DCS | Digital Culture and Society | Vol. 7, Issue 2 | © transcript 2022

DOI 10.14361/dcs-2021-0204

Embedding Heterogenous Forms of 
Surveillance in China’s Autocratic 
Networked Media
How the Government Supports and Controls Platforms, 
Companies, Online Celebrities, and Users

Cornelia Bogen

Abstract 

The rise of platforms, datafication, and the new business model of 
platform capitalism have prompted scholars to carve out the differ-
ences between surveillance capitalism in authoritarian states and 
Western democracies. However, there has been little research about 
the mechanisms that authoritarian governments use to subject eco-
nomic actors and users to state control and the subsequent social 
practices. The case studies presented here illustrate how the state’s 
deep entanglement with platforms is meant to foster both economic 
and socio-political outcomes by allowing platforms to promote users’ 
entrepreneurship and restricting their online business if they are radi-
cally indifferent to media content or Party censorship rules. Further-
more, the case studies demonstrate that China’s model goes beyond 
the Western concept of surveillance capitalism, because the hetero-
geneous logics of marketisation are interconnected with types of state 
surveillance different from the ones described by Zuboff (2019) for 
democratic countries. Against the backdrop of Fuchs/Trottier’s (2015) 
theoretical model of social media surveillance, the societal implica-
tions of categorical suspicion, social sorting, and surveillance creep 
play out differently. The diffusion of China’s institutional setting into 
e-platforms provokes culture-specific narratives (Versailles literature) 
and social online practices utilising networked images (barrage sub-
titling, human flesh search) unseen in Western online publics to date. 
Hence, studies of surveillance mechanisms in China’s digital space 
need to be embedded within the larger context of political economy 
and state control. 

Keywords: 

Platform Society; China; Social Media Surveillance; Networked 
Images; Autocratic Networked Media



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1. The Interaction of Political and Economic Surveillance  
in China 

Platformisation (i.e., the rise of platforms) has become the leading economic 
and infrastructural model of the social web. A shift from social network sites to 
social media platforms has seen datafication become even more sophisticated, and 
the new business model of “platform capitalism” (coined by Srnicek 2017) has 
emerged. This transforms the social action of interconnected businesses, adver-
tisers, and ordinary users on online platforms into quantified data that can be 
commodified for real-time tracking and predictive analytics (van Dijck 2014: 198). 
The new model characterises capitalist internet economies not only in Western 
democracies (here: EU and US), but also in authoritarian capitalist countries, 
where state intervention is not limited by public and private goods and trans-
gresses the principle of self-limitation of government power implied by the Rule 
of Law (Sallai/Schnyder 2019: 3; 13). 

The top ten most valuable brands (which consist of only U.S. American and 
Chinese platform companies like Tencent and Alibaba) are continually seeking to 
drive alternative platforms out of the market and expand to other online spaces 
(Helmond 2015: 5). To extend their core business (i.e., everlasting data extrac-
tion), these platforms collect and process networked images to use as training 
examples for algorithms and image-based predictive models to predict users’ 
future behaviour (MacKenzie/Munster 2019: 10; 17-18). However, as users have 
no insight into the technical infrastructure and operations of platforms, they are 
prevented from using self-determined reason in their interaction with digital 
artifacts (Mühlhoff 2018: 570-571). Due to this power imbalance between IT-firms 
and users, Zuboff describes “surveillance capitalism” as a form of instrumentally 
controlling collective behaviour that was totalistic in its ambition – in both China 
and the West (Zuboff 2019: 404). Other scholars used the term “neoliberal psycho-
politics” to emphasise how the surveillance state and market economy go hand in 
hand, to foster practices of exploitation and mind-control (Byong-Chul Han 2017). 

However, there is a fundamental structural difference in the entanglement 
of instrumentarian and state power between Western democracies and China 
(Zuboff 2019: 393). In the US and the EU, IT-firms possess user data, and the 
state moves with the firms to get access, whereas in China, the state “appears 
determined to ‘own’ this complex”, and firms move with the state (ibid: 443). 
This is because in the US, Californian high-tech artisans promoted a neoliberal 
ideology to foster their social privileges (Barbrook/Cameron 1996:10), whereas in 
post-Mao China, a technocratic elite promoted network expansion and telecom-
munications for military and state surveillance purposes (Zhao 2007: 100). As 
a result, China’s neoliberal internet economy combines commodification, public 
relations, and marketing with state control and socialist ideology (Fuchs 2017: 381). 
A public sphere with deliberative outcomes is regarded as a danger to party rule 
and social stability, with the potential to undermine the prestige of the govern-



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 57

ment and to impede its governance (Li 2014). Hence, the Chinese government 
has helped national IT-companies to build native social networking platforms 
that allow for better control of regime-critical content (Reuter/Szakonyi 2013: 49). 
It follows that algorithmic control of networked images in China’s authoritarian 
capitalism (Fuchs 2020) is not only economically but also politically motivated. 
Thus, scholars who have explored the institutional and cultural dimensions of the 
platformisation of Chinese society identify a deep entanglement between state 
and platforms, as well as a dynamic intersection of infrastructures, governance, 
and user practices (de Kloet et al. 2019).

Scholars note that the mechanisms that authoritarian governments use to 
subject economic actors to state control and erode the boundaries between public 
and private domains (in both political and economic life) have not only remained 
unexplored, but also differ between various authoritarian capitalist states (Sallai/
Schnyder 2019: 3-4). Therefore, before we explore multifold surveillance mecha-
nisms regulating China’s online space, we first need to understand the institu-
tional and cultural settings that enable the Chinese Communist Party to control 
the financial and intellectual capital of IT-firms. In a second step, case studies 
employing a critical discourse analysis of Chinese social media content will be 
discussed in order to illustrate the Chinese state’s governance of platform politics 
in action, by shedding light on various occasions when the Chinese government 
either grants a certain degree of freedom to companies and users, or restricts their 
online activity.

First, in Western surveillance capitalism, a specialist class of software devel-
opers and data scientists owns tools to predict (computational methods) and 
condition (social network incentives using social pressure) collective behaviour 
with the goal of fostering platform growth tactics and a socially efficient collec-
tive (Zuboff 2019: 504). Such power in the hands of IT-companies is prevented 
by the Communist Party of China (CPC). The CPC is not only above the law in 
practice, but also in its control of the development of a state-dependent mercan-
tilism. Firms in strategic and essential industries (e.g., Artificial Intelligence) are 
state-owned, party officials hold a personal stake in privately-owned businesses 
and hybrid firms, and the financial system relies heavily on state-owned banks 
(Witt/Redding 2012: 4-5). Hence, in China’s authoritarian capitalism, Chinese 
companies do not enjoy the degree of freedom that firms enjoy in free-market 
democratic capitalism. In a capitalist system without capitalists, the knowledge 
(understanding the operation of the whole market and the behaviour of its actors) 
that IT-firms generate is subjected to state control. It follows that if IT-firms exploit 
their knowledge advantage by undermining the CPC’s online censorship rules, 
they will be punished with restrictions on their business operations. 

Second, the reciprocity (e.g., fair labour practices, unionisation, and collective 
bargaining in employment relations) that used to exist between companies and the 
people (i.e., employees and customers) in Western democracies is currently being 
eroded through structural separation of U.S. surveillance capitalists (i.e., IT-firms) 



Cornelia Bogen58

from the European and U.S. American publics (Zuboff 2019: 501). China’s political 
economy does not display this kind of reciprocity; however, platform labour poses 
similar challenges in China regarding monopoly, employment, wages and labour 
precarity, as the case of food delivery workers illustrates (Sun 2019; Doorn/
Chen 2021). The growing body of literature in this field suggests that the notion 
of precarity (in relation to digital labour) might be different in China due to the 
unique historic experience under Mao’s rule, when job security was ubiquitous 
but still meant a life in poverty (deKloet et al. 2019: 253). Furthermore, since 
the Communist Party already represents the interests of the proletariat, China’s 
Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is an organ of political control. For example, 
during workers’ strikes, the ACFTU does not represent labourers’ interests but 
instead promotes the interests of management (Witt/Redding 2012: 9). Similarly, 
NGOs closely cooperate with the state (Hou 2015: 81), and social protest is forbidden 
(Ho/Jackson 2021: 508). Despite there being no state-independent representation 
of workers’ interests (Witt/Redding 2012:14), workers still find ways to show resis-
tance to platform labour (Sun 2019: 319). I argue that if one assumes that produc-
tive social relationships between employers and employees do not exist in China 
because these are regulated by the CPC, then we are likely to overlook alternative 
forms for negotiations of interest in China’s online public (i.e., workers’ internet 
memes). 

Third, in China we can observe a similar preference for prediction products 
that favour content designed to direct online users to entertainment products and 
sensational news. One example is the ranking system of trending topics within 
the popular Chinese social media platform “Sina Weibo”, where celebrities can 
either purchase favourable positioning for a topic, or rely on their fans to generate 
traffic and attract public attention (Nigunigu 2021). At the same time, in authori-
tarian media systems, media’s role is not to supervise state action, but to act as a 
propaganda tool serving political stability. It follows that in China’s instrumen-
tarian social order, where the asocial mode of knowledge and freedom is concen-
trated in the state, IT-firms cannot be radically indifferent towards media content.  
The Chinese government closely cooperates with platforms (who must implement 
censorship based on politically sensitive keywords and use advanced blocking 
technologies) to directly control (political) public discourse (deLisle et al.2016: 21). 
This helps prevent the behaviours observed with US IT-firms such as constantly 
attempting to surmount state laws and market constraints by consumers, compet-
itors, employees and civil society (Zuboff 2019: 403; 504). Although scholars 
observe that the range of political issues allowed to be debated online in China 
has widened, this expansion was not to encourage public reasoning with delib-
erative outcomes, but to foster online consumer culture (by piquing nationalism) 
and people’s loyalty (Jiang 2012: 84-94). Due to China’s ambition to turn the 
country into a global power of Artificial Intelligence by 2030, it is no surprise that 
Chinese public discourse about government use of Artificial Intelligence for mass 
surveillance highlights its economic and political potency while ignoring socio-



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 59

ethical implications (Zeng/Schäfer 2020: 12). If online content does not comply 
with the law and socialist core values as requested by the Cyberspace Administra-
tion of China, digital platforms are asked to intervene with censorship measures. 
It appears that Chinese IT-firms’ public responsibility to promote a “healthy” 
internet culture and positive atmosphere (Lin/de Kloet 2019: 4) clearly goes beyond 
the Western model of surveillance capitalism. Ironically, the complex interplay 
between platformisation, datafication, networked (often image-based) practices, 
and the Chinese state’s knowledge sharing of patient data with the public (for 
the sake of epidemic containment) has spurred certain forms of asocial online 
behaviour unseen in the West (e.g., “human flesh search”, as discussed later). 

