Censors and Sensibility: How China’s Internet Auditors Feel About Their Work

China Media Project has published a translation of an extended article by Qin Shi at the Mang Mang newsletter, detailing the work and attitudes of some of China’s legions of low-paid, overworked online content reviewers. These foot soldiers of censorship must often review sixty or seventy thousand pieces of content per day, working long hours of overtime with few prospects for career advancement. While some are true believers in the work, others are simply grabbing whatever work they can find in China’s bleak current job market, and their attitudes toward the job vary from patriotic zeal to profound guilt.

“Becoming an internet auditor on political issues means filtering out information that could harm the country, ensuring that the nation is stable and peaceful,” [Wang Jiakai] says. “In my view, this is no different from the ancient generals who helped the state and the king suppress rebellions. My job is about assisting in maintaining order in the nation.”

[…] Once this “Mao fan” became an internet auditor, he found the work challenging. “I didn’t understand these people online who were always saying this or that about our country is bad,” he says. “What good does it do them to be so pessimistic about their own country? When I came across these people online, I would immediately shut down their accounts. Let’s see how well they sell out their country with no account.”

[…] “I don’t have the same strong sense of mission and values as he does,” Chen [Zheming] says of [his coworker] Wang. “I joined the company by chance, and if I hadn’t found this job I might have worked elsewhere. But to tell the truth, I didn’t find anything else.” For this reason, his choice to join the company was more just following the flow. The waves and current in that flow were the general decline in the Chinese economy and intensifying controls over online content in the face of the global pandemic, which meant more demand for internet auditors who could plug the gap. 

[…] “At the time [when I started], there were many people in Wuhan posting videos asking for help from the outside world. There were all kinds: asking for medicine, begging for food, and of course, even more people pleading to get to the hospital to receive treatment,” says Chen Zheming. “I would delete these and cry at the same time. At that time I felt like I was doing evil, but I couldn’t help it. It was my job and I had to do it.” This was the initial source of his psychological distress. [Source]

The article also discusses the role of “AI” technology in the censorship process, and the processes by which workers learn what to censor, either through formal classes or their own explorations beyond the Great Firewall. 

In October, Mang Mang published an interview with another censor, who used the pseudonym Chen Lijia. Some of the most relevant excerpts from CDT’s translation of the conversation are republished below. The attitudes displayed here lie somewhere between Wang Jiakai’s zeal and Chen Zheming’s despair:

Q: So, your purpose [in being a censor] is simply to make more money?

I’ve never felt guilty. It’s just a job. And if I’m going to do it, I should do it well. It’s really uncommon for anyone to “aim high.” [This is a reference to an apocryphal question from a presiding judge to an East German guard convicted of the last shooting of someone trying to flee over the Berlin Wall: “Couldn’t you just have aimed your rifle one inch higher?”] I doubt that really happened. It sounds like some intellectual dreamed it up. Could anything like that happen in real life?

That phrase “aim your rifle an inch higher” must have originated from the fall of the Berlin Wall, right? All day long, those guards were trained to do this or do that. That sort of environment must have completely eroded their sense of morality. There’s no way they’d ever shoot to miss. And if a soldier did dare shoot to miss, and got caught by a superior officer, can you imagine what they’d do to him? And how few people would even care?

Q: Does all this censorship and working with “negative” information have a negative impact on your mental health?

A: Nah. I don’t even feel politically pessimistic. To be honest, the only pressure from my job comes from worrying about mistakes. I’m very afraid of making a mistake, which is to say I’m afraid of not censoring bad content. As far as I can tell, none of my coworkers have any negative feelings either. Nobody cares about politics. These topics aren’t related to our daily lives. One of my colleagues is actually Mao Zedong’s biggest fan. Many see themselves as helping the nation avoid chaos and avoid societal instability. From that perspective, how could we feel pessimistic or worried about politics?

Q: Is there anything that makes you feel guilty?

A: Of course. For example, [content about] COVID and the Zhengzhou floods, as well as a piece called “Ten Days in Chang’an” written by someone called Jiang Xue. Deleting those made me feel very guilty. But of course, these were really obvious things. If I didn’t delete them, someone else would. They were too blatant. I couldn’t let them slip by if I tried. 

Q: How does your “guilt” manifest itself?

A: It makes me want to quit. But the people around me will console me by saying that if I hadn’t censored it, someone else would have. Some of my friends will also ask me what I’d do if I didn’t do this. Everyone knows that survival is the most important thing. Morality and ethics are secondary to survival.

Even so, 2021 was an extremely difficult year for me. The Xi’an [lockdown] and the Zhengzhou flood happened that year. That’s when my guilt peaked. I really wanted to leave the company and never work as a political censor again. But I couldn’t find any good opportunities. I feel conflicted about working as a political censor: it’s familiar work that keeps me fed, but on the other hand, it’s … painful. My guilt was even heavier during that time because I was living through the same things. 

Q: Do you think you deserve sympathy? If you were to step back and look at your work from an outsider’s perspective, what would you have to say about censors?

A: I’d say we do deserve some sympathy. If I were to judge us from the outside, I’d say we’re just a group of people struggling to make a living. It’s really that simple. There’s nothing that complex about it. As for questions of so-called “justice,” none of us think too deeply about it. If you can’t make a living, if you don’t have enough to eat, where’s the “justice” in that? Call it helplessness or call it tragedy, but for people on the bottom rung of society, we really don’t have any other choice.

I reject the moral judgements made about my job. Shouldn’t the middle class be the one subject to criticism? Why is criticism always heaped on those of us at the bottom? Instead, the question ought to be: Who created the position of censor? We’re just workers, after all. The problem isn’t the job; it’s the people who created this job. Critics should aim their barbs at the source of the problem, not at workers like us, who are just carrying out orders. Cogs in the machine are replaceable—if it weren’t us, they’d just find someone else to do the work.

I think there’s a phrase that sums this up well: responsibility should be commensurate with power and position. The common people shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of too much social responsibility. It’s already hard enough for ordinary people to survive, without having to bear the weight of so many expectations. [Source]

Though the problems facing China’s rank-and-file censors are particular in some respects, there is also considerable overlap with those encountered by content moderators elsewhere.