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• The Guardian
• Thu Apr 17 2025

It is 2013. For four full months, Liu Lipeng engages in dereliction of duty. Every hour the system sends him a huge volume of posts, but he hardly ever deletes a single word. After three or four thousand posts accumulate, he lightly clicks his mouse and the whole lot is released. In the jargon of censors, this is a ?total pass in one click? (????), after which all the posts appear on China?s version of X, Sina Weibo, to be read by millions, then reposted and discussed.

He logs on to the Weibo management page, where many words are flagged. Orange designates sensitive words that require careful examination ? words like freedom and democracy, and the three characters that make up Xi Jinping?s name. While such words regularly appear in newspapers or on TV, that does not mean ordinary citizens can use them at will.

Red is for high-risk words that cannot be published and must be deleted: ?Falun Gong?, the banned spiritual group; ?64?, representing June 4, the date of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre; the names of Liu Xiaobo and the Dalai Lama; ?Jasmine?, because, after the Tunisian revolution of 2011, several small-scale demonstrations that have come to be known as China?s ?Jasmine revolution? have made the Chinese government nervous.

After three years as a censor, Liu detests his job. He detests the white office ceiling, the grey industrial carpet and the office that feels more like a factory. He also detests his 200-odd colleagues sitting in their cubicles, each concentrating on their mouse and keyboard as they delete or hide content.

One afternoon, the office boredom is disturbed when Chen Min* in the next cubicle suddenly jumps up, limbs flailing ecstatically. He has uncovered Wang Dan?s Weibo account. All the censors know that Wang Dan, one of the 1989 student leaders, political criminal and exile, is considered by the Chinese government to be one of the most important enemies of the state. Finding him is a big deal, and the news is immediately reported to the Sina Weibo office in Beijing. It might even be reported to the public security bureau.

The following month, a senior manager comes specially from Beijing to highly commend Chen Min for discovering intelligence about the ?enemy?, praising his ?acuity? and ?high level of awareness?, and bestows on him a small bonus. All his colleagues applaud and shout in admiration. All except Liu. He sits amid the crowd and glares at Chen Min?s face, flushed red with excitement, and asks himself: is this worth it?

The day shift is 11 hours and the night shift is longer ? 13 hours. During the breaks, most of the censors sneak away to smoke and chat in the stairwell. Liu doesn?t smoke and has nothing in common with the others to gossip about. Bored stiff, he logs on to a VPN service to circumvent the great firewall of China and uses Google Earth to wander streets in unfamiliar cities, fantasising about the people there and their lives.

He often logs on to the Weibo webpage, not as a censor but as an ordinary user. On Weibo, his username is Ordinary Fascist (?????). It?s a satirical name but Liu is unsure whom it satirises.

Hardly any of the censors use Weibo themselves, and Liu never tells his colleagues that he does. It would not occur to them that Liu has so much to say on Weibo and posts so much ?unhealthy? and ?inappropriate?, let alone ?illegal? and ?reactionary?, content. Liu never gets into trouble. He knows all the sensitive words that are flagged and how to avoid them. In these days Weibo posts are limited to 140 characters ? that will change later ? and he resorts to all kinds of ruses to ridicule the Communist party and mock the government. He employs sensitive words, but the censors ignore them because they are too busy looking for those flagged orange or red.

In spring 2014, the Chinese government begins to purge influential Weibo users, the so-called big V ? as in, verified ? accounts. A journalist at the People?s Liberation Army Daily is so impassioned that he publishes a post on Weibo calling all big Vs vermin who must be dealt with severely. A few minutes later, Ordinary Fascist posts an extremely vulgar comment that essentially suggests the journalist should engage in frenzied sexual congress with his mother. This post generates even more comments and reposts. Many find the abuse gratifying, but no one knows that the author is himself a censor.

