Scaling Authoritarian Information Control: How China Adjusts the Level of Online Censorship

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211064536
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2022, Vol. 75(4) 1345–1359

© 2022 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211064536

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Scaling Authoritarian Information

Control: How China Adjusts the Level of

Online Censorship

Rongbin Han

1

and Li Shao

2



Abstract

Autocracies can conduct “strategic censorship”online by selectively targeting different types of content and by adjusting

the level of information control. While studies have conf‌irmed the state’s selective targeting behavior in censorship, few

have empirically examined how the autocracies may adjust the control level. Using data with a 6-year span, this paper

tests whether the Chinese state scales up control over citizenry complaints in reaction to a series of socio-political

events. The results show that instead of responding to mass protests and major disasters as previous studies have

suggested, the state tends to adjust the control level because of political ceremonies, policy shifts, or leadership changes.

The f‌indings help ref‌ine the strategic censorship theory and offer a granular understanding of the motives and tactics of

authoritarian information control.

Keywords

authoritarian information control, strategic censorship, Internet, China

The literature on censorship in autocracies has explored

the selective targeting phenomenon extensively (e.g.,

Bamman, O’Connor, and Smith 2012;Fu, Chan, and

Chau 2013;King, Pan, and Roberts 2013;Qin,

Str¨

omberg, and Wu 2017), with the focus on why the

government blocks certain types of content but not the

others. However, the level of censorship may not be

constant over a specif‌ic type of content. For example, to

celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the

People’s Republic, Chinese authorities banned “overly

entertaining”TV shows for a hundred days from 1 August

2019 onward, while promoting only 86 selected main-

stream propaganda TV series.

1

Such a ban instead of

targeting a specif‌ic type of taboo topic represents a scale-

up of the level of information control, albeit for a limited

time period. How to explain such temporary “scale-up of

control”on certain content during special time periods?

Building on the strategic censorship model by Peter

Lorentzen (2014), this article provides evidence on how

the Chinese state adjusts the level of control over online

information across the time. More specif‌ically, we address

the question: under what circumstances does the Chinese

government scale up the level of information control?

This article differentiates selective targeting in state

censorship, which has been heavily studied, from ad-

justments in the information control level and focuses

only on the latter. If selective targeting is about sorting out

what type of content is tolerated or censored, thus con-

cerns primarily with mapping the boundaries of expres-

sion, adjusting the level of control indicates the scenario in

which the state shrinks or expands the zone of permissible

expression. Using a metaphor of highway patrol here, we

are not studying whether traff‌ic police catching and

punishing drivers going above the speed limit of 65 miles

per hour but when and why the traff‌ic authorities tem-

porarily or permanently adjust the speed limit from 65 to

45 miles per hour. We operationalize adjustments in the

control level as changes in the volume of a broad category

of online expression—citizenry complaints about local

problems (again, not specif‌ic cases of such complaints).

We then test whether a series of socio-political events

have caused f‌luctuation in this category of expression by

1

Department of International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens,

Georgia

2

Department of Political Science, School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang

University, Hangzhou, China

Corresponding Author:

Li Shao, Department of Political Science, School of Public Affairs,

Zhejiang University, 634 School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang U Zijingang,

Hangzhou 310068, China.

Email: shaoli@zju.edu.cn