2. Framework of Case Studies

As outlined previously, the concept of surveillance capitalism (with its focus on 
digital platforms as the dominant actor employing datafication) tends to reduce 
the political economy of the Internet to a narrow problem area. Against this 
backdrop, the focus of my analysis will be extended to explore the range of logics 
that are at stake in China’s internet economy. This critical digital social research 
study applies the theoretical model of social media surveillance (Fuchs/Trottier 
2015: 130) to (a) showcase how commercial social media surveillance and state 
surveillance interact in Chinese practice, (b) shed light on the types of incidents 
in which the Chinese government will either allow full autonomy to e-commerce 
actors, or subject economic actors and users to state control, and (c) carve out the 
social impact of authoritarian surveillance on online user behaviour and the social 
use of images on platforms. 

The theoretical model is based on the assumption that social media surveil-
lance has three societal implications: (1) permanent monitoring of citizens’ 
social media activities (categorical suspicion), (2) algorithmic classification of 
users, which not only targets advertisements but also allocates resources to privi-
leged individuals and discriminates against others (social sorting), and (3) user 
behaviour of habitually exposing their private lives to the public and observing 
other users’ posts (surveillance creep) (Fuchs/Trottier 2015: 128-129). Against the 
backdrop of this model, I will discuss the diverse surveillance mechanisms and 
logics of marketisation in China’s online space. Fuchs/Trottier’s model empha-
sises the social, political, and lateral forms of surveillance and control going 
beyond the concept of surveillance capitalism, and allows us to embed China’s 
digital economy into a wider context of political economies and state regulations. 
I will identify the intersections between economic and political surveillance and 
networked images by discussing several case studies, which are grouped here 
according to the dynamically intersecting parameters of “infrastructures”, “gover-
nance”, and “practices”, as inspired by Kloet et al.’s model of the institutional and 
cultural dimensions of Chinese platformisation (2019).



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In the practice section, three case studies will be presented in order to illus-
trate how the Chinese government not only considers instrumentarian society to 
be a means to work towards political and social outcomes (Zuboff 2019: 389) but 
also as a market opportunity. This is because certain Confucian values continue 
to shape China’s modernity, including the crucial role of government leadership 
in maintaining socio-political stability and in providing improved material living 
conditions through economic growth (Tu 2002: 204-5). The Chinese govern-
ment’s strategy of “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation” (2015) views the 
internet’s sharing economy not only as a space that provides new opportunities 
to IT-giants and well-established entrepreneurs to extend their core business, but 
also to millions of “grassroots individuals” and start-ups (Lin/deKloet 2019: 3-4). 
Hence, the cases discussed in this section demonstrate how the Chinese govern-
ment considers rapid platformisation and datafication as tools for promoting 
economic growth. The first case explores how the government allows digital 
platforms to economically utilise public attention and user engagement in public 
debates (case study of Purcotton advertisement). The following two cases explore 
how the government allows brands and Wang Hong (web celebrities) on popular 
Chinese social media platforms (i.e., Weibo, Kuaishou, and Bilibili) to stimulate 
users to experiment with new forms of creative entrepreneurship (case study of 
livestreaming on Kuaishou, case study of Versailles literature). However, despite 
scholars’ observation that the Chinese government has hesitated to implement 
strict rules of content regulation to promote the IT sector’s economic growth (Qin 
et al. 2016: 5), there have recently been legal disputes between service providers 
and the Chinese government due to diverging interests.

The governance section is devoted to platform politics and the automated censor-
ship of images. It discusses a case study (about a prominent sex scandal discussed 
in Chinese public discourse in 2020) to show how IT-giants that fail to maintain 
an equilibrium between the promotion of platform growth tactics and their public 
responsibility to moderate media content will have further restrictions imposed on 
their operational freedom in the virtual marketplace by the state. These Chinese 
platform operators that display their indifference to party rule by coming up with 
their own – not politically, but economically motivated – censorship rules will 
prompt state intervention. The case study is also an interesting example of how 
categorical suspicion and surveillance creep can backfire and not only harm users, 
but also those who operate social media and e-commerce platforms.

In the infrastructure section, the two cases not only exemplify how users 
employ media art and image data to stabilise surveillance capitalism, but also 
demonstrate the role of networked visual images in culture-specific forms of 
online behaviour. The first case is devoted to Chinese delivery workers’ resis-
tance to algorithmic control of their work practices by digital platforms. Although 
employees cannot expect their interests to be fairly represented by labour and 
trade unions due to China’s institutional setting, delivery work has challenged 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 61

traditional Chinese labour law with delivery drivers being governed, classified 
and surveilled by platform algorithms (social sorting), and the Chinese state is 
just beginning to investigate how to regulate these digital labour practices. While 
the Chinese government has allowed new forms of labour precarity to develop, it 
also allows digital labourers to publicly express their resistance to platform labour, 
provided they blame the operators and customers of food delivery platforms and 
not the Communist Party. I will show how delivery workers successfully use new 
media art (i.e., videoclip-based internet memes) to criticise surveillance capitalism 
and stimulate  active public engagement – which, ironically, stabilises surveillance 
capitalism. Here, the social practice of barrage subtitling enhances the network 
effects that operators of video sharing sites are aiming for.

In contrast, the second case study in this section shows what kind of network 
effects prompt state intervention. For example, in the case of human flesh search, 
it is a merging of surveillance, modulation of viewing, and audience labour in 
times of health crisis. It shows how health data made publicly available by the 
government and platforms during the Covid-19 pandemic spurred a new type of 
human flesh search, in which online communities exposed images of patients’ 
movements. Furthermore, this example illustrates how two social implications of 
social media surveillance fatefully ‘enrich’ each other when netizens engage in a 
human flesh search of Covid-19 patients (i.e., categorical suspicion in the form of 
both state and platforms monitoring smart phone users’ activities to control the 
spread of an epidemic; surveillance creep in the form of exposing users’ private 
lives).

In summary, the case studies discussed shed light on marketisation tenden-
cies that are linked to state and social forms of surveillance that go beyond 
Zuboff’s concept of surveillance capitalism. Applying the Fuchs/Trottier theo-
retical model to the Chinese context helps us to recognise that although social 
media surveillance in both China and the West has similar societal implications 
(categorical suspicion, social sorting, surveillance creep), the social effects appear 
to be different in China due to its peculiar institutional and cultural system. 

3. Practices: How Brands and Companies Utilise User-
Generated Content for Online Merchandising 

3.1 Purcotton Advertisement

On January 7, 2021, the high-end daily necessity brand ‘Purcotton’ posted an adver-
tisement for make-up remover-cleansing wipes online. It immediately triggered 
a heated online debate on the popular social media platform Weibo, especially 
among female netizens, because the advertisement was said to discriminate 
against women. In the advertisement, a man chases a young woman at night, but 
when she removes her make up with cleansing wipes, he walks off. 



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Fig. 1: Still frames from Purcotton’s advertisement video

Many female Weibo users found the advertisement insulting because it not 
only suggested that women are ugly without make up (“The advertisement for 
make-up remover” 2021), but because it depicts and trivialises a gendered crime. 
The next morning Purcotton publicly apologised, describing it as “creative adver-
tising”, which provoked even more criticism from netizens, women’s federa-
tions (“Creative advertising or insulting women?” 2021), and journalists (“China 
Women’s Daily” 2021); “Purcotton apologises” 2021). That afternoon Purcotton 
published a second apology (Purcotton 2021), and deleted both the original apology 
and the controversial advertisement. However, commercial media (Fig. 2) and a 
women’s newspaper (Fig. 4) provided screenshots of the deleted material (i.e., the 
original apology and scenes from the advertisement), and highlighted the ranking 
of ‘PurCotton Era’ (‘全棉时代’) on the list of trending topics on Weibo (no. 20) 
(Financial community network 2021) (Fig. 3). Cut versions (“Creative advertising 
or insulting women?” 2021) and fast motion versions of the advertisement (“China 
Women’s Daily” 2021) were provided as well.

The case illustrates that in networked media, controversial advertisements 
can trigger an immediate and heated discussion among the online public. Users 
can quickly access the debate and the controversial content through hashtag 
grouping of comments and through social media platforms’ ranking of trending 
topics. This also impacts on whether media outlets and other organisations are 
willing to join the debate. A company’s attempt to reproduce and maintain surveil-
lance capitalism by producing provocative, attention-seeking online ads can come 
into conflict with social media platforms’ economic surveillance of user generated 
content and their efforts to transform user habits of browsing into grazing and 
other forms of active cognitive engagement (Creeber 2013).



