we allow them to feel our mutual equality, and avoid creating a feeling of opposition. At the same time the work can be smoothly accomplished without revealing what goes on behind the scenes; this achieves very good results.
Specific instructions for one fifty-center effort included:
• For local websites that republish news or related reports on this story, do the work of guiding online opinion; you have the responsibility of taking care of your own territory.
• Only post comments and follow-up comments, do not write commentaries.
• Each Party committee and department must post at least 5 follow-up comments and one substantive post, to be reported to the regional Discipline and Inspection commission classroom.
• Before April 25, each Party committee and department will send all posts, and also indicate the number of follow-up posts, choice posts, their length, their number of characters, their organizational clarity, and their richness of content.
An internal speech by China's top Internet official detailed some of China's plans to use the Internet to project soft power abroad. Wang Chen, Deputy Director of the Propaganda Department, Head of External (foreign) Propaganda and Director of the State Council's Information Office made his speech to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on April 29 and posted it on the Congress's website on May 4. The next day, Chinese government censors removed, sanitized and re-posted the speech on another government website. However, Human Rights in China caught the original speech which it included in its report, China's Internet: Staking Digital Ground.
Wang Chen's speech outlined a vast array of Chinese institutions and methods that control opinion at home and abroad to "create an international public opinion environment that is objective, beneficial and friendly to us." His speech underscored the Fifty Cent Party's utility as informal public-opinion leaders that push the CCP's line on sensitive issues: "Government agencies at all levels... have gradually built mechanisms to guide public opinion through integrating the functions of propaganda departments."
China first moved to international deployment of fifty centers with Twitter. When the international media anointed The Huffington Post as one the Internet's most influential blogs, China listened. Chinese sources indicated that the Ministry of Propaganda has recruited hundreds of Chinese students in the USA, and several Chinese Embassy employees to respond to HuffPost's blogs.
In China, many netizens mock the Fifty Cent Party. See, for example, this blog post by Han Han, and this satirical training manual for Fifty Cent Party members. Cartoons about the Fifty Cent Party have also gained wide circulation on the Chinese Internet.
In the USA, diverse interest groups sponsor and fund the information we consume. However, we generally have awareness of funding sources behind campaigns to sway our opinions. Unlike the Fifty Cent Party's propaganda, most US web campaigns have short lives and employ relatively few people. Consequently, the journalistic axiom, "Consider the source" becomes crucial. As organized employees, fifty centers' efforts have both short and long-term ramifications. Yet, casual readers of blog posts may detect no discernible patterns. Unlike China, the US government should continue to protect anonymity on the web and freedom of speech. However, befitting our traditions, consumers of information also have a duty to interpret the easy flow of information through awareness of organized motives.
Follow Usha Haley on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uhaley
http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/06/22/spying-csis.html
With a population full of "little emperors/empresses" hyper-nationalism is growing quickly in China so I'd expect a growing number of these type of comments. Some of my favorite web sites have been overrun by such commenters; I generally saw China in a more favorable light until this started happening in 2008. BTW, your first article hit some great points.
Good comments, though and a thought-provoking topic.
In fact, to many people’s surprise, Chinese Communist Party is not the only legal party in China. There’re also 8 “participatory parties” legally existed in China, including china democratic Party, China Public Interest Party, Revolutionary Committee of Chinese Kuomintang and so on…
These participatory parties theoretically share power with Chinese Communist Party, and in practice:
1. The leaders of these 8 parties are appointed by CCP;
2. They are mainly funded by CCP;
3. None of them can recruit a new party member without the permission of CCP;
4. They are not permitted to recruit any party member who is under the age of 35;
5. They report their work to CCP every year.
Generally speaking, they do nothing, except gathering in meeting every several year, to discuss:
1. The decisions made by CCP are right;
2. Why the decisions made by CCP are right.
Joshua Xanadu said "I'm not hiding behind anonymous work because there's nothing to hide." But, Joshua, baby, all your posts have been anonymous. Is Xanadu your real name? How many of you are there? We say you work for the US government, because you so conviently told us you do. Just as you also conveniently told us you were sexy, Western, and loved the USA.
