At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common. But in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valour in cyberspace.
Last month a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan, accusing him of smearing the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China.
Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo”, is seeking 1.5bn yuan ($208m/£164m) in damages from Mo – one yuan per Chinese citizen – as well as an apology from Mo and the removal of the offending books from circulation. His lawsuit has not yet been accepted by any court.
Mo, who was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2012, is best known for his novel Red Sorghum, which tells the story of three generations of a family in Shandong during the second Sino-Japanese war, known in China as the Chinese war of resistance against Japanese aggression.
Although there are elements in Mo’s books that would probably not be published in today’s more restrictive cultural environment, say experts, he is by no means a dissident. He is widely celebrated in China and is a vice-chair of the party-backed China Writers Association.
Although Mo hasn’t responded to Wu’s attacks directly, this week – in response to the “recent storm” – Chinese media outlets shared a video of him reciting a poem by the Song dynasty poet Su Shi about the struggles and joys of being a scholar despite setbacks.
In attacking such a venerated figure, Wu “wants to sound more Catholic than the pope”, says Dali Yang, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. And while some people have accused Wu of trying to boost his own social media clout, the fact that such a campaign is tolerated by China’s censors reflects the rising levels of online nationalism, which in recent years have reached dizzying heights of fervour.
Elsewhere on Weibo, netizens have been posting videos of themselves pouring away water from bottles of Nongfu Spring, China’s biggest bottled water company. The company’s crime? Using a design on its green tea drink that allegedly looks like a Japanese wooden pagoda. Another offending beverage, a brown rice tea, features on its packaging fish that allegedly look like Japanese koinobori, flags in the shape of carps.
The furore over Nongfu – whose founder, Zhong Shanshan, is China’s richest man – was sparked by the death last month of one of Zhong’s business rivals, Zong Qinghou, who was revered by nationalists. It soon spiralled into an all-out attack on Nongfu, with netizens criticising the drinks’ packaging as well as the fact that the company has US investors and that Zhong’s son is a US citizen.
“I’m patriotic, but you sell this Japanese stuff, I despise you,” said one Nongfu-hater outside a convenience store, in a video posted on Weibo. Some shops have reportedly stopped stocking Nongfu products and the company’s share price dropped by nearly 6% in the first week of March, although it has recovered slightly since.
‘Anti-intellectual culture’
“Traffickers in online nationalism have a vast audience from people who are pretty frustrated in terms of jobs, living standards and so on,” Yang notes. Analysts say online vitriol has been particularly intense since China’s zero-Covid regime kept tens of millions of people cooped up at home for the better part of three years, only to emerge into an economy battered by poor job prospects and weak demand.
Average hiring salaries in Chinese cities fell for three straight quarters in 2023. That has sparked resentment of the elites in some quarters, with a recent target being Tsinghua, China’s top university. Although it is generally regarded with admiration, recently some online have questioned why, unlike some 600 other Chinese institutions, it hasn’t been subject to sanctions by the US.
“You take so much money from the state, but you can’t even get on the sanction list of the ugly country, shouldn’t the people scold you?” wrote one Weibo user.
According to one outspoken Tsinghua law professor, Lao Dongyan, the online environment amounts to an “anti-intellectual culture” – unlike comments from many of the self-styled patriots, however, hers has since been deleted.
Eric Liu, a former content moderator for Weibo, says that while online witch-hunts are nothing new, “recently it has reached a level that surprised people”.
But it “hasn’t met any kind of obstacle of challenge” from the authorities, says Liu, who is now an editor for China Digital Times. And there is “no sign that it’s going to stop anytime soon”.
Additional research by Chi Hui Lin
