Back in May, there was a flurry of announcements from websites and social networking apps in China indicating that they would be suspending their interactive features – such as basic comment functions and so-called “bullet comments” proliferating across video in real-time – in order to carry out “upgrades.” In some cases, the suspensions were by all accounts permanent.
Users in China were quick to pick up on the fact that these were not at all about improving services, but rather pointed to a concerted effort by internet control authorities to restrict interactivity for the sake of convenience in exercising control over public opinion.
From midnight on May 28, the Qdaily website and App will suspend content refreshing for 3 months.
During this time readers can enjoy our past content.
Reader comments and other interactive services will be suspended.
Interactive features for Qdaily Research will appear in another App called ‘Very Strange,’ and readers can participate there.
There is no indication in the notice that Qdaily is facing anything at all serious. Nothing fatal, at any rate. But how is that even possible? How can any for-profit media venture simply live in cryo-freeze for a period of three months and then wake to the world again as a viable source of information?
In decades past, it was impossible in China to kill a publication or render it comatose without some degree of uproar. Just think of the international stink that ensued in 2006 when authorities ordered the shutdown of the respected Freezing Point supplement of the China Youth Daily newspaper.
But for propaganda controls, this is indeed, as Xi Jinping is so fond of saying, a “new era.” These days, an interesting, vibrant and cool platform like Qdaily could simply walk off into the sunset, without a fuss and without so much as a goodbye.
And who really cares? After all, there is always something new.
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