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 63

Fig. 2: Commercial media; Fig. 3: Ranking as trending topic; 
Fig. 4: China Women’s Daily



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3.2 Livestreaming on Kuaishou

The social media platform Kuaishou, an algorithm-based video and live-streaming 
platform where registered users can upload short videos targeting second- and 
third-tier cities in China, took a different approach to online merchandising 
by making netizens into the content producers of advertisements. In 2019, the 
e-commerce management team of Kuaishou launched the “Kuaishou fashion
product award”. Bloggers were asked to upload videos in which they unpack the
company’s products, give tutorials on how to use certain beauty products, or show
off their dressing skills when wearing fashion companies’ products (Fig. 5 & 6).

Fig. 5 & 6: Participants of Kaishou fashion product award 

The fashion product award became a big success, not only for the platform but also 
for Kuaishou anchors (who gained hundreds of thousands of additional followers), 
and fashion manufacturers (who saw their daily sales volumes increase). More 
than 70,000 users submitted 600,000 broadcasts to the competition, attracting 
3.7 billion views and 130 million likes (“Hard currency” 2019). However, only 
the top ten bloggers that attracted the most traffic received a share of Kuaishou’s 
revenue (traffic packages) and were offered business opportunities with respective 
beauty companies.

At the same time, the success of Kuaishou platform also depends on its 
commercial cooperation with “grassroot” content creators, mostly uneducated 
young Chinese living in rural areas, for whom the platform can provide a tool 
to build a career. While Kuaishou has been described as “democratic” because 
the algorithm gives users from any social stratum the chance to attract traffic 
with their content (Lin/deKloet 2019: 5), the operation of its algorithmic system 
remains invisible to users. Furthermore, content moderators need to make sure 
that no illegal content violates Chinese law. Kuaishou platform has already been 
disciplined for the distribution of harmful content, and as a result many user 
accounts were shut down in 2018 (ibid: 4). Hence, trying to attract as much traffic 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 65

as possible, content producers are likely to engage in acts of self-censorship in 
order to avoid conflicts. Thus, scholars describe the special state-platform rela-
tionship as a feature that distinguishes the Chinese platformisation of cultural 
production from its Western counterpart (ibid: 7).

Thus, while livestreaming can empower users by stimulating creativity and 
new forms of creative entrepreneurship, it can also foster labour precariousness 
when people move from contracted labour to platform labour (de Kloet et al. 2019: 
253). While service providers and brands can exploit the labour of the average user, 
platforms need to ensure that user-generated content is compliant with the rules 
of the Cyberspace Administration of China.

3.3 Versailles Literature

One of the most searched words in China in 2020 was ‘Versailles literature’ (‘凡尔

赛文学’) (“Versailles Literature” 2021). Weibo user Xiaonaiqiu (@小奶球) coined 
this name, inspired by “The Rose of Versailles”, a novel about the late 18th century 
French aristocracy. Versailles literature is a lifestyle narrative in which netizens 
present an unsatisfying image of their life on the surface, as a technique to show 
off their alleged wealth and high social status (Zui et al. 2020). The narrative, 
which suggests that a materialistic lifestyle leads to ultimate happiness, is used to 
promote online consumption, since its anchors implicitly advocate the purchase 
of certain products to achieve the supposed happiness. Instructing netizens about 
the main techniques, Xiaonaiqiu has become a popular lecturer on the video-
sharing platform Bilibili (Little milk ball 2020, Fig. 7):

Fig. 7: Online tutorial by Xiaonaiqiu, Bilibili



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In November 2020, the social media platform Douban initiated a series of online 
lectures instructing people how to create a proper narrative (i.e., “Versailles study 
group” and “Versailles open online tutorials”) (Brain instructor 2020). Awards are 
given to those netizens who promote the narrative successfully (Zui et al. 2020). 
One famous but contested representative of this narrative technique is Meng Qiqi 
(蒙淇淇77). She received online public attention on Weibo because of how she 
depicted her alleged extravagant lifestyle. Meng Qiqi name drops famous brands 
while describing her husband’s clothing style (see post from Nov. 2, 2020, Fig. 8, 
lower half of screenshot): 

“My husband is so thrifty; he only wears $23,000 KITON suits. Even on important 

occasions, he just wears $5,000 ZEGNA suits to work, and always uses the same ARMANI 

handbag and D&G shoes”.

Fig. 8: Weibo posts by user Meng Qiqi 

Some users express their dismay at Meng Qiqi’s post and the kind of narrative she 
uses. This results in her blocking them, which is an act these users find even more 
ridiculous, as illustrated by the four screenshots below (User ‘Max English name 
is too short’ 2020, Fig. 10; User ‘Iceberg Fire’ 2020, Fig. 11; User ‘Caribbean Big 
Bubble’ 2020, Fig. 12). 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 67

Fig. 9: Censored; Fig. 10: User Max; Fig. 11: User Iceberg; Fig. 12: User Caribbean

Translation (Fig. 9-12): Fig. 9 (lower half): Censored user comment: “Fly your helicopter 
to Lhasa to see the starry sky”. Fig. 10 (upper half): “I can only laugh at you! You 
really make me sad”. (User ‘Max English name is too short’ 2020). Fig. 11 (upper half): 
“Damn, Meng Qiqi’s layout is too small. That’s it, you blocked me @Mengqiqi 77”. (User 
‘Iceberg Fire’ 2020). Fig. 12 (upper half): “Unbelievable. Deleted my comments and 
blocked me!” (User ‘Caribbean Big Bubble’ 2020)



Cornelia Bogen68

Note that the first of the four user posts shown above (Fig. 9) is no longer 
publicly accessible and has likely been deleted by internet censors because 
it contains the politically sensitive word “Lhasa” (capital of Tibet). This is an 
example of categorical suspicion as one major implication of social media 
surveillance (Fuchs/Trottier 2015: 128), as this particular comment was not 
meant to criticise China’s policy on Tibet, but was filtered out by censors 
anyway. Here, we can see that Zuboff’s concept of surveillance capitalism is 
insufficient to grasp the interaction of economic interests and socio-political 
surveillance in the case of China. 

Despite extensive user criticism, Meng Qiqi is still an opinion leader on 
Weibo, with hundreds of thousands of fans. Authors of Versailles literature aim 
to capture the attention of netizens (Hello new life 2020) by creating a fabricated 
image of a virtual self that flaunts its alleged wealth and high social status. If 
they succeed, they may be promoted by platforms, brands and merchandising 
companies and so be able to generate profit as an online influencer. Hence, the 
aesthetic and narrative strategies of Versailles literature make users turn to 
the platform and spend their time, either creating, admiring or criticising this 
content. Together, this generates the network effects needed to stabilise surveil-
lance capitalism.     

To summarise, the three case studies discussed in the practice section demon-
strate that the new business model of platform capitalism in China’s authoritarian 
state centres on enabling “grassroot” content creators to make a living through 
online advertisement and merchandising. The Chinese state does not intervene 
in the e-business activities discussed, signalling its support of the parties involved 
reproducing an ideology based on platforms’ commodification of user content 
creation. Hence, against Zuboff’s claim that the Chinese government regards 
instrumentarian society as a means to pursue political and social outcomes, the 
examples discussed suggest that it considers instrumentarian society as a market 
opportunity to be equally important. That the Chinese state is equally determined 
to pursue socio-political outcomes is illustrated in the next section. We will see 
how the Chinese Cyber Administration restricts the amount of freedom it grants 
to IT-companies that prioritise platform growth tactics without respecting Party 
rule. 

4. Governance: When Social Media and E-Commerce
Platforms have their Own Way with Algorithmic Censorship

The first Chinese online celebrity listed by Nasdaq in 2019 was Zhang Dayi, who 
started her career as an e-commerce model and established herself as a fashion 
entrepreneur. Operating her highly successful online store on the e-commerce 
platform Taobao, she interacts with her followers (and customers) by raising 
questions about the products she sells to increase online engagement and estimate 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 69

the number of products her team should produce. Holding 13.2% of the shares, she 
is the chief marketing officer of Ruhan Holdings on Weibo platform, China’s first 
ranked e-commerce company. Ruhan Holdings provides a marketing platform 
for online celebrities and cooperates with the online-retailing store Taobao to 
promote certain brands (Hangzhou Ruhan Holdings Co., Ltd. 2021). It uses the 
new economic operation mode of multi-channel-networks (MCN 2021) by contin-
uously releasing professional content to promote both online celebrities and the 
brands these celebrities are advertising. Ruhan provides supply chain manage-
ment, fabric purchases, design and pattern-making, manufacturing and produc-
tion, but Zhang’s task is to recruit new followers, to advertise fashion products 
and to stimulate user feedback on newly released products (Pan 2017). Hence, her 
business model is built on (a) creating audio-visual material that invites netizens 
to interact with her and, (b) extracting data from user engagement with the help of 
big data analytics (i.e., sentiment analysis). One day before Women’s Day in 2019, 
Alibaba praised Zhang Dayi on its official Weibo account, as one of the top nine 
successful female “Wang Hong” practising e-commerce on Taobao and Tmall 
(Shandong Finance 2020). Similar to their Western counterparts, the economies 
of Chinese social media corporations consist of both advertising industry and 
financial economics, where investors purchase shares to increase market value 
(Fuchs 2016: 35).

Zhang Dayi is also interesting because she became involved in a major online 
event that illustrates the power of platforms in redefining digital visual culture: 
content that harms the platform’s economic business is doomed to be made 
invisible by the platform’s automated image censorship. When Dong Huahua 
publicly warned Zhang Dayi on Weibo not to contact her (Dong’s) husband Jiang 
Fan anymore, netizens became curious. On April 17, 2020, Jiang Fan (Alibaba 
executive, Weibo’s second largest shareholder, and president of Taobao Tmall) 
was suddenly on the list of hot topics for a sex scandal: he had cheated on his 
wife Dong Huahua in an affair with Zhang Dayi. Screenshots of Dong Huahua’s 
Weibo posts show that the comment function of her Weibo account (@花花董花

花) was blocked only one hour after she had posted the original message that had 
piqued netizens’ attention (Su and Meng 2020, Fig. 13).