This is in response to Zhu's statement below: "Over 70% of Chinese citizenry support Beijing's decisions - INCLUDING the need to put away subversives, who often are funded by foreigners that wants to do China harm.". Where do you get these figures? No doubt from the Communist Party. Party officials do the surveys -- no independent body can gather survey data in China -- by law.
There have NEVER been elections in China after the Communistrs took over except at the municipal levels. If the Communist Party is so secure in its position, why not hold elections? Oh, of course it's because the rest of the world is against China.
Y'see America has "think tanks", where those who mostly did not succeed at anything else - such as at business or teaching or government, come collect lowly stipends (by American standards that is), and for the American equivalent of "wu dou mi" (five buckets of rice), they write and they conference and they blog and they twitter till they're blue in the face, trying to change public perception on issues being pushed by whatever institution they serve. Yes, the great American institution, the "think tank", housing "commentators" that start (and often get stuck) at US$50,000 a year. What are they called? 50thou-ers?
So, legend is that, Chicoms saw the 50thou-ers, and figured that under New China's industrial policy, what the West can do, China must also have the same capacity, albeit at a much better price. See your 50thou-ers, and raise you 300,000 50cent-ers. Game, set, match. No contest.
The point is that think tanks and the people who work for them are independent of the government. On the contrary, the Fifty Cent Party is a propaganda arm of the government. That is the difference.
My original post was a sarcastic dig at the paranoia of the red-baiters. If you missed that, you should read it again.
Oh, don;t bother its scripted answer number 654. I see it now.
Your tired old scripts have show me the error of my ways (not). Long live Chairman Mao! Long live the Communist Party of China! What Red Menace? I see a Red Salvation where we all walk into the pink sunset together.
Thanks Zhuubaajee for all this entertainment.
Protectionism harms all Americans, including you, Usha, if you are American. Why this hostility to folks who do not share your view?
if the shoe fits...
hilarious, zhubaaje, I never read your posts carefully, but just looking at your name pooping up you may already have passed the half a dozen mark on posts to this blog. No imagination. No one said the Chinese were great innovators.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2300254722104314948#
We suggest you not waste your time with these Chinese propagandists by responding to their posts. Your time would be better served focusing on these upcoming elections our free society offers and contact your local & national politicians and let them know they need to stand fiirm against Communist China's negative influence on our society. Remind them you, your family & friends are watching their actions.
It is very easy ... simply go to http://www.congress.org/ and use your zip code to get a complete contact list of all your representatives.
Do not be passive on this. This is a very real danger.
As I am in China now, I cannot visit Facebook, Youtube and Twitter and.... a very very long list....
Loved the cartoons and the instructions to 50 centers.
The peanut gallery beat me to it.
Thanks for this post -- puts much in perspective
Pity the 50thou-ers who has not gotten raises for years.
The 50-Cent-Party is a too-convenient label to denigrate genuine Chinese public sentiments. It's indeed a tool for the CCP for Chinese websites, but you're giving far too much credit to some alleged Chinese person with such good English to repeatedly follow and comment on your articles. You think someone with that level of English mastery is really working that hard for 50 Cents, or about 8 cents USD?
How arrogant of you. I'm not defending the CCP, but dismissing Chinese patriotism and commentators as tools of the government is the height of arrogance.
divitius is just too typical AMERICAN to even understand the irony.
When I was a kid, I had a cheap wind-up toy car made in Japan. Looking into its wheel wells showed it was made from a Schlitz Beer can.
The first Japanese autos, Toyopet and Bluebird, were not as good as American cars, so they were withdrawn from the market. The next time Japanese autos were brought to the U.S. was in the 1970s, at the time of the Arab oil embargo.
Their quality and fuel economy caused many U.S. car and truck buyers to become loyal customers to Japanese brands.
The Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik triggered massive spending on teaching of math and sciences.\ in U.S. schools.