Religious Cyberspace Continues to Shrink in China

Two people use the Internet.
1/2Two people use the Internet. (Photo: unsplash.com)
The WeChat account of the Social Service Department of CCC&TSPM, the Chinese government’s umbrella organizations for Protestant churches, has become unnamed.
2/2The WeChat account of the Social Service Department of CCC&TSPM, the Chinese government’s umbrella organizations for Protestant churches, has become unnamed.(Photo: WeChat )
By Anthony Li June 13th, 2022

A Christian in China has been blocked from using an intelligent working platform for a year for “posting illegal religious content” there.

As the Administrative Measures for Internet Religious Information Services came into force on March 1, Christianity-related websites, WeChat accounts, and group chats have seen severe censorship.

After several complaints to DingTalk, an enterprise communication and collaboration platform developed by Alibaba Group, a Christian professional was recently informed that her post involving illegal religious messages violated one of the platform’s rules. However, she posted similar content in her daily work.

She had also encountered similar experiences in the past months. Unfortunately, she had been unable to send messages on DingTalk for three days, seven days, and even for as long as 28 days. Such a situation has been common in recent years. Christians are likely to be blocked on the platform after posting content concerning sensitive religious words.

As one of China’s most widely used workplace apps, DingTalk is an all-in-one mobile workplace platform that has integrated the basic functions of operation for companies, including instant messaging, financial examination and approval, and work report submitting. It has been popularly used within a company itself. 

With the escalating control of cyberspace, several products of the Alibaba Group, such as WeChat, and Alibaba Cloud Server, have seen severe censorship in the past years.

The WeChat account of the Social Service Department of CCC&TSPM, the Chinese government’s umbrella organizations for Protestant churches, has become unnamed. 

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