Ordinary Fascist is tasked with following more than 300 Weibo users, mostly big Vs, the majority of whom are people brave enough to occasionally criticise the political system. In the official view, they are ?factors of instability? and thus dangerous elements. Among them are journalists, professors, lawyers and even an occasional star of the big and small screens. Although most of their posts are tactful and restrained, likening the government to a violent husband or a pissant blowing their own trumpet, few realise that they are witnessing the pinnacle of freedom of speech in communist China, the golden age for a generation.

No matter how tactful, restrained and oblique the criticism, the Communist party still detests it. A lot of content is deleted, and accounts on Ordinary Fascist?s watchlist frequently disappear for no apparent reason. These people are banned from posting, their accounts are shut, and some of the individuals behind them are even arrested by the police.

Liu appreciates and sympathises with these people. He sometimes uses his powers to furtively lift the bans on frozen accounts and salvage deleted or hidden posts. Years later, Jenny Ho* still remembers Liu?s help restoring her frozen account. She is from Hong Kong and in 2013 publishes several posts about the Hong Kong protests. She is then banned and for several weeks cannot post anything. Just as Jenny prepares to register a new account, Liu sends her an email telling her he has surreptitiously unblocked her account. ?I didn?t know him, but he helped me a lot,? says Jenny. ?I often wonder, what sort of person is that? Why would he risk doing that??

From Liu?s point of view, there was no danger: ?If discovered, I might get a dressing down or lose a few points on my performance evaluation. The worst possible outcome would be termination, which was no big deal because I had already decided to quit.?

At this point, Liu has just turned 30. He has a childish face, though a few grey hairs have appeared prematurely. He is also unrealistically optimistic. His violation of workplace ethics is far more dangerous than he imagines. And even more dangerous is his collecting of Weibo censorship files. The most significant files are the censors? ?shift handover files? because they record the orders from superiors when a new sensitive incident occurs, when a new sensitive individual?s name or a sensitive word is added to the forbidden word list, and when instructions are issued on how to employ more efficiently the four lethal weapons available: ?delete, hide, stop, and make private?. Liu doesn?t know why he is collecting those files other than his belief that they are important: ?They are a part of contemporary history.?

When he hands in his request to resign from the job, Liu feels relieved. ?At last,? he thinks. ?I can finally leave this shithole.?

Five days later, as Liu is completing his resignation paperwork, he logs on to the Weibo back-end management page. He notices that one of the big V accounts he follows is cancelled. It belongs to the author Murong Xuecun. Me.

It is 2013 and I am a bestselling author and a verified Weibo user with a small blue capital V after my name. In a little over two years, I publish more than 1,800 posts on Weibo. Many of these posts criticise or ridicule the Communist party. They are wildly popular, generating countless comments and reposts. I am frequently praised for my bravery, but upon reflection, my indirect criticism and mockery is not true bravery. Everything I say is permissible. Everything I publish is also permitted. At most, I hit a few aces. In this, I am no different to many public intellectuals of this time who never point at the elephant in the room and call for an end to Communist party rule. Of course, should I say things like that, my account would be immediately cancelled and I would probably be disappeared.

By May 2013, I have close to 4 million followers on Weibo. Such large accounts are not handled by Liu. Weibo allocates a personal censor, known as a Weibo gatekeeper. Mine is Jia Jia*. Whenever I write inappropriate content, she phones me. ?Mr Mu, that post of yours won?t do. I deleted it for you.? Sometimes she tells me the names of the people and the events that cannot be mentioned, so I can take a detour around the forbidden zone.

She says ?we?, not ?you?. When she refers to such matters, she speaks softly, her tone suggesting that this is a consultation, as though she were a sister or a close friend. I never meet, Jia Jia but I feel obliged to say, I quite like her work style. Yes, she is a censor, yet she is so gentle in her work, so considerate, not lacking in human warmth. In China, censors like her are rare and precious.

I don?t know why my account is cancelled and no one tells me the reason. Jia Jia won?t tell me.

Xi Jinping has just ascended to power and hasn?t yet revealed his true intentions. Many people still place high hopes on him. They think he will take China on the path to democracy.

