[FooBarWidget]

Censorship in China is completely orthogonal to whether the issue will be investigated or not. This is because censorship's primary goal is not to suppress anti-government information, but to supress collective action. Both pro- and anti-govt messages are censored if they have collective action potential. Conversely, anti-govt messages are not censored if they lack collective action potential.

Furthermore, the Chinese government is very responsive to citizens' feedback. This means actually addressing feedback by changing policies. Online criticisms and offline protests are common. Threatening the govt with collective action, increases response rate.

Thus, a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon is common in China: messages get censored and the govt does something about the issue.

All these claims are shown by research:

Harvard: Conditional Receptivity to Citizen Participation: Evidence From a Survey Experiment in China http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.703...

American Journal of Political Sciences: Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China https://china.ucsd.edu/_files/pe-2014/10062014_Paper_Jen_Pan...

Harvard: How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-...

At the end of the day, westerners will still not agree with how China works. But I think it's important to keep in mind that China works quite differently from popular imagination.

[rsj_hn]

FYI, it would help if you provided links to the cited studies.

[strogonoff]

I’d love to see an example of a pro-government message that had collective action potential (what kind of action would that even be?) and that was censored by the party.

[FooBarWidget]

From the paper:

> Another example is the following censored post supporting the state. It accuses the local leader Ran Jianxin, whose death in police custody triggered protests in Lichuan, of corruption:

> “According to news from the Badong county propaganda department web site, when Ran Jianxin was party secretary in Lichuan, he exploited his position for personal gain in land requisition, building demolition, capital construction projects, etc. He accepted bribes, and is suspected of other criminal acts.”

One way collective action potential is measured is by measuring the virality of a post.

[graeme]

“Let’s form a patriotic march to support the govt on day X”

If there are to be such marches, it is the govt which will organize them. Not bottom up action, not via any process which could generate alternate leaders, power structures, organizations, etc

[bmn__]

Anti-Japanese collective action, which nominally aligns with the interest of the government, would occur every year but it's clamped down early. When uninhibited, it culminates in riots where sushi restaurants, Japanese cars, buildings with Japanese consulates are torched and demolished.

The owners of those are fellow Chinese citizens who become understandably ticked off and come to the government for redress for the damage and can be a right pain. So it's less work to maintain public order and not let demonstrations like in 2012 spiral out of control.

[danielrpa]

> When uninhibited, it culminates in riots where sushi restaurants, Japanese cars, buildings with Japanese consulates are torched and demolished.

This is, then, ultimately against the government's interests and thus it is suppressed. The CCP would be completely okay with the torching of Japanese property if it wasn't against the state's economic/diplomatic interests (arguably such property would not even exist if it was against the state's interest).

So let's stop saying the CCP will suppress "pro government" speech.

[nradov]

The CCP is afraid of any unsanctioned collective action, even if that action is aligned with CCP policies. They don't want alternative power structures to arise which might challenge their authority in the future.

[FooBarWidget]

Done.