Power, in this case, being the electricity companies. On Thursday morning, news went out that the power companies were losing money and would receive nearly 20 billion yuan in subsidies to help them recover from the heavy damage caused by the snow storms and earthquake this year.
The first five comments on the story at Netease:
ip：59.32.*.*：
The tallest, most beautiful building in our county belongs to the electricity company. And they’re still making a loss???ip：221.231.*.*：
The electricity company has the highest salaries and benefits in our county. And they’re still making a loss???ip：125.79.*.*：
The brightest building in our city in the evening is the electricity company’s. And they’re still making a loss???ip：60.190.*.*：
All I know is that the electricity industry has the most money, the staff are paid well and they consume a lot!!!!ip：221.202.*.*：
Why do state subsidies always go to the rich??
These, and the many, many other kneejerk reactions may not be fair, but things were certainly not going well for electricity companies.
So… tranlasted by ESWN:
Previously, the rumored electricity subsidies would be coming through partially. Today, it was announced that 19.5 billion yuan in the state enterprises’ budget will be used to assist those state enterprises that were hurt during the natural disasters to recover. Included are the state electricity companies …
(Douban) Secret internal Sohu.com email.
We used received an emergency bulletin from the External Relations Department of the State Electricity Network to mobilize everybody to post comments at Sohu.com. Today, Sohu.com featured the article
, which is drawing discussion from netizens. In order to guide public opinion and support the good image of the State Electricity Network, its External Relations Department has requested the various departments and employees to join the discussion. These comments should highlight the following keypoints. (1) There is no doubt that the electricity network was adversely affected by natural disasters. (2) Before the financial tsunami arrived, the state electricity network had invested 1 trillion yuan in order to create job opportunities. (3) At critical moments in time, the state electricity network has always courageously assumed the burden. (4) Certain individual want to have the best of both worlds, by expecting the results without paying the costs, and we better make sure that the people remain alert. After each employee has commented, they should send an email back to indicate that they have done so. The deadline is 11pm on November 28.
Oh dear. It might have been a good idea (after all, the government does it) if someone hadn’t leaked it. The Douban post has been deleted, pointlessly since plenty of other people were spreading it around.
Now, here’s an odd thing: If you followed the China Business News link in the quote above, you may have noticed that there are no comments whatsoever:
No comments? Really? A snapshot of that page taken by the Sogou search engine shows that as of 11.56pm on Thursday, there were 8,765 original comments with a total of 10,057 responses:
6 Comments
No comments on your post either - but there should be - a great exposure/analysis of online media manipulation.
Well done! no comments…
>In order to guide public opinion and support the good image of the State Electricity Network, its External Relations Department has requested the various departments and employees to join the discussion.
“guide”
“support the good image”
Sounds more like an attempt to sway public opinion by enforcing (not guiding) a particular view on readers.
And the chinese have the nerve and hypocrisy to accuse US of bias in the western media*!
*We, the western community, never made the claim our media isn’t biased. But it’s certainly less biased the government-controlled media in china.
could you explain to us non-China hands what this means? Who did the censorship? The gov’t, the power company? Both?
Agree with Michael; great work.
This story comes as no surprise. China’s internet policing machine has long been suspected (by me at least) of orchestrating mass pro-party/China responses on blogs and online newspapers whenever they read something not to their liking.
I suspect the External Relations Department will be drafting a release to the effect that their ‘emergency bulletin’ was a typo.
@Jay, since most censorship on the internet is carried out by the internet companies without any prompting, it’s most likely that decision to delete all comments and new ones being posted was taken by Sohu. It’s highly unlikely that the government had anything to do with it. It is possible that the State Electricity Network may have a business deal with Sohu to keep restrict negative coverage and the company may have invoked that deal. But the fact that it is possible doesn’t necessarily mean it happened.
So there are definitely two, and possibly a third, layers to this.
1) Astroturfing (known as the 50 cent party or 50 cent gang in China) is used to counteract negative PR.
2) Once they have been exposed, all comments, both positive and negative become an embarrassment so they are all censored by the internet company.
And the outside possibility that 3) The State Electricity Network may have bought off the internet company.
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