10 - The 2010s

Summary

Chapter 10 focuses on the the rise and fall of Guo Meimei, an Internet sensation in the 2010s. Presenting herself as general manager of the Red Cross Commercial Society, her ostentatious display of wealth on the online platform Weibo attracted scorn from netizens and led to an official crackdown on the (unrelated) hapless quasi-governmental agency the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) in 2011. Criticism of the RCSC reflected growing challenges to the legitimacy of the CCP in the burgeoning online protest culture of the 2010s, characterized by “human flesh searches” and “spectating,” with serious social issues presented in a humorous style to attract interest. This story reveals complex motivations for participating in online protest events, from genuine outrage to more mundane motivations. The case led to a lasting distrust of the RCSC within China, despite being officially declared innocent of wrongdoing, and Guo Meimei’s later arrest and imprisonment on charges of operating an illegal gambling den. A spate of unrelated online controversies likewise reveal the deep-seated crisis of trust in public institutions and their officials in the PRC today, in turn spurring the widespread adoption of online public-opinion survey reports, “civilized” website awards, and other forms of Party surveillance and self-regulation through semi-automated big-data mining combined with traditional “front building” and increasingly draconian legal measures, all of which are enabled by the more easily monitored and contained closed discussion groups of WeChat.