An online group critical of the CCP emerged after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Party reacted by attacking accounts and arresting netizens.
by Chen Tao
Bitter Winter reported in March that two “Rubao” YouTube channels were permanently suspended on February 13 after a series of suspicious CCP-backed copyright infringement reports. The good news is that after much media coverage and persistent efforts by the channel teams, the two channels were unsuspended in May, including Xiaochitang (小池塘) on May 10 and Xiaofanqi (小反旗) on May 12. But the CCP’s crackdown on the youth-led Chinese dissident movement outside of the Great Firewall is apparently not limited to the Rubao culture. The Chinese Communist Party(CCP) had also targeted the Great Translation Movement after the suspension of two Rubao YouTube channels in February.
The Great Translation Movement（TGTM，大翻译运动）is an online group that emerged after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its aim was translating posts by Chinese netizens inside the Great Firewall and some of the reports of CCP’s official media. TGTM exposed the CCP’s control and manipulation of the Chinese people, to show the pro-Russian, anti-American, and anti-Japanese populist and xenophobic stance prevailing in China under the CCP, as well as the negative social scene in some Chinese cities under the Zero-COVID policy.
Although the CCP-controlled media widely criticized TGTM as a deliberate attempt to “discredit” China by “one-sidedly” intercepting some of the more inflammatory comments on Chinese social media, the official Twitter account of TGTM stated on March 17 that its purpose was not to smear, but to faithfully translate lies to awaken people and move China towards freedom, democracy, and constitutionalism.
In addition to using its propaganda machine to criticize TGTM, the CCP does not stop using other means to suppress the group.
On April 2, the official Twitter account of TGTM was restricted from access by Twitter officials. At 19:00 on April 3, the restricted access to TGTM Twitter account was lifted. At around 1:00 a.m. on July 28, Twitter suspended the official Twitter account of TGTM, and the account returned to normal at around 2:30 a.m. the next day.
“On April 2, our account was ‘blocked’, but on July 28 our account was ‘suspended’, which was more serious. If the account is suspended, we cannot access the account, we have disappeared,” a TGTM Twitter account administrator who requested anonymity told Bitter Winter. Unlike the previous two Rubao YouTube channels that were suspended, TGTM ‘s Twitter account was not warned before it was suspended, nor was any reason given by Twitter after it was suspended. “We filed a complaint against Twitter during this period, but again they provided no explanation after unsuspending our account,” the administrator said.
The administrator also speculated that the two account anomalies were due to complaints Twitter received from the CCP’s online army of trolls and its nationalist supporters. “Almost every day they are reporting us, and we are receiving a lot of harassment and abuse. Our recent translation of some mainland Chinese netizens gloating over the assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the approach of the 20th National Congress of CCP may have been factors in this concentrated reporting leading to the suspension of our Twitter account,” he told Bitter Winter.
Bitter Winter also learned from informed sources that around June 10, CCP’s state security department conducted a “closing the net operation” against TGTM, arresting more than 40 netizens who had participated in TGTM online. One of the arrested netizens, whose net name is “Mao’s Return”(@maozedongguilai), suddenly appeared on Twitter four days after the arrests, claiming that he had only been “called by the police for a talk, nothing serious.” However, his friends generally do not believe that the person who later operated the account was the same “Mao’s Return” who was posting previously.
“The person who used his Twitter account three days after we lost contact with him was definitely not him, because not only did that account change its way of speaking, posting only irrelevant things, but it also didn’t like tweets as often as he used to,” a netizen familiar with “Mao’s Return” told Bitter Winter.
“The account only started liking tweets after we pointed it out, but the frequency of the likes was nowhere near what it used to be. After a week, the account just mechanically reposted other people’s content. We suspect that this account has likely been controlled by the police for the purpose of entrapment against other participants in the Great Translation Movement, but fortunately no one has fallen for it,” our informant added.
When asked by Bitter Winter about the arrest, the administrator of the TGTM Twitter account said, “We learned that the members arrested on that occasion were mainly from Telegram groups, and they were indeed participating in TGTM, but through a sort of parallel relationship with us. They were not involved in the operation of our Twitter account. As for ‘Mao’s Return,’ he did participate in the operation of our Twitter account in the early days, but he has since quit our Twitter account although he still participates in TGTM in his personal capacity.
Nevertheless, we strongly condemn such arrests conducted by the CCP authorities to suppress freedom of expression, and we will insist on carrying on the Great Translation Movement to expose CCP’s condoning of hate speech inside the Great Firewall, hoping that more netizens who support universal values will join us.”
Another member of TGTM Telegram group told Bitter Winter that after CCP-controlled media “The Paper” published an article on April 28 that exposed and attacked TGTM, the twitter account of @usedtosolitude, the administrator of TGTM telegram group mentioned in the story, was repeatedly logged in by unknown users. Her twitter account was also suspended shortly after the mass arrest due to numerous reports.
“The unusual logging in of accounts and the concentration of reports were clearly manipulated by CCP,” said the TGTM participant,” @usedtosolitude withdrew from online activity after being traumatized by the suspension of her own Twitter account and the arrest of her friends. But I hope that the outside world will not forget what the TGTM Telegram group has done and the persecution they have suffered. If the outside world is silent about the CCP’s crackdown on TGTM, it will only condone the CCP’s online censorship and political persecution outside the Great Firewall.”
