Question to the C's about China

[miguel angel]

So what are some reliable sources for those of us who have no acquaintances in China?

I would suggest you to download into your phone the app called "rednote". I learned about it on twitter when people was complaining in the usa about the closing of tik tok. I used it a few days and could watch amazing videos of really humble and polite Chinese people of many different cities or towns, content creators of different subjects. I think it is worthy a try.

 

[meadow_wind]

There is also the Weibo app where you can follow different political topics, celebrities or friends. The problem is that at this moment, it's all and only in Mandarin, thus a little challenging to create an account. I tried installing it only on my computer, but it won't work unless an account is set up on a cell phone first as a verified account. They said they will eventually release an English version. Time will tell.

What I noticed is that Social media in China is heavily "controlled" in order to be politically correct, as well as "sponsored" with different complex marketing strategies. Celebrities' lives are under the microscope at all times. They only say positive things or show sponsored products. And when there is an important event, their accounts suddenly all share the same message. Also, if they move 1 finger, their fans propagate 100 versions of the same video with different editing (and a lot of gossiping). I've read a few people mentioning that the fan culture in China is a little toxic. A good example is incident 227 (the banning of AO3 in China), known country wide, and it almost destroyed an actor's career although he had nothing to do with any of it; people went "nuts". The wiki explanation is a little skimmed, I found more info on Reddit, which is another place where one can find opinion-based discussions about subjects related to China.

Xiao Zhan incident - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org