After a knife stab, Chinese Social Media Companies Faced with Carestream Supervision for Hate Speech | Technology

Taichung, Taiwan – For one user on the Chinese social media platform, Weibo, the problem was Americans.

“The British also make me nervous, but I hate Americans,” the user comment said.

For the other, it was a Japanese.

“I really hope the Japanese will die,” the user repeated 25 times in the announcement.

On the platforms of Chinese social media, it is easy to reach xenophobic and hypernationalist comments, even after some of the largest technological companies in the country have promised to suppress hatred speech after a series of knife attacks on Japanese and American nationals in the country.

Since the summer, at least four foreign nationals have occurred in China, including an incident in September, killing a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy in Shenzhen.

The attack, which took place on the anniversary of the event under the false flag that orchestrated the Japanese military staff to justify the invasion of Mandzuri, encouraged the Japanese government to ask for an explanation from his Chinese colleague, as well as the guarantee that he would make more to protect Japanese nationals.

After the incident, some Japanese companies offered the return of their staff and their families home.

A few months earlier, an attack by a knife injured by four US college instructor in Jilin tightened the relations between the United States and China, and US Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns accused Chinese authorities of not ready with the incident information, including the motive of the attacker.

Beijing, although he regretted the attack and condolences to the families of the victims, insisted that a series of knife stabs was an isolated incident.

“Similar cases could happen in any country,” said Lin Jian, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a regular medium briefing after the attack in Shenzhen.

Although the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo did not respond to the commentary’s requests, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC said that Chinese law “clearly forbids the use of internet to spread extremism, ethnic hatred, discrimination, violence and other information.”

“The Chinese government has always opposed any form of discrimination and hate speech, and invites all sectors of society to keep the order and safety of cyber space together,” a spokesman for Al Jazeera told.

Although violence against foreigners in China is a rarity, an obvious increase in attacks in 2024 and prevalence of hate speech on the Internet have encouraged concern in the country, said Wang Zichen, former journalist of Chinese state media and founder of Bulletna Pekingnology.

“It has launched a domestic discussion of this type of speech and how to restrain it,” Wang told Al Jazeera.

Despite the promises of Chinese technological companies that he will suppress hatred speech against foreigners, monitoring such content is not easy, says Andrew Devine, a doctoral the University of Tulana in the United States, which specializes in China’s authoritarian policy.

“Especially since it is [tech] Companies have incentives not to control hate speech, “Devine told Al Jazeera.

Although the algorithms used by the Chinese Social Media Platforms are shared with the Chinese government, they have not been discovered to the public, which makes it difficult to know the exact mechanism that spreads hate speech online.

Elena Yi-Ching Ho, an independent research analyst who focuses on propaganda and social media in China, said the algorithms used by the Chinese social media platforms are most likely not different from those using platforms outside the country.

“They want to maximize the engagement between the users on their platforms and want the users to stay on their platform for as long as possible,” Ho for Al Jazeera told.

In hunting users’ attention, for Chinese influencers and vlogers it can be lucrative to seek controversy with hypernationalist content, HO said.

In today’s China, a spotted lack of patriotism can cause public anger.

Last year, the Chinese Boca Bottle Production Company withdrawed its bottles from stores after the users of social networks claimed that the company logo shows the Fuji Mountain in Japan.

The internet condemnation has spread to the company owner, Zhong Shanshan, whose loyalty to China has been called into question, an accusation enhanced by the fact that his son has an American citizenship.

In 2023, stone and eggs were thrown at two Japanese schools in Qingdaou and Suzhou after Tokyo decided to release purified radioactive wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in the sea.

Wang said that spreading negative comments about foreigners on Chinese social media is partially the result of growing hostility between China and some other countries.

“Chinese relations with some countries have worsened in recent years,” Wang said.

China and Japan have been disputed around a number of historical and territorial disputes, including the status of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the Eastern Chinese Sea.

Relations of the US and China have also worsened in recent years in the midst of disputes about topics ranging from trade and origin of Pandemia Covid-19 to the claims of Beijing on the ownership of self-governing Taiwan.

But hate speech is preceded by some of these recent conflicts, according to Hou.

“And Japan and the Japanese were special targets,” she said.

Some Chinese bloggers and users of social media roots have negative feelings for the Japanese in what they call “hatred education” towards Japan, including abuse in China from the Imperial Age.

Wang said that the actions of Japan had a deep influence on the Chinese national psyche during World War II.

“Japan launched an invasion in World War II, which killed as many as tens of millions of Chinese, and that is still in the thoughts of many Chinese today,” he said.

“Some people have the feeling that the Japanese have not done enough to redeem themselves for it.”

However, some Chinese citizens claim that Japan’s beasts should not be used to justify the feeling of hatred of today’s Japanese.

“I think we have to change the way we deal with our past if we want to see less hate speech,” she told Al Jazeera Tina Wu, a 29-year-old social media manager in Shanghai.

While hate speech is not just a problem on the Chinese Internet, the Chinese Social Media platforms, unlike those in the US, operate in a very censored environment in which seizures on sensitive topics have a semi-stainful phenomenon.

China has the least free Internet environment in the world together with Mjanmar, according to a report on 72 countries of US non -profit Freedom House organization.

In 2020. More than 35,000 words related to Chinese President XI Jinping were subjected to Cenzura, according to China Digital Times.

Devine said that although some comments are full of hatred are subject to censorship, it is less likely that the content that reflects the official attitude of the Chinese government will be removed.

He said he did not believe that the promise of Chinese technological companies about the suppression of xenophobia and hate speech would do a lot to change the spread of such content.

“At the same time, technological companies want to avoid taking over additional monitoring costs,” he said.

Regardless of the incentives, social media platforms with more than a billion active users cannot realistically eradicate every example of hate speech, Wang said.

“There is so much information and it is constantly added that there is simply no way to eradicate or eliminate it all,” he said.

“Even Chinese moderation capacities have their limits.”

Wang said it is an optimist that a recent friendly exchange of China with some countries and the growing power and influence of the country will lead to less mood against foreigners.

“China should have confidence that he steps into the future with a greater sense of security and confidence instead of still being persecuted by the memories of the past,” he said.

The Shanghai Wu also said she hoped to see some of the dominant narratives in China, especially those related to foreigners.

“Currently, a large part of the Chinese story is that we are constantly victims of foreign aggression,” she said.

“And as long as it’s a strong message, I’m afraid there could be new attacks on foreigners in China.”