Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/10639381

This month the Weibo account Weibo Finance, which has more than 1.5 million followers, issued an instruction against posting any comments “that bad-mouth the economy”. The post appears to have since been deleted. Bloomberg reported that several other finance influencers had been told by Weibo to “avoid crossing red lines” and to post less about the economy. Weibo did not reply to a request for comment.

In a separate WeChat post, the ministry said: “Various cliches intended to denigrate China’s economy continue to appear. Their essence is to use false narratives to construct a ‘discourse trap’ and ‘cognitive trap’ of China’s decline, in order to cast doubt on the system and path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Topics that are considered increasingly sensitive in China’s economy include record high youth unemployment figures (the government stopped publishing this data in August), deflation, the struggling property sector and capital flight.

The restrictions have been building for some time. In June, three finance commentators, one of whom had 4.7 million Weibo followers, were blocked by the platform as a punishment for “hyping up the unemployment rate, spreading negative information … [and] smearing the development of the securities market”.