Due to surveillance creep, users involved in the discussion soon noticed that 
not only had the keyword “Jiang Fan” been removed from Weibo’s hot topic list, 
but all related content was deleted on both the wife’s (Huahuadonghuahua 2021) 
and the mistress’ (Zhang Dayi’s) Weibo account. Only two of the user comments 
shown in the screenshot below remained publicly accessible (i.e., the third 
comment by user ‘Han Xiaofan’ 2020, and the fourth by user ‘handsome and 
witty lyc classmate’ 2020). The first two comments (posted by the same user) have 
since been deleted (Fig. 14).



Cornelia Bogen70

Fig. 13: Dong Huahua’s posts on Weibo (censored)

Translation (Fig. 13): 1st message upper part: “Who locked the comment function of my 
Weibo account?” (User Dong Huhua); 2nd message, lower part: (@Zhang Dayi) “This is 
my last warning. Stop seeing my husband”. (User Dong Huahua)

It is unclear why only some of these user comments have been deleted, despite 
all having the same meaning (i.e., expressing astonishment about the censorship 
of the two women’s Weibo accounts). The fourth user comment even goes one 
step further, by relating the act of censorship to the power of capitalism, but this 
has not been deleted either (User ‘handsome and witty lyc classmate’ 2020, Fig. 
14). Furthermore, user comments highlighting the economic stakes behind the 
ranking of trending topics are still visible on the social media platform Douban 
(User ‘Calabash Baby’ 2020). Public interest in Weibo’s hashtag #Donghuahua# 
(i.e., 99 million readings between April 17, 2020 and June 18, 2021) can also still 
be retrieved (“#Donghuahua#” 2021). A year later, the topic is still being discussed 
by the online public (User ‘Zheng went to buy shoes’ 2021). 

There is a commercial media article available that outlines the economic 
considerations behind the act of online censorship (Su/Meng 2020). It provides 
a screenshot of Dong Huahua’s deleted Weibo posts, and points out that these 
had been forwarded by major Weibo big V media (i.e., Weibo accounts of verified 
celebrities and companies) whose official social media accounts have millions 
of followers. These, however, were deleted as well. Users who tried to comment 
on the topic would have received a notification saying “manual review required 
first”. When asked by reporters about the rationale behind the deletions, Weibo 
explained that in some cases users who had replied to Dong Huahua’s account 
deleted comments themselves, and in other cases Weibo had to shut down users’ 
Weibo accounts entirely because of legal complaints issued by lawyers. 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 71

Fig. 14: Users comment on censorship

Translation (Fig. 14): 1st message: “What happened? Why have all these Weibo posts 
about Dong Huahua and Zhang Dayi been deleted?”; 3rd message: “The Weibo accounts 
of Zhang Dayi and Dong Huahua have all been deleted. I am so worried about it”. (User 
‘Han Xiaofan’ 2020); 4th message: “#Dong Huahua# There are more than ten new Weibo 
posts about this trending hashtag but Weibo comments continue to be deleted. I think 
capitalism is the worst!” (User ‘handsome and witty lyc classmate’ 2020)

Most interestingly, the journalists present net revenue statistics from Weibo 
advertisement and marketing, and their relation to Alibaba (Fig. 15).

Fig. 15: Weibo’s net revenues and their relation to Alibaba



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The journalists also report a deeper economic relationship between unfaithful 
husband Jiang Fan (Alibaba and Weibo) and mistress Zhang Dayi (Ruhan 
Holdings), revealing that “Alibaba currently holds 30.2% of Weibo’s shares, and 
Ruhan Holdings is the only MCN institution that Alibaba Group has invested in”. 
The reporters suggest that Weibo shareholder Jiang Fan’s economic interests lie 
behind the act of censorship: when his name was brought into disrepute, he would 
have wanted to divert public attention away from his person to avoid any negative 
impact on his online businesses (Taobao/Tmall, Alibaba, Weibo). 

But why would Chinese media want to highlight that the social media 
platform was employing forms of algorithmic and social control? Perhaps this 
was made publicly visible because the social media and e-commerce platforms 
involved had already incurred the Chinese authorities’ displeasure through legal 
disputes within and outside China. For example, a year-long legal dispute with 
the Beijing Office of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) accused 
Sina Weibo of having violated the cyberspace laws and regulations by spreading 
illegal information and negatively affecting the online environment (“The State 
Cyberspace Administration of China” 2015). In 2018, Sina Weibo was ordered 
to conduct a “self-inspection” and make improvements in the management of 
“harmful information”. Weibo temporarily suspended certain functions (e.g., 
trending topics, ‘most searched hashtags’, ‘Weibo Q&A’, ‘celebrity and soft news 
aggregator’), and the Beijing Municipal Internet Information Office interviewed 
Sina Weibo’s person in charge and fined Weibo (“Dongyuan boiled wine” 2018). 
The Dong Huahua/Zhang Dayi/Jiang Fan incident provoked another wave of 
investigations by the Beijing Internet Information Office, which was following the 
instructions of the State Internet Information Office (Xiaoxiang Morning News’s 
official hundred accounts 2020). Within the broader context of current policy 
debates on anti-monopoly and data security, Weibo has been one among other 
platforms (e.g., DIDI app for ride-hailing) who are being subjected to legal inves-
tigations, self-inspections and regulatory changes in China’s platform economy 
(Chan/Kwok 2021: 14).

In summary, this example not only highlights an incident in which the state feels 
called into action to regulate platforms, but also shows how categorical suspicion 
and surveillance creep (Fuchs/Trottier 2015: 129) can backfire and not only harm 
users, but also those who operate social media and e-commerce platforms. Against 
the background of Zuboff’s diagnosis of the radical indifference of U.S. American 
IT firms to Western democracies’ inclusive economic and political institutions, 
this case study demonstrates that if Chinese platform operators display their 
indifference to party rule by coming up with their own, economically motivated 
censorship rules, state intervention is prompted. The case also depicts the state 
as being in a continuing process of contention, in which it is caught in partially 
dragging-on negotiations with regulatory bureaus, corporate actors, public and 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 73

private sectors, and stakeholders (Hong 2017: 20), as the long-lasting legal dispute 
with Weibo, Alibaba and Ruhan Holdings illustrates. 

Having discussed how the state controls economic actors, the final section 
now focuses on social actors (users) and the impact of platform surveillance on 
employees and patients. While these cases will highlight Chinese culture-specific 
forms of online behaviour that stabilise surveillance capitalism, we will also see 
that the power of networked images does not always play into the hands of the 
Chinese government. 

5. Infrastructure: The Power of Networked Visual Images

5.1 Workers’ Internet Memes and Young Users’ Barrage Subtitling 
Practice between the Stabilisation and Deconstruction of 
Surveillance Capitalism

On-demand e-commerce platforms have reconfigured the social relationship 
between companies, employees, and consumers. One example of this is the food 
delivery industry in China. Two major players provide online meal ordering 
services: ‘Ele.me’ (backed up by the e-commerce giant Alibaba), and ‘Meituan 
Dianping’ (whose main investor is Alibaba’s rival, Tencent). In contrast to other 
digital workers, the 3 million delivery workers are deeply embedded in digital-
ised platforms (Sun 2019: 309). These companies use algorithms to optimise the 
flexibility, scalability, and tractability of labour. All the parties involved (including 
employers, employees, and customers) can see the algorithmic system’s calcula-
tion of delivery distance and time. This helps ensure the efficiency of the delivery 
system (e.g., dispatching orders to the drivers, managing deliveries, etc.). The 
app is designed so that customers can track the delivery man on the map, and 
the employer can see the number of finished orders, delivery time, duration of 
work time, and customer ratings (Sun 2019: 316-317). Wages are based on the 
employee’s performance (i.e., a minimum wage and a bonus calculated according 
to the number of orders they deliver per month). It appears that the platform’s 
constant monitoring of the delivery worker’s job execution (categorical suspicion), 
the algorithmic classification of drivers and allocation of privileges according to a 
worker’s performance and customer ratings (social sorting), and the customer’s 
observation of the delivery person’s physical movement on the map (surveillance 
creep) subjects the worker to an overall surveillance that they can hardly escape. 
In addition, labour platforms that are embedded in several layers of institutional 
structures cooperate with third-party intermediaries to manage flexible labour, 
which further fosters new forms of labour precarity. Within this context, delivery 
workers are treated as independent contractors, whose burden of self-management 
and risk-absorption is further aggravated by the sense of being readily disposable 
(Doorn 2020: 147).  



Cornelia Bogen74

In that respect, the algorithmic management that Chinese food delivery 
platforms use to assign orders and assess a worker’s performance does not 
differ largely from Western food delivery platforms that might (depending on 
the particular platform) also use a piece-rate model (Doorn 2020: 140), bonus 
pay, penalising drivers who frequently decline orders, or customer feedback as a 
quality-control mechanism (Griesbach et al. 2019: 5-7). At the same time, despite 
similarities in gamified financial incentives, researchers notice that Chinese 
delivery persons, if compared to their colleagues in New York, face more competi-
tion among colleagues (e.g., gamified function of stacking orders, in which drivers 
need to quickly pick well-paid orders shown on the platform) (Doorn/Chen 2021: 
17; 20). 

