38 China The Economist January 8th 2022
Forprofitparanoia
A
n anxious worldhas long worried that rising nationalism
might one day lead ordinary Chinese—especially the young—
to outbursts of uncontrollable rage. If recent months are any
guide, outsiders missed a more insidious threat: that antiforeign
paranoia would become a nasty but profitable game.
These are frightening times for Chinese civilsociety activists,
nongovernmental organisations (ngos) and private businesses
that see their role as building bridges between China and other
countries. Nationalist bloggers, supported at times by media out
lets controlled by the Communist Party and the People’s Libera
tion Army, have spent months denouncing groups and individual
campaigners for receiving foreign grants, or merely for relaying
foreign concerns about China’s growing impact on the world, even
in such relatively safe fields as the environment.
Last year Paperclip, a maker of popular science videos, was at
tacked by online nationalists and driven out of business, accused
of spreading antiChina hatred with afilm noting that China is a
big buyer of Brazilian soyabeans linked to deforestation in the
Amazon, and saying that eating less meat is good for the planet.
Online celebrities have been called race traitors for making videos
about overfishing, some of them for a Britishheadquartered
charity, in which they urged Chinese to consume seafood more re
sponsibly. Nationalists detect an “evil” agenda to deny China pro
tein that Americans and Europeans wish to keep for themselves.
China House, a social enterprise based in Shanghai that pro
motes sustainable development in Africa, and that offers young
Chinese opportunities to volunteer to help marginalised folk, fac
es ongoing attacks. It drew ire for drawing attention to discrimi
nation faced by African migrants in southern China, and for inves
tigating Chinese buyers of illegal ivory. Sai Lei, a blogger behind
some of the loudest recent campaigns, declared China House’s
founder an er guizi, a contemptuous term for collaborators with
Japanese occupiers in the 1930s and 1940s. Reposted by the Com
munist Youth League, his video has to date been viewed 5m times.
A veteran of the ngoworld calls this the worst time for Chinese
civil society since 1989. Yet this atmosphere of fear was not trig
gered by new government policies, or by a wave of arrests. Instead,
disconcertingly, some of the most damaging attacks came frompreviously littleknown socialmedia entrepreneurs. Still more
shockingly, the secret weapon of these bloggers is to make anti
foreign bigotry fun. Their core audience is young men aged 1825.
If followers are initially hooked by videos denouncing “antiChina
traitors”, their attention is kept with nationalist memes, conspira
cy theories and dark injokes. Calling targets er guiziis only a start.
Because state security services offer rewards of up to 500,000
yuan ($78,700) for reporting agents of a foreign power, those Chi
nese deemed unpatriotic are mocked online as “a walking
500,000” in anticipation of their denunciation as spies, or simply
“500,000”. Nationalism has become an entertainment industry. In
the words of a Chinese liberal whose employer was targeted last
year, nationalists discovered that videos about “antiChina”
treachery generate clicks. “If you have a lot of clicks you become
influential, and influence drives revenues.”
Chaguan asked Sai Lei why he started making nationalist vid
eos, after years of making explainer films about science and cars.
Before agreeing to a telephone interview the 30yearold, whose
real name is Li Sirui, asked for questions in advance, citing his dis
trust of foreign media. He described his suspicion, starting in
2020, that a hidden agenda lay behind what seemed to be growing
criticism of China. While relating his story, Mr Li mixed together
many things that shocked him: comments by President Donald
Trump about covid19; bbcnews reports about alleged forced la
bour in Xinjiang’s cotton industry; and unsourced titbits that he
had “read somewhere”, such as a claim that pandemic facemasks
donated by China “have Huawei chips in them”. He called such
claims “very clearly fake news” and added, “We need to be vigilant
as to what the intent is behind all this.” He insisted that his cam
paigns are not coordinated with officials in advance. “We are a
private company, we’re not connected to the government.”
In this grim moment, those under fire are struggling to discern
how closely clickbait nationalism aligns with the party’s agenda.
In the 1980s and 1990s overseas ngos and foundations were wel
comed as they brought foreign economists and legal scholars to
China and funded scholarships for Chinese to study in the West.
That era is over. Today’s Chinese leaders think the West at once
less useful as a source of knowledge and more likely to be hostile. Telling the Chinese that every foreigner is a potential spy
Now that they have fewer opportunities to cooperate with do
mestic reformers inside China, some international ngos have piv
oted to lobbying China to be a more responsible global actor, on is
sues from climate change to illegal fishing far from home. That is a
more confrontational role for outsiders to play. Pushing back at
critics creates synergies between clickseeking online national
ists and nationalsecurity hawks, who never believed that foreign
ers would help China without expecting something in return.
In November lawenforcement officials accused Rendu Ocean,
a nonprofit that surveys marine pollution around China’s coast
line, of collecting oceanic data that could be used by spies. Later
that month the Global Times, a tabloid often given exclusives by
state security agencies, warned Chinese working for environmen
tal ngos that they may be unwittingly aiding foreign “espionage
activities”, for instance when they host academic forums explor
ing China’s intentions in climate negotiations. Such hostility sits
awkwardly with President Xi Jinping’s stated ambition for China
to lead the world in “ecological civilisation”. For now delegitimis
ing critics with foreign links is useful. Whether that dynamiccan
easily be reversed is a problem the party will face another day.nChaguan
China’s online nationalists see hostile foreign forces at every turn