Blocking of AO3 in China

On February 29, 2020, the Chinese government blocked access to the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own (AO3) in mainland China. The reason for the block has never been officially acknowledged, but occurred shortly after fans of Xiao Zhan, who starred in The Untamed, objected to his portrayal in one fanfic hosted on the site and sent reports to the government. Chinese AO3 fans then retaliated against Xiao Zhan's fans by boycotting the actor himself, blaming him for not reining in his fanbase. As of 2024, AO3 is still blocked in China.
The Chinese government has blocked access to many foreign websites, and AO3's servers are located in the United States.
The blocking of AO3 and subsequent boycott of the actor by angry fans were covered in Chinese and international news, who reported that Xiao Zhan's fans had mass-reported AO3 itself to the government. However, competing explanations have circulated in different fan communities. Xiao Zhan fans argue that they never reported AO3, only the fanfic. Initially there was a widespread belief in English-speaking fandom that AO3 was blocked for its high concentration of LGBTQ+ content, smut, and other content that the Chinese government would disapprove of. The first accounts in English-speaking circles downplayed or dismissed the mass-reporting as a rumor. Many fans also noted that new internet regulations were already due to come into force in China on March 1, which might have caused AO3 to be blocked in a day's time anyway., published February 29, 2020 (Accessed March 1, 2020). I should also mention that a set of new internet regulations will kick in on March 1.
Ultimately AO3 may have been collateral damage in what would otherwise have been part of the normal life cycle of a Chinese BL ship."I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but acting in a BL adapted drama is the recipe to huge fame and a major way of producing 'top flow.' The disentangle and distilling of shipper fans had happened before, and the battles were already epic back then--though this one (227) did get much further than anyone expected and dragged in too many outsider." , fail_fandomanon comment, 2020-04-28.
==Name of the Event==
In China the events are often referred to as the Xiao Zhan incident (肖战事件), the AO3 incident (AO3事件), or the 227 incident (227事件). The Wikipedia page was titled Xiao Zhan Fans Reporting Incident (肖战粉丝举报事件), but renamed to Xiao Zhan incident in May 2020.肖战粉丝举报事件 (Accessed 12 April 2020)See talk page discussion: 
Some fans on twitter refer to the incident or the people as Tutu7., tweet by Lilly_Madelane, 5 September 2021., tweet by XZsbeautyspot, 29 Jul 2021., tweet by DianaSayan3, 16 Oct 2022., tweet by beaniezhan, 20 Jun 2021.
==Timeline of Events==
February 24, 2020:
*A Chinese author posts a new chapter of an Untamed RPF slash fanfic, featuring the pairing Xiao Zhan/Wang Yibo, on AO3 and Chinese blogging site Lofter and posts about it on weibo. The story, 《下坠》, is rated Mature, tagged Underage and m/m, and is an AU, with Xiao Zhan as a prostitute with gender dysphoria and Wang Yibo as high-school aged. posted to AO3, 2020-02-24. 81202 words, 13 chapters, 1360 comments, 19849 kudos, 900004 hits, and 268 bookmarks as of 3 March 2020.
*Fanart for the fic is also created and shared.
*Non-RPF fans of Xiao Zhan, called xfx, start objecting to the characterization of Xiao Zhan in the fic and in the fanart. Arguments ensue. The offending fanworks are shared more widely. 
February 26:
*Two xfx on weibo, 巴南区小兔赞比 (Banan) and 来碗甜粥吗 (though Banan is mentioned more frequently)Machine translation: "At 18:05 pm on February 26, Xiao Zhanweifan @ 来碗甜粥吗 and @ 巴南区小兔 Zambi first attacked the fan story [同人文] 'fall' and its author, is the frontline advance sent by the Xiao Zhan fan camp Squad." 1 March 2020, are alleged to have started a campaign to report the entire AO3 platform to Chinese authorities. Xiao Zhan fans have disputed this version of events, and many insist that only weibo posts were reported, but general consensus of the rest of Chinese fandom is that they reported AO3.
*Fans who reported then post screencaps of officials' replies.
*News spreads all over weibo, angering more fans.
*The fic writer changes her username and locks her fic on lofter.Machine translation: "I locked it, it's all right." , by mailedididi, 26 February 2020. (The fic is still up on AO3.) 
February 27:
*Fan creators in many fandoms start removing their works from Lofter and Bilibili., posted on Bilibili, 2 March 2020.
*Other fans on weibo start a trending hashtag 227大团结 (translated as 227 Great Unity or 227 union or 227 historical moment?).weibo tag, lofter tag. Fans from "every single fandom you can think of" join in.
*News of the drama unfolding on weibo starts to trickle in to English-speaking spaces, though most people don't notice., tumblr post, 27 February 2020., tweet by EG0ISTHYE, 27 February 2020. , tweet by cocohopezhang, 27 February 2020.
February 28:
*Xiao Zhan Studio blocks a trending hashtag, #肖战粉丝举报AO3# (Xiao Zhan fans report AO3). This backfires.
*Anti-Xiao Zhan fans crash an Olay livestream, and the spokesperson defends Xiao Zhan., tweet, 28 February 2020. (Xiao Zhan has a brand endorsement deal with Olay.)
*According to the Chinese Wikipedia article, the fic author gets doxxed and reported to her university. (A lot of rumors have circulated since, indicating that someone else entirely got doxxed. fail_fandomanon thread, 2020-04-25.) 