View image in fullscreen Chinese dissident Wang Dan addressing fellow students in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in May 1989. Photograph: AP

Soon, however, an internal document called Seven Things Not to Talk About (???) breaks their hearts. This document clearly shows Xi?s aspirations. It prohibits university-level teachers from discussing seven topics in class: universal values, freedom of the press, civil society, civil rights, historical mistakes of the Communist party, powerful bourgeoisie and judicial independence.

The day the document is leaked, I have a busy schedule. I give a public lecture at a library and then rush to a gathering. In the car on the way to this meeting, I write a short comment on Weibo. I suggest that the Seven Things Not to Talk About is just one thing: culture is prohibited.

The gathering is in a fancy restaurant in the centre of Beijing. There are a dozen or so of us ? professors, lawyers, journalists and human rights activists. We drink a few bottles of wine, eat some expensive dishes and discuss the future of China. At this time, many are confident the Communist party?s rule cannot possibly last much longer. China will have a bright future. ?The sky will soon be light,? a professor says to me. ?We will definitely see it.?

None of the participants foresees that, in 10 years, half the people around the table will be in jail. Some, like me, will be living in exile. Those still in Beijing will have long been silenced and will not utter a word. The optimism that we share at this distinguished gathering will feel illusory and distant, like a fleeting dream.

On the way home from the get-together, I receive a message from a friend whose Weibo account was closed the previous day. I, like most Weibo users, consider account banning a serious matter, so I publish a harshly worded question on Weibo: ?Who gave you the right to arbitrarily deprive citizens of their freedom of speech?? Retribution is swift. Within 20 minutes of this posting, my account is cancelled.

The Cyberspace Administration of China is the premier censorship agency in China. The newly appointed boss, Lu Wei, popularly known as the ?internet tsar?, begins to implement a series of severe purges of online speech. Countless accounts are cancelled, and many people are thrown behind bars for what they wrote online. But that?s just guesswork. In China, there?s no need for a good reason to block someone?s account. A powerful government agency can simply issue an order to make a person disappear from public life.

Many people feel my treatment is unfair. They light virtual candles for me and hold ?memorial services?. My Weibo gatekeeper, Jia Jia, the gentle censor, telephones me and, though apologetic, she, too, thinks I should be a little more careful. ?There?s no need for you to get into direct conflict with them, don?t you think??

She declines to tell me which agency issued the order, only referring to ?higher levels?.

I hope that, in consideration of our close relationship, Jia Jia will tell me the details, but she responds: ?I?m sorry, Mr Mu, I really cannot reveal this. You know we sign non-disclosure agreements. Please show me some empathy. I have a life, too, right??

It?s my last telephone conversation with Jia Jia. I then register multiple accounts, but each one is cancelled. I imagine Jia Jia is aware of this, but she does not contact me.

The next day, around dusk, my friend Yu Dayou* calls to tell me he received an email from a stranger. The email is about me and he forwards it. It is just one line: ?Please forward to Murong Xuecun.? There are two attached images. They are screenshots of the Weibo management page that contain detailed information about my account: time of registration, IP address, my mobile phone number, the reason for the deletion of each of my posts and the blocking of my account, as well as the answer to the question I pestered Jia Jia about: which agency and who ordered my account to be cancelled.

It is Liu?s last day at Sina Weibo. The handover is complete and his possessions are packed. He just needs to endure a few more hours and he can leave that putrid place for ever. Liu does not know me and has not read my books. He has read a few of my posts in his role as a censor, but they don?t leave a deep impression. He sees the momentous memorial for my Weibo account and then goes out of his way to look at the Weibo administrative page. At first, he doesn?t think much about it, but gradually an idea forms in his mind. Perhaps he can do something.

He considers rescuing the Murong Xuecun Weibo account but the order to cancel it has come from a very high level, so it is impossible to quietly reactivate it like other accounts, without anyone noticing.

Liu has signed the same censors? non-disclosure agreement as Jia Jia, though he is determined to violate it. When no one notices, he furtively copies two screenshots on to his own flash drive. He knows the value of the two images, but he can?t send them directly; he must find an intermediary.

Liu finds Yu Dayou in the list of Murong Xuecun?s followers. Yu is a not particularly successful businessman, and his words and actions never overstep the boundaries. Liu calculates that Yu will escape notice. Liu spends a little time reviewing Murong?s communication records to determine that Murong and Yu are in contact with each other. This is the one, Liu tells himself.

The time to leave arrives. Liu carries his scant belongings out of that grey skyscraper and walks a few hundred metres along the ancient Grand Canal that connects Beijing to Hangzhou, pondering whether to do it. Getting caught would certainly mean arrest and possibly a prison sentence. How long? Two years? Three years? At most three years, no longer.

View image in fullscreen Police arrest a man after internet social networks called to join a ?Jasmine revolution? protest in Shanghai, in February 2011. Photograph: Carlos Barr?a/Reuters

He walks into an internet bar, finds a secluded seat and registers a new email account with the username Nameless.

He sends the two images to Yu Dayou and adds a one-sentence message. After sending the email, he sits silently in front of the computer for a while, recalling the three years of his life as a censor. He thinks about his family and his girlfriend Alice*. In a few days, he will marry Alice. She probably will not understand the significance of what he has just done. Best not tell her, to avoid making her worry.

After 40 minutes, Yu Dayou replies: ?The friend asks, can this be made public??

Liu has already thought this through. As soon as the images are published, Sina Weibo will definitely try to track down the leaker. They may make a police report. Liu hesitates. He considers the number of people who have access to that page, at least three or four hundred. They would not necessarily suspect him.

?OK to make public,? Liu replies. ?In any case, they are unlikely to find me.?

He logs out of the email account and erases his browsing history. He then checks again to be sure he has not left any traces before he is confident enough to stand up. There are a lot of youths playing video games all around. They are engrossed with their computer screens and yell out chaotically. None of them notices him. Liu silently walks out of the internet bar, head lowered. It will soon be dark. He brushes his sleeves as though flicking off three years of grime. He walks quickly to merge with the people strolling at dusk.

The two screenshots Nameless sends me contain many names: Weibo censors, some censorship managers, as well as the name of the person who cancelled my account. And then there is Old Mr Chen, the editor-in-chief of Weibo. He was once my friend, but our friendship ends here. In his eyes, I must have become a ?sensitive element?, like a pathogen to be avoided.

The key name in the screenshot is that of ?Minister Peng?: Peng Bo. He has just been promoted to vice-ministerial rank, becoming a member of China?s privileged class, the lawless nomenklatura. He delivers speeches at meetings claiming he will ?thoroughly cleanse cyberspace? ? that is, he will eliminate all voices detrimental to the party, which is the reason he issues the order to cancel all my social media accounts.

One afternoon two months later, I cannot restrain myself any longer: I use a newly registered account to write a threatening post to Peng on Weibo. In it, I say: if my account is cancelled again, I will deploy all my resources to investigate your corrupt deeds and make them public. ?The day this account is cancelled is also the day you will be jailed. Don?t say you weren?t warned.?

These words are not me firing blindly in the dark. Before his promotion, Peng was a journalist, an editor and a publisher. We have many mutual acquaintances and friends and, despite the constant refrain of words such as ?honest? and ?upstanding? on his lips, many people suspect that he is corrupt and licentious. Common sense suggests that a high official with as much power as Peng is unlikely to be as honest and upright as he claims to be.

View image in fullscreen Peng Bo during his trial in 2022. Photograph: CCTV 13/Weibo

Perhaps that is why Peng is apprehensive about dealing with my threat. After about a month, my new Weibo account is cancelled. It?s around midnight. I have just returned to my apartment when I receive a call from the editor-in-chief of Sina Weibo, my erstwhile friend, Old Mr Chen, who featured in the screenshots. He sounds very nervous. He says the order to cancel my account comes from an organisation and has nothing to do with Peng. He admonishes me ?not to be used by others? ? that is, by Peng?s political enemies.

?Peng began his career as a journalist. He?s the same as the two of us. We?re all the same,? says Old Mr Chen. ?Moreover, when he cancelled your account last time it was not of his own volition. He was following orders so don?t fuck with him, OK?? Chen then suggests I meet with Peng for a chat. ?Now, just the three of us. We?ll go somewhere for a drink and talk about this, OK??

During the next two hours, I receive six phone calls like that from Old Mr Chen at Peng?s instigation. Apart from Old Mr Chen, a mutual friend calls to say something along the lines of: ?Don?t fuck with him. Starting a vendetta will not be good for you.? I ignore them all. I begin to draft a public announcement offering a 200,000-yuan reward for evidence of Peng?s corruption. And then Yu Dayou telephones: ?If you keep this up, Peng will be very dangerous. If you can?t beat him, the guy who gave you the tipoff will be in deep trouble. He helped you out of the goodness of his heart, so you can?t implicate him.?

Liu knows nothing of this. He does not read my essay and does not know about my war with Peng. In the summer of 2013, he marries Alice and holds a reception at a fancy restaurant in the city of Tianjin. There is a throng of well-wishers, relatives and friends. Liu drinks a lot of alcohol. He occasionally thinks of his former career as a censor, which still makes him feel nauseated.

After the wedding, a relative introduces Liu to a temporary job in a state-owned enterprise. Alice is carrying their first child. To earn more, Liu takes a job at a TV and film streaming service, where he is a quality control manager. The work has no connection to censorship, but he works alongside censors. Every day he sees new official censorship orders. Some of the orders are unbelievable. One variety show compere says he almost ?died laughing?. In subtitles, the word ?died? must be put inside double quotation marks, otherwise it is a breach of regulations. It?s as though viewers are considered not intelligent enough to understand an extremely simple phrase.

Liu begins to collate these orders. He copies censorship orders page by page, then uploads them to cloud servers outside China?s great firewall. After four years, he comes to believe the material is extraordinarily significant. He secretly vows that one day he will release it to the public.

As the censorship file grows, he becomes increasingly nervous. He has no illusions that what he is doing is more than enough for a three-year jail sentence at minimum. Five or six years is entirely possible, and eight or 10 years is not impossible. His son has just begun to walk and his daughter has just been born. If the police drag him away, the family will be destroyed.

Liu stays quiet. He refrains from making new friends and doesn?t share his true feelings with anyone. He walks around with his head lowered out of fear of attracting attention. In a city of 15 million people, not a single person knows that he is engaged in dangerous work.

By now I have vanished from public life in China; my books cannot be sold, my essays cannot be published. I live in isolation in a small apartment in Beijing. I frequently have money worries and I frequently think about Nameless. What sort of person are they? Why take such an enormous risk to disclose sensitive information to me? Yu Dayou and I agree that whoever they are, that person is extraordinary. ?If this riddle is ever solved,? says Yu, ?I will definitely treat that person to a good meal.? I, too, want to thank them.

Meanwhile, Peng?s political career progresses smoothly. He is constantly on TV and quoted in newspapers. He hosts meetings and publishes speeches that call for people to ?study well, publicise well, and implement well the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping?s important speeches?.

His power grows: in addition to managing public opinion on the internet, he is also responsible for the ?prevention of and dealing with cults? ? that is, the repression of and attacks upon faith communities. My religious friends are beaten and arrested. In 2018, Peng becomes a professor of journalism at China?s most important university, Peking University. In the classroom, he tells students: ?I?m not an official; I?m just a foot soldier in the line of fire.?

At the end of 2019 and in early 2020, Covid-19 spreads. First, in Wuhan, and then to the whole world. Within a few years, several million people lose their lives. In China, Xi pushes his cruel Covid policies that transform the country into a huge prison. At the slightest pretext, cities with populations in the millions are completely locked down. No one can leave their homes without permission, even to buy food. This applies also to people with urgent medical conditions or pregnant women about to go into labour.