While scholars find that the anticipation and interpretation of platform 
surveillance and data extraction processes by various stakeholders still needs 
to be explored (Chan/Kwok 2021: 14), some researchers have enquired into how 
Western (Griesbach et al. 2019) and Chinese food delivery workers (Sun 2019) 
experience the algorithmic control over their work. Online surveys and interviews 
have found that although workers feel subjected to arbitrary authority, they also 
have a sense of agency (e.g., choice of working time). However, as I argue here, 
one major difference between Western and Chinese digital laborers is that due to 
the lack of reciprocal and productive social relationships between employers and 
employees, Chinese workers have limited means to show their resistance to food 
delivery platforms’ surveillance mechanisms in an organised form. In addition, 
they might lack the educational background to challenge the power of platform 
algorithms (i.e., delivery pricing and wage calculation) by building open-source, 
web-based applications to collect data (on delivery fees) (Doorn 2020: 139; 142). 
Creating media content appears to be one loophole. The following case study 
analysing the public discourse of journalists, delivery workers, and customers 
(here: younger netizens) sheds light on the powerful impact of networked visual 
images on public attention and reveals culture-specific practices when users 
engage with media content. 

A short video shared by the NetEase Finance Weibo account has raised public 
attention, showing nearby shopkeepers helping the 48-year-old delivery man Liu 
Jin on January 11, 2021 in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, after he set himself on fire 
because he had not been paid his monthly income (“#Jiangsu delivery man” 2021, 
Fig. 16).

This prompted journalists to investigate the precarious working conditions 
of this group of employees (Li/Sun 2021), which are traced back to the emergence 
of “flexible employment online platforms” (e.g., Haohuo App), utilised since 
2019 by companies to which the e-commerce takeaway platforms had outsourced 
the handling of their employment contracts. The subcontracting agreements 
consider delivery persons as self-employed business owners, which spares the 
companies from paying social security, overtime hours, or compensation for work-
related injuries. The platforms’ wage payment system (using the Haohuo app to 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 75

transfer money to personal Alipay accounts) does not provide a proper remu-
neration statement from a bank to document the labour relationship between 
the outsourcing company and the driver. This makes it difficult for workers to 
be protected by labour arbitration. Delivery workers have attempted to escape the 
algorithmic governance of platforms that constantly change their bonus policies 
(e.g., by taking routes other than those suggested by the algorithm, or by estab-
lishing groups on social networks like WeChat where they can transfer their 
orders to each other) (Sun 2019: 319). 

Fig. 16: Delivery driver set on fire gets rescued 

 
Journalist reports received some attention from the public, with more than 
100,000 views on WeChat (Li/Sun 2021), however, it was predominantly single 
individuals among the group of Chinese workers themselves that drew attention 
to their plight through internet memes. Memes are image-text-combinations or 
short videoclips circulated, imitated, and transformed by individual internet users. 
Memes are a highly visible, important practice in popular and digital culture. 
Due to their form-related and visual aspects, emotion-related features and their 
participation and representation patterns, the viral distribution of internet memes 
has been described as a mirror of processes of crowd psychology (Shifman 2013). 
Internet memes as short videoclips have recently experienced a transformation 
due to the emerging social practice of barrage subtitling, which first appeared in 
Japan and rapidly spread to China with distinctive changes (Nakajima 2019: 99). 
In barrage subtitling, viewers add a large number of text comments onscreen to 
videos that follow the timeline of the video, so that viewers have a sense of collec-
tiveness on the video-sharing platform.

One internet meme that was very successful in capturing attention was the so 
called “Dagongren” (“hard workers”) meme, distributed via the popular Chinese 
video sharing site Bilibili, where three-quarters of users in 2017 were below the 
age of 25 (Nakajima 2019: 106). This meme criticised the surveillance of delivery 
workers with tracking tools by platforms, employers and customers (User ‘San Lu 



Cornelia Bogen76

is poisonous’ 2020), and went viral in December 2020. In less than 24 hours, the 
video “Good morning, Dagongren!” was watched more than 17 million times (Fig. 
17), and received 11,815 comments (Fig. 18). 

Fig. 17: Internet meme “Good morning, Dagongren!”, Fig. 18: 11.815 comments by 
May 04, 2021

The video shows a barking dog with a voice-over satirically mocking the life of 
workers. It shouts the following text:

“Good morning, Dagongren! Dagongren has a working spirit. Dagongren are all masters. 

We want to work quietly and then surprise everyone. We must have faith in our hearts: 

there is no difficult work, only the brave Dagongren. Has your takeaway order not arrived 

yet? It’s okay, Dagongren is not afraid of anything. It is the princess who depends on others. 

The Japanese depend on you. The people in the north are from Taipei. People who rely 

on nen [your] mothers are from Henan. We are the glorious Dagongren on our own. Are 

you tired? It’s alright if you feel tired. Comfort is reserved for the rich. Are you cold? If 

you feel cold, that’s it. Warmth is reserved for those who have cars. Don’t be late, because 

money will be deducted if you are late. Don’t dry your tears, because riding an electric bike 

like this is dangerous. Raise your fist and punch in the air. In order to fight against this 

world, do not fight for father, do not fight for mother, do not fight for work, do not fight for 

money. Just desperately be a Dagongren! Try Harder! Dagongren! As long as I work hard 

enough, the boss will soon be able to live a better life. Come on, Dagongren! As long as I’m 

good enough! Mankind will move towards a better future. Cheer up! Dagongren! When 

Dagongren cheers up, tomorrow’s sun will no longer exist. And the dazzling light shining 

in the east is a sign of Dagongren’s hard work. Good morning, Dagongren!”

The user speaks for the employees working for delivery services, deconstructing 
the customer’s power to use apps to demand a rush of deliveries and restoring his 
pride in sentences such as: “Has your takeaway order not arrived yet? It’s okay, 
Dagongren is not afraid of anything”. Sentences like “Don’t be late, otherwise 
money will be deducted” refer to the platform company’s algorithms’ tracking of 
different categories of driver performance. Sentences like “It is the princess who 
depends on others”, “As long as I work hard enough, the boss will definitely live 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 77

the life he wants” and “Comfort is reserved for the rich” clearly blame the capital-
owning class and deconstruct capitalist ideology. 

In a next step, the video was re-edited and uploaded on two other Bilibili user 
accounts, containing the same content but now displaying 15,000 user comments 
(barrage, 弹幕) running through the video (Fig. 19).

Fig. 19: Re-edited version “Good night, beaten workers!”

Translation of one user comment running through video (barrage), captured in the 
screenshot above (Fig. 19): “I cried. Really ruthless. Imprisonment because of a ‘wife’. 
Hit all Dagongren. Are you scolding again? Taiwanese people call this expert out 
directly. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I could kick myself. Henan people feel very upset. 
The Taiwanese said it was very connotative. Imprisonment because there is no ‘wife’. 
Public execution. People from Henan expressed their displeasure! Proletarians of the 
world, unite! Brothers, I am here again, in a bad mood, continuing to see Dagongren 
hhh. San Lu’s video. I am really miserable! It hit everyone. Once a day. Watch it again a 
billion times. This is so true!”

It is not only that the display of users’ feedback in edited videos (barrage) creates 
a new type of image that signals how the video is a trending topic to online 
audiences. It is also an indicator of a change in everyday practices in East Asian 
online youth culture. Users are motivated to watch the video again to read through 
the comments, and users are motivated to comment on the video in the hope that 
it will be displayed in future edited versions. However, it needs to be pointed out 
that although everybody can watch videos, only those can comment on them who 
are registered Bilibili members or who have been invited by current members to 
become one. Registration is free, but users need to pass a quiz about Japanese 
anime subculture and about the ways to engage with barrage subtitling to upgrade 
their level of membership (Nakajima 2019: 106-107). Hence, while user content 
(barrage in video-based memes) helps extend (passive) users’ browsing time and 



Cornelia Bogen78

thus plays into the hands of platform operators’ growth tactics, the platform seeks 
to attract more active users by tying exclusive membership to the “privilege” of 
content production. The emotional gratification that active users get from Bilibili’s 
barrage subtitling practice is the sense of a “sociality of connections”, where the 
main purpose of interaction is based on the formal continuation of online commu-
nication, as opposed to clarifying meaning (translation of foreign language video 
content) in ordinary subtitling (Nakajima 2019: 102). 

Two conclusions can be drawn from this case study. First, the barrage subti-
tling practice demonstrates that platformisation and economic surveillance have 
redefined digital visual culture by combining a platform’s growth tactics (i.e. 
extending users’ browsing time, extraction of user data) with a new aesthetic of 
short videoclips (users’ text comments onscreen to videos, following the time-line 
of the video) that nourishes the users’ sense of collectiveness. Ironically, while crit-
icising surveillance capitalism, workers’ memes have stabilised surveillance capi-
talism by successfully capturing the young audience’s attention and prompting 
them to participate in more platform labour. Second, while platform labour busi-
nesses operate in legal grey areas and pose challenges to both the Chinese and 
Euro-American political systems (Chan/Kwok 2021: 6), Chinese delivery workers 
are deprived of the means available to their Western colleagues (e.g., workers’ 
strikes, public protest). Instead, they use other means to express their criticism 
of new forms of labour precarity, and turn to the online sphere (e.g., the video-
sharing platform home to China’s youth cultures) to generate collective support. 
It appears that the penetration of China’s institutional setting into e-platforms is 
giving birth to social and cultural online practices so far unseen in the West. 

Being torn between promoting management instead of proletariat interests 
while recognising platform labour as a problem that needs to be regulated, the 
Chinese government allows workers and young users to collaborate on short 
video-sharing sites and generate the observed network effects, presumably 
because it regards the behaviour of both economic actors (i.e., algorithmic cate-
gorisation of “dagongren meme” as a trending topic; e-platforms’ incentives for 
users to engage in barrage subtitling) and of users (i.e., criticising not the govern-
ment, but employers’ and customers’ exploitation of their labour force with big 
data analytics) as appropriate. 

In the following section, the final case discussed will explore what kind of 
network effects are considered to promote an “unhealthy” online environment by 
the state, and so prompt intervention.

