Why censors are deleting videos about poverty in China – 5/4/2023 – Market

A touching video of a pensioner showing what groceries she could buy with 100 yuan (R$72) – roughly her monthly pension and only source of income – has gone viral on the Chinese internet. The video has been deleted.

One singer vented about widespread frustration among educated Chinese youth over their abysmal finances and bleak job prospects, such as temp jobs. “I wash my face every day, but my pocket is cleaner than my face,” he sings. “I went to college to help rejuvenate China, not to deliver meals.” His music was banned and his social media accounts were suspended.

A migrant worker working to support his family gained widespread sympathy and attention last year after he tested positive for Covid-19, and authorities released many details of his movements. He became known as the hardest working person in China. Censors blocked conversations about him and local authorities positioned themselves in front of his house to prevent journalists from visiting his wife.

China claims to be a socialist country that aims to promote common prosperity. In 2021, its top leader, Xi Jinping, declared “a comprehensive victory in the battle against poverty”. However, many people remain poor or live just above the poverty line. With the country’s economic prospects dimming and people’s growing anxiety about the future, poverty has become a taboo subject that could draw the government’s ire.

In March, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet regulator, announced that it would crack down on anyone who posted videos or posts that “deliberately manipulate sadness, incite polarization, create information harmful to the image of the party and government, and hinder the economic and social development”. It bans sad videos of the elderly, disabled and children.

Hu Chenfeng recorded the footage which was removed from the Chinese internet. On popular video sites, he posted a recording showing an elderly woman living on just $15 a month. In the words of many social media commentators, he was revealing too much. “This matter is untouchable,” wrote one commenter in a now-deleted discussion thread on the Zhihu website. Another wrote: “The account was censored simply because it showed what many people’s lives are like.”

In the video, which survives outside the Chinese internet on YouTube, Hu interviews the woman, a 78-year-old widow, on a street in the southwestern city of Chengdu. She said she only intended to buy rice, the only thing she could afford. She had not eaten meat for a long time. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she recounted her financial struggles. The two pass a grocery store. There they buy rice, eggs, pork and flour. The bill comes to 127 yuan (R$91.44). Hu insists on paying.

He too was emotional, and said goodbye with “a heavy heart”.

The video was removed from the two largest user-generated video platforms in China. Hu’s accounts were suspended.

Income inequality is a problem in many countries, including the United States. In China, the biggest wealth divide is between rural and urban residents. The gap is created by government rules that link social benefits, including education, health and pensions, to a person’s place of birth, not to their residence, income or needs. The policy mainly hurts retirees.

In 2021, elderly people in the interior received an average of US$ 27 per month (R$ 135) in social security benefits, according to a government report. This pension is about 5% of what the average urban retiree receives.

A viral video about elderly people struggling to make ends meet is set in one of China’s most populous provinces, Henan, whose government increased monthly pensions for rural residents from $16 to $18 this year. The video shows two men in their 70s unloading a truckload of cement bags using their hands and shoulders.

In the years of China’s miraculous economic growth, from the 1990s to the mid-2010s, poverty was not an issue that people paid much attention to. Now, with the country’s economic engine failing, Chinese newcomers to the middle class are worried they might slip back into poverty, part of the reason these videos have garnered attention.

Because of propaganda and censorship, many of them were not aware of the depth and prevalence of poverty in the country.

When the Prime Minister in 2020, Li Keqiang, said that 600 million Chinese –40% of the population– had a monthly income of less than US$150, some people, who did not know where the numbers came from, called it “fake news”. . The People’s Daily, the official body, had to call the State Statistics Department to confirm that it was true. Official Chinese media rarely mentioned the inconvenient number again.

Another reason why poverty is seen as a novelty among the middle class is that local governments often kick out beggars and homeless people. They become invisible in big cities. A friend’s daughter in Beijing asked her last year what a beggar was. I recently met a 13-year-old Chinese new immigrant in San Francisco who was shocked to see homeless people. She said she had never seen one in Beijing.

The Beijing government doesn’t just ban beggars and the homeless from staying in the city. In the winter of 2017, he kicked many low-income people out of their apartments to get rid of what he called the “low-quality population”.

Now, with video streamers scouring the country in search of eye-opening facts that attract attention online, the public can see the poor and some of the unpleasant aspects of life in China. This is one of the reasons for censorship.

In addition to poverty, the government does not want the population to dwell on another major social problem: youth unemployment, which, according to the authorities, reaches almost 20%.

One composer used a well-known literary figure, Kong Yiji, an educated but poor intellectual who lived during the Qing dynasty, to disprove the government’s thesis that young people cannot find work because they don’t try hard enough. The song was censored and the singer’s online accounts were suspended.

The official media, in turn, produced articles about university graduates who earn their living by collecting garbage or as street vendors.

The government wants to “deny the prevalence of economic recession and unemployment” and avoid accountability, wrote one commentator.

The same can be said about poverty. By censoring videos and online discussions, the government is evading its responsibility to provide the most basic social safety net for the poor.

“I shot these videos in hopes of earning some money while pushing our society forward a bit,” Hu, the cameraman, said in a video posted on a backed-up social media account that had not been blocked. “But I never thought it was forbidden.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves