The Center for Human Rights at the Catholic University of America has recently published an op-ed by Chen Guangcheng commemorating the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. To view this article, check the link in the description or go to humanrights.catholic.edu.
Will Deatherage: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China. My name is Will Deatherage, the producer. And joining me as always is Chen Guangcheng.
Chen Guangcheng: Hello, Will. Hello, everyone. I’m glad to see you here again today.
W: Yeah. So Guangcheng, what will we be talking about today?
G: Yeah. Today, we will talk about this special job in mainland China. Usually, we call it “five dimes.”
W: Why do they call it that?
G: In mainland China, the CCP controls everything. Online, the CCP asks the people to register to become commenters.
W: Okay. Yeah.
G: And every time they write one comment online, the CCP will pay them five dimes.
W: Right. 50 cents per comment.
G: 50 cents, yes. RMB, not dollars, of course.
W: Sure.
G: So all the netizens call them “five dimes.”
W: Yeah. Guangcheng, do you know how long this has been going on for?
G: That is, I think, around 20 years ago.
W: Wow.
G: Yeah. A lot of people work online for [the] CCP. So this is why any time, if the people share some video, picture, or documents to expose them – black box (the CCP censors them and they disappear); a lot of commenters come out to say some good word about [the] CCP. [The] CCP spends a lot of money every year [on] this.
W: Wow.
G: Yeah. And today, I want to tell our listeners the new situation. The CCP doesn’t want to just control China’s people, they want [to] control the whole world’s social media.
W: Right.
G: So last year, the CCP spent money to pay people to attack activists in foreign countries.
W: Okay.
G: And we just got news that the CCP [is] prepared to pay commenters in foreign countries now.
W: So, Guangcheng, what you’re saying is for the past 20 years, they’ve been paying people in China, but now they’re going outside of China.
G: Yes, yes. But the price changed. Now the CCP will pay the foreign commenters $5 every time they write a comment for [the] CCP.
W: Right. $5. Wow.
G: Yeah. Yeah. Much, much better than in mainland China, right? You can see the CCP tried to influence foreign countries. So we would like to let our listeners know the situation, so if, in the future, don’t feel surprised if you see negative comments about our podcast.
W: Right, so yeah, I think people can already see on a few of our episodes, Guangcheng, there’s a few very negative comments written in very poor English too, right, Guangcheng?
G: Yes, yes. Their English [is] not good, but they want to try to do the job. SO, they want to get money from [the] CCP, so they always try to do the negative comments.
W: And people can’t see it on the public end, but our videos actually get quite a lot of dislikes.
G: Yeah. Yeah.
W: A lot of people hit the thumbs down button, right? So…
G: For me, I think that is good news. We hurt the CCP, so [the] CCP uses this way to try to give us trouble. So that proves our work is very good, right?
W: Well, Guangcheng, are there any things that the United States government or other Western governments can do to prevent this type of influence? Do you have any ideas there?
G: Yeah. I think the US should spend some money to get some people to help them to understand where the commenters come from. I think that is very, very important in the future.
W: So, you know, if we discover that someone’s acting on behalf of the Chinese government, and commenting online, what do you think should happen to them?
G: I think if the commenter lives here, but they work for [the] CCP, I think the US would deport them.
W: When you say that they should be deported, that’s if they’re caught not just making bad comments, but if they are an agent for the CCP.
G: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
W: Like non-citizens.
G: Yes, yes. And many commenters will try to manipulate information about Americans’ politics to try and change American opinions, especially about elections.
W: That’s kind of a way of the Communist Party interfering with our democracy, right, Guangcheng?
G: Yeah. Yeah. The CCP wants to make [it] look like Americans are always fighting each other.
W: Right. And we talked briefly about the US government and how you say we should spend more resources finding people trying to subvert our media and elections. What do you think tech companies, like X or Facebook, what do you think they can do to stop this from happening?
G: Yeah. I think if the companies catch people spreading misinformation, then they should remove their account.
W: Right. It’s a common tactic for a lot of these accounts to post in Chinese, right? But these are American companies. And I know that in the past, a lot of these companies have spent a lot of money banning people on English-speaking accounts for having certain opinions. Do you think that these companies are doing enough to monitor non-English-speaking accounts, like Chinese accounts?
G: I think not. The big problem is, I think they employ people from mainland China to do the censorship in the US.
W: Gotcha. So these companies have already been infiltrated, then.
G: Yeah. If the China Communist Party controls the people’s social media, [there’s] no justice on that social media, right?
W: Right.
G: So anyway, I think the US should think [about] how to resolve the problem. If they want to get some ideas, of course, we can help them.
W: Well, we’ll continue to monitor that situation as always, and we encourage people to check out our website, humanrights.catholic.edu. Guangcheng, thank you so much for this information.
G: Thank you, everyone.
The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights has published a documentary on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The documentary features world-class human rights experts from former State Department officials, to ambassadors and human rights activists. It can be found on our website at humanrights.catholic.edu.