5.2 New Input for ‘Human Flesh Search’: The Role of Government and 
Platform Patient Data

The process of ‘human flesh search’ (‘人肉搜索’) emerged in China twenty years 
ago; it involves someone disclosing a specific individual’s behaviour that allegedly 
violates certain moral values and socio-cultural norms. The netizen links his or 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 79

her findings to a particular question or provocative statement, which prompts the 
formation of an online community to track down a specific individual through a 
joint effort to harvest more details about the person or about a related event with 
the goal of revealing the ‘truth’ and pursuing ‘justice’ on their own (“Human 
flesh search” 2021). Recent cases of human flesh search were related to legal and 
moral aspects or to entertainment (Cheng et al. 2019). For example, in the case of 
Chinese work safety official Dacai Yang, who was caught in a photograph grinning 
at the scene of a tragic bus crash in Shaanxi province in 2012, online collabora-
tion of netizens (i.e., digging out images that showed Yang wearing luxury wrist-
watches) prompted the legal authorities to investigate a potential case of bribery 
and corruption (Xinhua News Agency 2012). The fact that scholars have identified 
weak institutionalised trust in China’s authoritarian capitalism (Witt/Redding 
2012:12) might be one factor that explains this culture-specific type of social 
online behaviour.  

Fig. 20: Wang’s original Weibo post; Fig. 21: Wang’s original Weibo post 
including visual trajectory of Zhao

Platforms have a huge interest in promoting this phenomenon, arranging the 
posts for human flesh search at the top of their websites, with traditional media 
spreading these sensational news items and turning them into social events on 
their social media accounts. In addition, users have become more efficient in 
exploiting other users’ digital traces on social media platforms and visualising 
them to attract netizens’ attention. The Covid-19 epidemic has caused a new twist 
in the phenomenon of human flesh search because netizens can now ‘harness’ 
available personal health data to publicly shame a particular patient who has 
allegedly violated public measures to control the epidemic. The general digital 



Cornelia Bogen80

surveillance and willingness of the Chinese state to share its knowledge – here 
the provision of data about diagnosed Covid-19 patients – with app users not only 
differs from other East Asian countries like Singapore, where more targeted tech-
niques for social tagging of the sick ensure the privacy of those in quarantine (Cha 
2020: 6-7) but also from the disuse or failed use of smartphone apps in European 
and U.S. American states for epidemic containment in 2020, as the case of the 
French contact-tracing app illustrates (Rowe et al. 2020). 

Fig. 22: Wang’s post shared by users on Baidu Tieba

Translation of Wang’s post shared by users: “Chengdu Covid-19 infection Zhao Maohan: 
female, 20 years old, unemployed.
December 5th: AC Bar on Shuncheng Street
At 12am (midnight) on December 6th: Haiwuli Bistro
At 3am on December 6th: Playhouse Bar in Jinjiang District
At 9pm on December 6th: Hepburn Bar on the second section of Jiefang Road.
If the above is true for you too, then you might be infected with Covid-19. You don’t 
know Zhao’s occupation? At least you know now how frequently she visited these bars. 
Worried after thoughts”. 

In December 2020, a 20-year-old woman, Zhao Maohan (赵茂涵), living in 
Chengdu became a hot topic on Weibo overnight. Under the heading of “Chengdu 
epidemic situation and Zhao Maohan’s identity information and activity track”, a 
private 24-year-old male user named Wang had revealed her personal identity and 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 81

posted an image of her personal location around 23:00 on December 7, 2020, on 
his Weibo account. Media eagerly reported on the case of human flesh search and 
published the young man’s original posts (“The girl diagnosed with the virus in 
Chengdu” 2020, Fig. 20-21): 

Using the name of the perpetrator “Wang Cang” (旺苍吧) on the Baidu post 
bar Tieba, users could find and share Wang’s posts about Zhao’s identity and 
location history (Wang 2020, Fig. 23):

Wang staged Zhao as a “time bomb”, who had deliberately decided to infect 
others by visiting numerous bars, parks, cinemas, and nail salons for her own 
amusement within the last 14 days. Other users became engaged in the smear 
campaign by uploading screenshots of Zhao’s social media posts showing photo-
graphs of her with friends in a bar (Wang 2020, Fig. 23).

Fig. 23: Photographs showing Zhao with friends in a bar

Hence, the internet mob staged the girl as immoral, and blamed her for causing 
the return of the epidemic in Chengdu (“I’m Ma Nan” 2020). 

Commercial media jumped on the bandwagon (“Zhao Maohan, a girl 
diagnosed” 2020) and moralised the issue with sensational headlines posted on 
their social media accounts (“A 20-year-old girl diagnosed” 2020). State media 
discussed the blurred line between the public’s right to know, and the violation 
of the privacy of user data (Luo/Li 2020), condemned the netizens for revealing a 
patient’s personal information (“The girl diagnosed with the virus in Chengdu” 
2020), and presented human flesh search as creating harmful online environ-
ments. On its official Weibo account, Chengdu Public Security concluded that 
Wang had severely violated the privacy rights of user Zhao and thus had to be 
punished legally (“The girl diagnosed with the virus in Chengdu” 2020).

Neither the journalists nor the Public Security Bureau ever discussed how the 
government’s online publication of personal patient data may have contributed to 
the emergence of this human flesh search occurrence. Media reports state that it 
was unclear how Zhao’s personal information was leaked (“The girl diagnosed 
with the virus in Chengdu” 2020). However, for the purpose of containing the 
epidemic, Chengdu’s Health Commission consistently published private infor-



Cornelia Bogen82

mation about Covid-19 patients on its website, so this may have spurred Wang’s 
search. Public notification records about the first newly discovered Covid-19 cases 
in Chengdu from the morning of December 8 (07:47) suggest that the family 
names of Zhao’s grandparents were already disclosed by the Health Commission 
on December 7:

“Patient 1: Zhao X, female, 20 years old, no fixed occupation, living in Huadu Yunjingtai 

Community, Cuijiadian, Chenghua District, is the granddaughter of the cases Lu and Zhao 

in Pidu District confirmed yesterday. Nucleic acid tests were found to be positive and Lu’s 

close contacts were isolated on December 8. After consultation with provincial, municipal 

and district experts, comprehensive clinics, and after the findings from imaging and labo-

ratory nucleic acid test results, the virus (common type) was confirmed and the patient was 

transferred to Chengdu Public Health Clinical Medical Center Hospital for isolation and 

treatment. In the past 14 days, the main places where the patients spent time include: MCC 

Central Park, Hi Blues Nail Salon, Alley Mala Tang, Haiwuli Small Bar, Playhouse Bar, 

Hepburn Bar, etc.”.

It is likely that Wang came across the details provided by the local Health 
Commission about Zhao’s grandparents (family names, name of residential area 
and location history), and took these as a starting point to uncover further private 
information (patient’s given name, exact address, and daily activities) in order to 
identify the people behind the newly confirmed cases in Chengdu. On December 
9, Zhao apologised publicly using her Weibo account (User ‘Fish balls are not 
good in Chengdu’ 2020). 

In summary, the case of the woman from Chengdu illustrates how economic 
surveillance (i.e., platforms prominently arranging user posts for human flesh 
search; hashtag grouping of comments) interacts with state surveillance (publica-
tion of patient data for epidemic containment) by stimulating a culture-specific 
social online behaviour through which netizens use a victim’s own social media 
posts to map out the victim’s movements, capture audience attention (the girl from 
Chengdu as a hot topic on Weibo) and motivate other users to become engaged 
in the smear campaign. Hence, the government’s new approach to handling the 
epidemic (i.e., disseminating real-time data) has provided human flesh search-
communities with a new dataset. This example also illustrates how two social 
implications of social media surveillance - categorical suspicion in the form of 
state and platform monitoring of smart phone users’ activities to control the spread 
of an epidemic and users’ exposure of private lives (surveillance creep) - fatefully 
‘enrich’ each other when netizens engage in human flesh search for Covid-19 
patients. The radical indifference of authoritarian states towards the privacy 
protection of patient data - or, to put it differently, the willingness of authoritarian 
states to publicly share their knowledge - can accelerate existing forms of problem-
atic online behaviour. 



Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 83

6. Conclusion

Against the background of the theoretical model of social media surveillance, 
the case studies highlight that some similar societal implications of surveillance 
capitalism (categorical suspicion, social sorting, surveillance creep) are at stake in 
both authoritarian and Western democratic states. However, China’s institutional 
setting (i.e., economic, governmental, infrastructural) penetrates e-platforms, and 
we can observe different effects on users’ online behaviour regarding the social 
use of images on platforms, and users’ interaction with visual images and their 
networkedness. For example, the two case studies in the Infrastructure section 
suggest that Chinese delivery workers, in collaboration with young Chinese 
netizens, show their resistance to social sorting in platform labour in different 
ways (video-based internet memes and their reediting with the barrage subtitling 
practice) to their Western colleagues (worker strikes). Similarly, Chinese private 
users engage in types of online behaviour (human flesh search) unseen in the 
West because the implementation of categorical suspicion for the sake of epidemic 
control by both the Chinese state and platforms provides Chinese users with 
access to patient data that Western users do not have due to data privacy protection 
laws. Furthermore, this culture-specific social online behaviour is fostered by the 
interaction of economic and state surveillance.

The case studies outlined in the Practice section exemplify how the Chinese 
government grants economic actors (platforms, brands, celebrities) freedom 
to commodify user content creation and to mobilise a great mass of people to 
become entrepreneurs in the digital economy. At the same time, we observe how 
politically sensitive words are automatically filtered out (categorical suspicion). 
This state-commerce relationship impacts content production on these platforms 
and distinguishes Chinese platformisation from its Western counterpart. In the 
Governance section, the case of the online celebrity Zhang Dayi illustrates that 
when social media platforms (Weibo) and e-commerce platforms (Alibaba) enact 
algorithmic censorship of content considered to be a threat to their business, 
users quickly notice their action due to surveillance creep being in place. Coming 
up with their own censorship rules suggests a radical indifference to Party rule 
and thus triggers intervention from China’s Cyber Administration (restriction of 
online business activities).  

