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35 New Persp. Q. 37 (2018)
The Rise of China as a Digital Totalitarian State

handle is hein.journals/nwpsp35 and id is 93 raw text is: The Rise Of China As A Digital Totalitarian State XIAO QIANG is an adjunct professor at the School of Information, University of California at Berkeley. He is also thefounder and chief editor of China Digital Times. Born in China, he has been living in exile in the US for 28 years. During its recent Lunar New Year gala show, state-run Chinese Central Television spotlighted a 93-year-old engineer who participated in China's first nuclear submarine program. The program, which broadcasts to an audience of over i billion national and overseas viewers, lauded this guest of honor for ded- icating his life to top-secret government work and for making huge sacrifices for the Communist Party. For 30 years, he made no contact with his family for fear of giving away his knowledge and only told his father what he did for a living when the older man was on his deathbed, the state report declared. Zhuo Baowei, a former lawyer in Shandong province, watched the broad- cast and was disgusted by what he viewed as blatant propaganda. Using the Chinese social media platform Weibo, Zhou wrote that the nuclear engineer was shameless for having not contacted his parents for 30 years. Three days later, Zhuo was detained by local police. He was held for io days and fined Soo yuan, or about $79, for his public criticism of the celebrated state hero. His ver- ified social media account was deleted by Sina, the tech company behind Weibo. Zhou's story is the latest example of how much stricter state control has become across the Chinese Internet, especially social media platforms. In China, censorship and propaganda go hand in hand, backed by the use of phys- ical force, including police visits, arrests and attacks by state media on people who have expressed controversial political opinions online. In China, censorship and propaganda go hand in hand, backed by the use of physical force, including police visits, arrests and attacks by state media on people who have expressed controversial po1tical opin- ions online. SPRING 2018 EM 3 37

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