Coronavirus tests China’s censors

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us //link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/19487787.77561/aHR0cHM6Ly90d2l0dGVyLmNvbS90ZWNobm9sb2d5/582c8673566a94262a8b49bdBf5e1c4bf [Get the newsletter]( Hi folks it’s Shelly. The [deadly coronavirus]( ripping through China is challenging Beijing's grip on what can and can't be said on the internet. Online censorship isn't as clear cut as you may expect from an authoritarian government. At the risk of dating myself, I liken China's approach to Nickelodeon’s green slime: It's constantly shifting and changing shape, with Chinese authorities keenly aware of how they can loosen or tighten their hold on social media and other information controls depending on the circumstances at hand. Sure, there are subject areas that always disappear from the web, such as articles about [Tiananmen Square](. But social media companies in China have tens of thousands of content moderators on staff because they have to make daily decisions to keep up with changing memes, hashtags and jokes that could unsettle China's leaders.  Consider the outpouring of grief that flooded China's WeChat messaging platform and its Twitter-like Weibo site earlier this month after the virus claimed the life of [Li Wenliang](, the young whistleblower doctor who was sanctioned for issuing early warnings about the SARS-like virus. For a brief 48-hour window, social media lit up with photo tributes and deeply personal essays with people outraged over a lack of transparency about the outbreak and poor treatment of medical staff. Criticism raged at a system where local government officials were too scared to alert Beijing, where party takes precedence over the health of citizens, and where doctors brave enough to speak out about the alarming virus were reprimanded. Hashtags like #Iwantfreedom of speech emerged. "It was unprecedented," [Lynette Ong]( told me on the phone recently. An associate professor in political science at the University of Toronto where she studies social control in China, Ong said letting people openly mourn the doctor's death was an example of how Beijing sometimes lets up on censorship like "a pressure valve to let off steam." This pressure valve approach has been used in the past after disasters like earthquakes, chemical plant explosions, or train crashes. The idea is to let people vent their anger for a short period in a controlled fashion so that the masses don't revolt later on. The difference is that those events sparked localized anger easier to contain and move on from by blaming local officials. The virus has now touched nearly all of China's 1.4 billion people, either through death, illness, work closures, or quarantine measures that have ushered in [the world's largest work-from-home experiment.]( Still, Ong cautioned about reading too much into the brief release that was allowed to spew through China's internet for a handful of hours. After all, the most sensitive posts asking for freedom of speech were scrubbed within hours, she points out, and Beijing's internet police clamped down soon after to wipe the internet of criticism that Beijing isn't doing enough to protect its people. "All grievances are cumulative, but I don't think this will turn into some form of activism immediately," Ong said. "You need a substantial groundswell of anger to trigger activism and I don't think we are there yet." Still, the state propaganda machine is acutely aware of what's at stake. Indeed, it launched into overdrive the last few weeks, using stage-managed events to portray a government in control of an outbreak officials say is reaching a turning point. For instance, my Beijing colleagues were among a group of foreign journalists invited last week to interview recovering doctors and patients, including one who told Bloomberg that the disease wasn't scary and that [you'll be cured as long as you believe in your country.]( Positioning the virus around patriotism, or a people's war against the disease, can help pressure Chinese people to stay united. But the longer the outbreak goes on, the more time people will spend cooped up in their homes with little else to do but cruise the internet for vital information and vent their frustration. If anything, the virus has raised the risks of a breakdown in the Beijing propaganda machine. —[Shelly Banjo](mailto:sbanjo@bloomberg.net) If you read one thing Masayoshi Son's other big real estate bet has some real problems. 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