Hence, the diverse logics of marketisation and economic surveillance (which 
combine user, platform and state perspectives), interact with different forms of 
social, political and lateral surveillance and lead to culture-specific social practices 
of online behaviour. The observed surveillance mechanisms go beyond the concept 
of surveillance capitalism, so that any analysis of China’s internet economy and 
the online behaviour of its economic and social actors must be embedded into a 
wider context of political economies and state regulations. 



Cornelia Bogen84

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my student research assistants, Wushuang Yu and Fujiali, 
who helped me collect the empirical data discussed in the case studies, and the 
anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions during the 
revision process. 

7. References

7.1 Primary Literature

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Netizens Were Angry, and Purcotton Apologised Twice!” January 9 (https://
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安徽妇联].

Brain Instructor (2020): “What Is the Origin of and Story behind ‘Versailles Lit-
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Chengdu Municipal Health Commission (2020): “There are 3 New Confirmed 
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inal source in Chinese: 成都市卫健委. “我市新增3例新冠肺炎确诊病例，均系昨

日郫都区确诊病例的关联病例”. 成都市卫健委].
China Women’s Daily (2021). “#Response: Backfiring Advertisement# (‘Creativ-

ity’ Is Not an Excuse for Abdicating from Responsibility)Recently, #Purcot-
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at Night and You Are Followed by a Man in Black, What Method Will You 
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http://cdwjw.chengdu.gov.cn/cdwjw/gzdt/2020-12/08/content_731e717981644fda8790da24d5d126c8.shtml


Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 85

“Dongyuan Boiled Wine. The Country Has Stepped Up Information Censorship, 
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界网. “骂上热搜！全棉时代广告被指侮辱女性 公司回应称为广告创意.” 腾讯网].
“Good Night, Beaten Workers! 5,394 Million Views, Barrage: 3558, Top 5 in the 

Ranking.” Bilibili, October 27, 2020 (video length 01:17) (https://www.bilibili.
com/video/BV1Fi4y177he/?spm_id_from=autoNext) [Original source in 
Chinese: “活动作品晚安，被打工人！539.4万播放, 3558弹幕, 全站排行榜最高

第5名”].
“Hard Currency: 5 Core Rules of Kuaishou Live Streaming.” Yibang Power 

Network, August 15, 2019 (https://www.niuxuan.cn/redian/51950.html) [Orig-
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“How to Approach Weibo’s Frantic Deletion of Huahua Dong Huahua’s Post About 
Zhang Dayi?” Zhihu (Question and answer forum), April 2020 (https://www.
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Huahuadonghuahua. Weibo account, April 2021 (https://share.api.weibo.cn/
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“I’m Ma Nan. The King of Virus May Appear in Chengdu. The 20-year-Old Girl 
Who Accompanies Customers to Bars Has Been Tested Positively and Still Ran 
All over These Places without a Mask.” Weibo, December 8, 2020

(https://card.weibo.com/article/m/show/id/2309404579882750312600) [Original 
source in Chinese: “我是马男.成都或出现毒王，20岁陪酒女孩确诊，不戴口罩

跑遍了这些地方.” 微博头条文章]. 
“#Jiangsu Delivery Man Set Himself on Fire with Gasoline#: ‘I Don’t Want My 

Life, I Want My Hard-Earned Money.’” Weibo account of NetEase Finance, 
NetEase Wangyi video, January 11, 2021 (video length: 00:37 seconds) (https://
weibo.com/1974561081/JCIEPtsIl?sudaref=cn.bing.com&type=comment) 
[Original source in Chinese: “#江苏外卖员点汽油自焚#: ’我不要命, 我要血汗

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qGv0I7nmfbxRgsyOaAan Sets Himself on Fire to Ask for a Salary of 4.000 

https://www.sohu.com/a/219459320_100100890
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https://view.inews.qq.com/a/20201120A0DH2M00
https://www.zhihu.com/question/389039128
https://www.zhihu.com/question/389039128
https://weibo.com/163money
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/KsGCqGv0I7nmfbxRgsyOaA
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/KsGCqGv0I7nmfbxRgsyOaA


Cornelia Bogen86

yuan. How to Protect the Rights and Interests of Delivery Staff.” WeChat, 
reposted from Sanlian Life Weekly, February 03 () [Original source in Chinese: 
李秀莲 /孙一丹. 李秀莲 /孙一丹. “外卖员自焚讨薪, 想要回4000块为什么那么

难.”  原创 李秀莉 三联生活周刊]. 
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Luo, Yidan/Li, Weijia (2020): “Behind the Information Leakage of the Confirmed 
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是怎么回事?” 界面新闻, 搜狐网]. 
Pan, Yiling (2017): “Top Web Celebrity Zhang Dayi Reveals the Key to Her Busi-

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Purcotton (2021): “Apology.” Weibo account ‘Purcotton cotton era’, January 8 (https://
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全棉时代]. 

“Purcotton Apologises for ‘Advertisement Alleged to Insulting Women’: The Video 
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商品的清洁功能。北京商报].
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Chinese: 山东财经报道—经济导报. “天猫总裁蒋凡与带货网红张大奕“被围观”
，阿里公关的反应是这样的.” 泰山财经].

Su, Qi/Meng, Yana/Wei, Jia (2020): “Internet Celebrity Zhang Dayi Was Scolded 
at, Why Did Weibo Quickly ‘Delete Posts, Ban and Remove hot searches’?” In: 
Burning Finance, April 18 (https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1664273220065

https://www.163.com/dy/article/FVR4B0U40519DFFO.html
https://www.163.com/dy/article/FVR4B0U40519DFFO.html
http://f.sdnews.com.cn/news/a/1538.html
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1664273220065234150&wfr=spider&for=pc


Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 87

234150&wfr=spider&for=pc) [Original source in Chinese: 苏琦 /孟亚娜/ 魏佳:  
“网红张大奕被隔空喊话, 微博为何迅速’删帖禁言撤热搜’?” 燃财经].

“The Advertisement for Makeup-Remover Was Accused of Insulting Women, and 
Purcotton Apologised: It Was Just to Highlight the Product’s Cleaning Func-
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2021 (https://www.163.com/dy/article/FVRBBBEC051480KF.html) [Original 
source in Chinese: “卸妆广告被指侮辱女性, 全棉时代道歉:已下架, 只为突出商

品清洁功能.” 前瞻网].
“The Girl Diagnosed with the Virus in Chengdu Whose Private Information Was 

Publicly Exposed: The Man Who Leaked Her Information Was Punished. The 
Real-Name System Will Become a Trend.” In: Investigation Factory, December 
10, 2020 (https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1685686672774761636&wfr=spid
er&for=pc) [Original source in Chinese: “成都确诊女孩遭信息泄露, 泄露信息

男子被处罚, 实名制将是趋势.” 调研工厂].
“The 20-Year-Old Diagnosed Girl in Chengdu Is Indeed Working as a Hostess. 

Are Girls Working as a Hostess in Bars Serious Girls?” Weibo headline article, 
Xintian Story, December 9, 2020 (https://card.weibo.com/article/m/show/
id/2309404580212439646540) [Original source in Chinese: “心天物语. 成都

20岁确诊女孩确为酒吧气氛组工作, 酒吧气氛组女生是正经女生吗?” 微博头条

文章].
User ‘Calabash Baby’ (2020). “Dong Huahua and Zhang Dayi Are Both Hot Topics! 

Who Will Buy Hot Searches for Them Now?” Douban Group, April 27 (https://
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娃. “董花花和张大奕都上热搜 了! 现在谁会给她们买热搜啊?” 豆瓣小组].
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博].

User ‘Fish balls are not good in Chengdu’ (2020). “Hello Everyone, I Am the 
Chengdu Girl Who Was Diagnosed with New Corona Pneumonia. I Apolo-
gise to the Citizens of Chengdu Here.” Weibo account of Zhao, Decem-
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id=4580203651671914) [Original source in Chinese: User ‘鱼丸不好成都’. “大
家好，我是确诊新冠肺炎的那个成都女孩，我在这里向成都市民致歉”. 赵茂涵

的微博账号].
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stantly Being Deleted. People Who Want to Know More Are So Worried about 
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share/234265485.html?weibo_id=4494733567205550) [Original source in 
Chinese: 晗小饭. “亲眼看见张大奕董花花的帖子不断被删 吃瓜群众好着急”. 
微博账号：晗小饭. 微博]. 

https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1664273220065234150&wfr=spider&for=pc
https://www.163.com/dy/article/FVRBBBEC051480KF.html
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1685686672774761636&wfr=spider&for=pc
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1685686672774761636&wfr=spider&for=pc
https://share.api.weibo.cn/share/234241241.html?weibo_id=4580203651671914
https://share.api.weibo.cn/share/234241241.html?weibo_id=4580203651671914
https://share.api.weibo.cn/share/234265485.html?weibo_id=4494733567205550
https://share.api.weibo.cn/share/234265485.html?weibo_id=4494733567205550


Cornelia Bogen88

User ‘handsome and witty lyc classmate’ (2020). “#Huahuadonghuahua#Amazing 
Amazing. This Entry Clearly Shows That Other Users Had Re-posted More than 
a Dozen of Weibo Comments. Hence, Many Weibo Comments Were Deleted. 
This Demonstrates the Power of the Capital.” Weibo account, April 17 (https://
share.api.weibo.cn/share/234265356.html?weibo_id=4494736926475048) 
[Original source in Chinese: 帅气又不失机智的lyc同学. “#花花董花花#牛批牛

