Why Does China Allow Freer Social Media? Protests versus Surveillance and Propaganda

Qin, Bei; Strömberg, David; Wu, Yanhui

doi:10.1257/jep.31.1.117

Cited by 353Social Media and PoliticsMedia Influence and PoliticsChina's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance

Why Does China Allow Freer Social Media? Protests versus Surveillance and Propaganda

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Qin, Bei, Strömberg, David, Wu, Yanhui·2017·Journal of Economic Perspectives

DOI 10.1257/jep.31.1.117

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Abstract

In this paper, we document basic facts regarding public debates about controversial political issues on Chinese social media. Our documentation is based on a dataset of 13.2 billion blog posts published on Sina Weibo—the most prominent Chinese microblogging platform—during the 2009–2013 period. Our primary finding is that a shockingly large number of posts on highly sensitive topics were published and circulated on social media. For instance, we find millions of posts discussing protests, and these posts are informative in predicting the occurrence of specific events. We find an even larger number of posts with explicit corruption allegations, and that these posts predict future corruption charges of specific individuals. Our findings challenge a popular view that an authoritarian regime would relentlessly censor or even ban social media. Instead, the interaction of an authoritarian government with social media seems more complex.

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The matching approach overcomes the potential problem in fixed-effects models with misspecified temporal lag structures arising from the assumption that independent variables are serially uncorrelated.
“This approach overcomes the potential problem in fixed-effects models with (misspecified) temporal lag structures arising from the assumption that the independent variables are serially uncorrelated.”
From Authoritarian collaboration and repression in the digital age: balancing foreign direct investment and control in internet infrastructure (2026) · cites this paper as [87]
The Surveillance section describes detecting collective-action events from social-media posts, while Conclusions and Discussion mentions regressions and a matched comparison of officials. Neither passage addresses whether matching overcomes misspecified temporal lags in fixed-effects models. Searches for that methodological claim and for serially uncorrelated independent variables found no supporting passage in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.75)
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Authors: Qin, B., Strömberg, D., & Wu, Y.
Affiliations: University of Hong Kong (HK)
Stockholm University (SE)
University of Southern California (US)
ORCID: Qin, Bei
Strömberg, David
Wu, Yanhui
Venue: Journal of Economic Perspectives
Publisher: American Economic Association
Published: 2017-02-01
Volume: 31
Issue: 1
Pages: 117-140
ISSN: 0895-3309 (ISSN-L)
DOI: 10.1257/jep.31.1.117
OpenAlex: W2581925873
Cited by: 353
References: 179
Citations by year: 2026: 27 · 2025: 36 · 2024: 50 · 2023: 60 · 2022: 42 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 34 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1
FWCI: 55.17
Type: journal article
Language: en
Open access: bronze
doi.org
Locations: The Journal of Economic Perspectives (publishedVersion)
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
The HKU Scholars Hub (University of Hong Kong) (submittedVersion)
Topics: Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance
Keywords: social media regulation, authoritarianism, censorship, Weibo, microblogging, protest, political surveillance, propaganda, corruption allegations, online political discussion

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Why Does China Allow Freer Social Media? Protests versus Surveillance and Propaganda

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