Liu decides to leave China because he can?t take any more of living like a prisoner. He is even more concerned about the censorship materials he has collected. The Chinese government begins to deploy QR codes to control the lives of Chinese people: tracking codes, venue codes, health codes. No matter where you go, QR codes must be scanned and reported to the government to detail your movements and location. One little error and you are subject to searches or even imprisonment. ?If they look through my mobile phone, I?ll be finished,? Liu thinks. ?I have to leave immediately.?

But there are hardly any flights. Tianjin airport is closed. He takes Alice and their two children to Beijing and catches one of the last planes to Los Angeles. Once the plane is in the air, he is finally able to relax, even though he wonders whether he will ever be able to return to China. Later, he would tell me: ?It was like a desperate escape from a house on fire.?

View image in fullscreen An activist known as Grandma Wong is detained by police in Hong Kong, June 2023, during the annual Tiananmen Square vigil. Photograph: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

About the same time, I buy a train ticket and sneak into Wuhan, which is still under lockdown. I stay a month in the city, interviewing people about their experiences during the lockdown, then hide in a hotel in the mountains of south-western China, where I spend several months writing Deadly Quiet City: Stories from Wuhan. When the book is about to be published, I carry a single suitcase to make it look like I?m taking a short trip. I tremble with fear as I am leaving China. Until the moment I clear customs, I?m uncertain whether the government will permit this ?sensitive element? to leave China. Once on the plane, just like Liu one year earlier, I realise that I may never be able to return to my country again.

By this time, Peng is suspended from his job and under investigation. This means his government career is over. According to official reports, he has taken bribes totalling 54,640,000 yuan (?5.6m). People in China know that bribery is not his only crime, and perhaps not his most serious. When high officials like Peng are punished, it is because they have sided with the wrong political faction or shown insufficient political loyalty. Despite his constant studying, publicising and implementation of the spirit of President Xi, it appears that Xi still felt Peng was insufficiently loyal.

Meanwhile, Liu is enjoying his American life. The day they arrive in Los Angeles, his family eats at In-N-Out Burger. He likes it so much that he will make a tradition of going to this restaurant every year on this date to buy a few burgers, a big bag of fries and cups of soda. Every time, they raise their cups to commemorate their free lives.

One day, Liu sends me a direct message on X. He is excessively polite. He writes: ?Mr Murong, please forgive me for presumptuously disturbing you,? before asking whether I remember the email sent via Yu Dayou with the two screenshots. My heart is pounding. I say: ?Yes, I remember that. I wondered who sent that email. I am most grateful.?

We have a long phone call like long-lost friends. We describe everything we have done since leaving China. He says: ?I wish to testify that although I was a Weibo censor, I am not a bad person.?

I reply: ?I will speak on your behalf.?

Many publications report on Liu. He is praised for being like the secret agent in the film The Lives of Others, or a North Korean refugee. He eagerly takes a job at China Digital Times, where he works on editing the censorship files he collected. They are published one by one, making them freely available to anyone who wants to read them to gain insight into just how evil is the system in which he once worked. ?I used to be a censor, but now I?m engaged in anti-censorship work,? Liu tells me. ?It really is like a dream.?

Liu and I agree to get together one day in the future, either in Australia or the US. We will toast to our freedom and everything he did in that nameless era.

In my homeland, high-security prisons hold many of my friends: lawyers, journalists, priests ? whose suffering is interminable. Now Peng joins their ranks. In November 2022, he makes his final public appearance on TV at his trial. He wears a navy-blue Mao suit and thick, black-framed glasses as he stands impassively in the dock. Official reports say he has committed many crimes, including a ?collapse of ideals and beliefs?, ?disloyalty to the party?, ?engaging in superstitious practices?, ?violations of the rules against attending private clubs?, as well as accepting bribes for a total amount that includes the inauspicious number ?64?. He is sentenced to 14 years in jail. Peng declares to the court that he accepts the verdict and will not appeal.

State TV devotes barely two minutes to reporting Peng?s case. There are many closeups of this 64-year-old former high official, former professor and former ?foot soldier in the line of fire? framed between two towering police officers, making him appear weak and in his dotage. His remaining hair is completely white.

* Some names have been changed.

A longer version of this piece was first published in Made in China Journal.