What were the most censored topics in the main cat application in China?

The trade war between China and the United States has been the subject most criticized by the Chinese authorities in the popular mobile application WeChat (WhatsApp local equivalent) in 2018, reported the Hong Kong daily South China Morning Post, based on local research.

The censorship was corroborated by a study from the University of Hong Kong called WeChatscopeWhat? monitored more than 4,000 official news accounts last year to badyze censorship on the platform.

The team confirmed that about 11,000 of the 1.04 million items badyzed by WeChatscope had been the subject of some form of censorship.

Among the ten most silenced subjects by the Chinese authorities, three are directly related to diplomatic tensions between Beijing and Washington.

1. The trade war
2. US sanctions against ZTE
3. Arrest in Canada of Huawei's Meng Wanzhou
4. Investigations into the crimes of businessman Ye Jianming
5. A scandal of medical alcoholism in Hongmao
6. #MeToo: badual harbadment scandal of a professor at Beijing University
7. Conflict between pbadengers and drivers in Chongqing
8. The baby whose DNA has been modified by a Chinese researcher
9. The Changsheng vaccine scandal
10. Tax Fraud Fan Bingbing

"The research group discovered that The scope of censored topics in WeChat goes beyond domestic politics and discomfort less politically sensitive issues, in what appears to be an effort to support China's international political image as a great power"says the report.

Censorship, on the other hand, does not seem to affect critical messages to the Donald Trump government.

The study noted that The number of articles censored with the words "Chinese-American" reached its highest level between late October and mid-November, to fall in early December, after the 90-day trade truce signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart Donald Trump after the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires.

With respect to local issues, some of the most censored topics in China have been the #MeToo feminist movement, the Changsheng pharmaceutical adulterated vaccines scandal, or the case of the first babies allegedly genetically modified by Chinese scientist He Jiankui.

Last November, the Chinese Administration of Cyberspace announced the suspension of more than 9,800 accounts in social networks, considering that they were publishing information outside established legal frameworks as part of a campaign to clean up the sensitive content network that began in October 2018.

China is the country with the largest number of Internet users in the world (about 700 million), but is also subject to increased control over the content of the Web, as evidenced by popular search engines and Social networks such as Google, Facebook and Twitter or YouTube have been stuck in the country for years.

(With EFE information)