Rights advocates are urging international social media platforms to do more to prevent Chinese authorities from obtaining the personal information of users. The call comes after two popular Chinese social media influencers alleged on X and YouTube that police in China were investigating their followers and had called some in for questioning.
Social media platforms such as X and YouTube and thousands of websites — from The New York Times to the BBC and VOA — are blocked in China by the country's Great Firewall. But increasingly, even as social controls tighten under the leadership of Xi Jinping, many in China are using virtual private networks to access X, YouTube and other sites for news, information and opinions not available in China.
Li Ying, who is also known online as Teacher Li, is one of the social media influencers who issued the warning on Sunday. Li came to prominence as a source of news and information following a rare display of public dissent in 2022 in China, protesting the government's draconian zero-COVID policy. His account on X has now become a hub for news and videos provided by netizens that the Chinese government considers sensitive and censors online.
In a post on Sunday, Teacher Li said, "Currently, the public security bureau is checking my 1.6 million followers and people in the comments, one by one."
He shared screenshots of private messages he received from followers over the past few months, some of which claimed that police had interrogated individuals, even causing one person to lose their job.
VOA could not independently verify the authenticity of the claims, but court records in China and reports by rights groups have previously documented the country's increasing use of social media platforms banned in China to detain, prosecute and sentence individuals over comments made online.
The Chinese Embassy spokesperson in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said he was not aware of the specifics regarding the social media influencers.
"As a principle, the Chinese government manages internet-related affairs according to law and regulation," Liu said.
Influencers warn followers
News of the crackdown on followers of social influencers comes amid a flurry of reports about China's hacking capabilities. Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure were "at a scale greater than we'd seen before."
A recent document dump detailed how private companies are helping China to hack foreign governments across Southeast Asia and to unmask users of foreign social media accounts.
Wang Zhi'an, a former journalist at China's state broadcaster CCTV who has a million subscribers on X and 1.2 million followers on YouTube, says his followers have reported similar problems.
In response, both Wang and Teacher Li have urged their followers to take precautions, suggesting they unfollow their accounts, change their usernames, avoid Chinese-made phones and prepare to be questioned.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Li's followers on X had dropped to 1.4 million. VOA reached out to Li for comment but did not receive a response as of publication.
Authorities reportedly tracking followers
Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch, said China is putting more effort into policing platforms based outside of the country as more Chinese people move to the platforms to speak out.
She said the recent reports of authorities tracking down followers is just a part of China's long-standing effort to restrict freedom of expression.
"I think the Chinese government is also increasingly worried about the information that is being propagated, transmitted or distributed on these foreign platforms because they have been, thanks to these individuals, very influential," Wang said.
A recent leak of documents from I-Soon, a private contractor linked to China's top policing agency and other parts of its government, described tools used by Chinese police to curb dissent on overseas social media, including one tool specifically created to surveil users on X.
Hackers also created tools for police to hack email inboxes and unmask anonymous users of X, the documents show. The leak revealed that officers sometimes sent requests to surveil specific individuals to I-Soon.
Wang said it is incumbent on social media companies to make sure their users stay safe.
"I would want to direct these questions to Twitter [X] to ask — are they adopting heightened measures to protect PRC [People's Republic of China]-based users?" she said. "I think Twitter [X] needs to investigate just how exactly this kind of information is being obtained and whether or not they need to plug some loopholes."
Yaqiu Wang, research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Freedom House, said that besides better protecting their users' privacy, the companies should also put in more effort to combat China's clampdown on freedom of speech.
"They should have steps actually helping out activists to protect their freedom of speech," she said. "Big social media companies should widely disseminate information to their users, like a manual or instructions of how to protect their account.
"They need to be more transparent, so users and the public know whether government-sponsored hacking activities are going on," she added.
VOA reached out to X, formerly known as Twitter, several times for comment but did not receive any response by the time of publication.
Xiao Yu contributed to this report.