批. 这个词条明明别人更新了十几条微博. 还是被删了好几个. 只能说 资本牛批 ”. 
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User ‘Iceberg Fire’ (2020). “Damn, Meng Qiqi’s Layout Is Too Small. That’s It, 
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cn/share/235254355.html?weibo_id=4582491820655671) [Original source in 
Chinese: 冰山大火. “妈的 蒙淇淇的格局也太小了吧 这就给我拉黑了@蒙淇淇

77.”  微博].
User ‘Max English name is too short, not allowed’ (2020). “#Meng Qiqi 77# 

Said That I Will Be Your Loyal Fan. I Will See You Pretending to Be, and I 
Will Step on the Snow Every Day to See You. I Am Really Sad Today.” Weibo, 
December 15 (https://share.api.weibo.cn/share/235254604.html?weibo_
id=4582527120186116) [Original source in Chinese:  Max英文名太短要求不得. 
“#蒙淇淇77# 说好了当你的忠实粉丝, 看你装逼 再天天踏雪你, 今天真的伤心

了.” 微博].
User ‘San Lu is poisonous’ (2020). “Good Morning, Dagongren! 17,089 Million 

Views, 15,000 Barrage, Comments.” Bilibili account of user ‘San Lu is poison-
ous’, October 22 (https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Mt4y1e7JY?p=1&share_
medium=iphone&share_plat=ios&share_source=COPY&share_tag=s_i&tim
estamp=1608268806&unique_k=WTVvEu) [Original source in Chinese: 三
Lu有毒. “早安, 打工人！1708.9万播放 · 1.5万弹幕.” b站账号: 三Lu有毒].

User ‘Zheng went to buy shoes’ (2021). “Dong Huahua Deleted All Her Hus-
band’s Weibo, Suspected to Be Divorced: Did Zhang Dayi Really Win?” Baidu, 
January 3 (https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1687873229323702357&wfr=spid
er&for=pc) [Original source in Chinese: 郑人去买履. “董花花删除老公所有微

博，疑似离婚：张大奕真的赢了吗?” 百度]. 
Wang Cang (2020). “Chengdu Covid-19 Infection Zhao Maohan: Female, 20 Years 

Old, Unemployed. December 5: Shuncheng Street.” Baidu Post Bar, December 
8 (https://tieba.baidu.com/p/7137116345) [Original source in Chinese: 旺苍吧

吧。“成都新冠感染赵茂涵：女，20岁，无业. 顺城街”.百度贴吧].
Xiaoxiang Morning News’s official hundred accounts (2020). “Sina Weibo 

Responded By Being Interviewed.” In: Xiaoxiang Morning News, June 11 
(https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1669165617281835720&wfr=spider&for=pc) 
[Original source in Chinese: 潇湘晨报官方百家号. “新浪微博回应被约谈.” 潇
湘晨报].

Xianliaogezhu (2021). “Shenzhen Dagongren, With a Monthly Salary of Five 
Thousand.” In: Yidian Information, July 14 (http://www.yidianzixun.com/

https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1687873229323702357&wfr=spider&for=pc
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1687873229323702357&wfr=spider&for=pc
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/7137116345
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1669165617281835720&wfr=spider&for=pc
http://www.yidianzixun.com/article/0Vo9GS0o/amp


Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 89

article/0Vo9GS0o/amp) [Original source in Chinese: 闲聊阁主. “深圳打工仔, 
月薪五千.” 一点资讯].

“Zhao Maohan, a Girl Diagnosed with the Virus in Chengdu, Was Searched 
Online: She Is a ‘Little Princess’ in a Nightclub, Alive.” Zhituoluo website, 
December 9, 2020 (http://www.tl6.net/redian/8563.html) [Original source in 
Chinese: “成都确诊女孩赵茂涵被人肉：她是夜店“小公主, 活”. 指陀螺第一门户

网站].
Zui, Yin Zhichao/Wen, Jiaxin (2020). “‘Versailles Literature’ Award.” In: Eastern 

Broadcasting Station, Social media account, November 15 (https://www.sohu.
com/a/432095178_120068346) [Original source in Chinese: 尹志超/温嘉欣. “’
凡尔赛文学’大赏. 东区广播站, 搜狐].

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Creeber, Glen (2013): Small Screen Aesthetics: From TV to the Internet, London: 
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deLisle, Jacques/Goldstein, Avery/Yang, Guobin (2016): “Introduction”. In: Jacque 
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de Kloet, Jeroen/Poell, Thomas/Zeng, Guohua/Chow, Yiu Fai (2019): “The Plat-
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List of images

Fig. 1: Two screenshots taken from advertisement from video version in: China 
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is not an excuse for abdicating from responsibility). Recently, #Purcotton# 
released a backfiring advertisement titled ‘When you go home late at night 
and you are followed by a man in black, what method will you use to get rid of 
him?’ triggered a vibrant discussion among netizens”. Weibo account of China 
Women’s Daily, Weibo, January 08, 2021 15:39. URL: https://share.api.weibo.
cn/share/235307059.html?weibo_id=4591119284830606 [Original source in 
Chinese: “#全棉时代回应反转广告# (‘创意’不是开脱责任的挡箭牌) 近日，#全
棉时代#发布的反转广告 ‘深夜回家遇黑衣人尾随，你会用什么方法摆脱”引发
网友热议’。” . 微博账号：中国妇女报, 微博].

https://baike.baidu.com/item/凡尔赛文学/54290433?fr=aladdin
https://baike.baidu.com/item/凡尔赛文学/54290433?fr=aladdin
https://baike.baidu.com/item/凡尔赛文学/54290433?fr=aladdin
https://share.api.weibo.cn/share/235307059.html?weibo_id=4591119284830606
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Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance 93

Fig. 2: Financial community network. “Hot search on scolding! PurCotton’s adver-
tisement is accused of insulting women. The company’s response: It’s cre-
ative advertisement”. Tencent.com, January 8, 2021. URL: https://new.qq.com/
omn/20210108/20210108A067XZ00.html [Original source in Chinese: 金融界
网。“骂上热搜！全棉时代广告被指侮辱女性 公司回应称为广告创意”。腾讯网].

Fig. 3: Financial community network. “Hot search on scolding! PurCotton’s adver-
tisement is accused of insulting women. The company’s response: It’s cre-
ative advertisement”. Tencent.com, January 8, 2021. URL: https://new.qq.com/
omn/20210108/20210108A067XZ00.html [Original source in Chinese: 金融界
网。“骂上热搜！全棉时代广告被指侮辱女性 公司回应称为广告创意”。腾讯网].

Fig. 4: China Women’s Daily (2021). “#Response: backfiring advertisement# (‘Cre-
ativity’ is not an excuse for abdicating from responsibility). Recently, #Pur-
cotton# released a backfiring advertisement titled ‘When you go home late at 
night and you are followed by a man in black, what method will you use to get 
rid of him?’ triggered a vibrant discussion among netizens”. Weibo account 
of China Women’s Daily, Weibo, January 08, 2021 15:39. URL: https://share.
api.weibo.cn/share/235307059.html?weibo_id=4591119284830606 [Original 
source in Chinese: “#全棉时代回应反转广告# 【‘创意’不是开脱责任的挡箭
牌) 近日，#全棉时代#发布的反转广告 ‘深夜回家遇黑衣人尾随，你会用什么方
法摆脱”引发网友热议’。” . 微博账号：中国妇女报, 微博].

Fig. 5: “Hard currency: 5 core rules of Kuaishou live streaming”. Yibang Power 
Network, August 15, 2019. URL: https://www.niuxuan.cn/redian/51950.html 
[Original source in Chinese: 硬通货：快手直播带货的5个核心法则。2019-
08-15。亿邦动力网].

Fig. 6: Source: “Hard currency: 5 core rules of Kuaishou live streaming”. Yibang 
Power Network, August 15, 2019. URL: https://www.niuxuan.cn/redian/51950.
html [Original source in Chinese: 硬通货：快手直播带货的5个核心法则。 
2019-08-15。亿邦动力网].

Fig. 7: Little milk ball. “‘Little milk ball Versailles open class’. Number of 
views: 100.000, barrage: 614”. Bilibili, May 09, 2020, 20:37. URL: https://
www.bilibili.com/video/av838098912/ [Original source in Chinese: 小奶球.  
“小奶球 凡尔赛公开课”。10.0万播放 ,614弹幕. Bilibili].

Fig. 8: Meng Qiqi (2020). Two Weibo posts by @Meng Qiqi77 on Nov. 2 and Nov. 
7, 2020 [@蒙淇淇77, 微博], quoted after “Why has “Versailles Literature” 
become a trending topic?”. Jiemian News, Sohu.com., November 9, 2020. URL: 
https://www.sohu.com/a/430696123_313745 [Original source in Chinese: “凡
尔赛文学”冲上热搜是怎么回事?”. 界面新闻, 搜狐网].

https://new.qq.com/omn/20210108/20210108A067XZ00.html
https://new.qq.com/omn/20210108/20210108A067XZ00.html
https://new.qq.com/omn/20210108/20210108A067XZ00.html
https://new.qq.com/omn/20210108/20210108A067XZ00.html
https://share.api.weibo.cn/share/235307059.html?weibo_id=4591119284830606
https://share.api.weibo.cn/share/235307059.html?weibo_id=4591119284830606
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av838098912/
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av838098912/
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Cornelia Bogen94

Fig. 9: Cannot be found anymore (URL deleted)

Fig. 10: User ‘Max English name is too short, not allowed’. “I can only laugh at you! 
You really make me sad”. Weibo, December 15, 2020, 22:37. URL: https://share.
api.weibo.cn/share/235254604.html?weibo_id=4582527120186116  [Original 
sou