February 29:
*In the morning in China, OTW's official weibo account makes an informational post about RPF on AO3, AO3's warning tags, and the difference between erotic fiction and child pornography.weibo post, 29 February 2020 at 10:20
*In the evening, fans in China notice that they can no longer access AO3.
*The official AO3_Status Twitter account confirms that the archive "is currently inaccessible in China. We've investigated, and it is not due to anything on our end. We're keeping Chinese users updated on our Weibo.", published February 29, 2020 (Accessed March 1, 2020). 
*The OTW's official weibo account posts an update confirming the connection problems reported by Chinese users are not on their end and adds that they do not know whether this is a short-term outage or a long-term access restriction., published February 29, 2020 (Accessed March 1, 2020). 在过去的几小时中，我们收到了关于中国大陆用户无法访问archiveofourown.org的诸多询问，有些用户也表示他们能够使用ao3.org这个网站访问AO3。
*North Americans wake up to the news that AO3 is blocked in China. In a popular twitter thread Muge_Niu states that there is a "widespread theory" that Xiao Zhan fans reported AO3 because they don't like all the sexual fanfic about him. , tweet by Muge_Niu, 29 February 2020.
*Chinese AO3 fans log into various websites to give 1-star reviews of anything associated with the actor. As reported by NetEase Entertainment they also boycott products endorsed by the actor, and at least some of the endorsements are removed.粉丝恶意举报致平台被禁 肖战代言遭大批网友抵制, ent.163.com, 2020-03-01 Whether Xiao Zhan actually loses any endorsement contracts is later a subject of debate.
March 1:
*A new internet censorsorship law, 网络信息内容生态治理规定 (Provisions on Ecological Management of Network Information Content), goes into effect in mainland China. Among the prohibitions outlined in the law are spreading rumors, distributing pornography, "Insulting or slandering others, infringing on others’ reputation, privacy, and other legitimate rights and interests", or posting anything that encourages "minors to imitate unsafe behaviors, violate public morals, and induce bad habits..."Bruce Sterling. , Wired, 22 December 2019. (accessed 18 July 2020)See also .
*#WeLoveYouXiaoZhan trends on Twittergetdaytrends.com (accessed 11 April 2020), courtesy of international Xiao Zhan fans worried about the backlash against Xiao Zhan. (Twitter is blocked in mainland China.)
*Banan (weibo account @巴南区小兔赞比), the xfx who started the campaign, posts an apology to weibo, stating that she hadn't expected this to impact other fan circles and that she hadn't been in contact with Xiao Zhan's PR team but her own PR industry friends.post by @巴南区小兔赞比 to weibo on 09:29 March 1, 2020Screencap on Twitter shared on 29 February 2020: Another fan (an admin of the fan group Banan is a member of?) posts a request on behalf of herself "and other Xiao Zhan fans who hadn't made their stance known" for the fan to "resign from her position in management and hand back the access to admin."See Talk:Blocking_of_AO3_in_China. post to weibo by 安之无物 on 05:46 March 1, 2020
*Banan updates her weibo page with the slogan "I'm not wrong", undercutting the sincerity of her apology and angering people.
*Xiao Zhan Studio Weibo account publishes an official statement responding to the situation. In it, the team apologises for "occupying public resources" and "causing trouble for everyone". The post thanks fans for their "love and support" while noting that people should be sure to protect themselves during the coronavirus pandemic. It states that Xiao Zhan himself is isolated following official advice about the epidemic, and closes expressing the hope that everyone could "return to work safely, live happily, be calm and peaceful and work together for a better tomorrow."大家好，这里是肖战工作室。 (Hello everyone, Xiao Zhan Studio here). Posted to Weibo, March 1, 2020. Accessed March 1, 2020.
*Chinese fans notice suicide notes posted to weibo. Youtuber AvenueX reports seeing six suicide notes by young fans, both AO3 users and Xiao Zhan fans, with one actually hospitalized.AO3 Being Blocked in China and Xiao Zhan - What Happened, youtube video by AvenueX, posted 1 March 2020. (AvenueX doesn't name her sources in the video, but one source may be the same "Xiao Zhan fans sneak attack on AO3" article that was circulating everywhere; her description of the events matches the article's.)user:aethel: One of my mutuals said that one of her students was mutuals with the person (still) in the hospital. 6 March 2020. NetEase Entertainment reports on the suicide notes as well.事态升级！肖战粉称为偶像偿命 平台写手晒"遗书", ent.163.com, 2 March 2020.Translation of the suicide notes from the article: see talk page. An apologist for Xiao Zhan posted on Weibo: "Please stop coming at Xiao Zhan, snowflakes. I’d pay my life for everything. Does that sound good to you, […]?" "[…], you don’t have to put on an act anymore. I’ll jump from here. No worries, I’ve only got such a few followers; they won’t trace you down, but you know you’re responsible for my death. Goodbye Internet." An AO3 user posted on Weibo on March 2nd: "This might be my last post. […] This is not revenge, but merely some words spoken in peace. Thank you. Please keep creating. Love will never die out. Creation will live all along." There are also false alarms and one person is later arrested by the police in the name of public-order crime.See talk page.
*Some xfx apparently responds to the suicide notes and wishes for their deaths. This escalates matters further."This is why there's so much anger directed at this group of rabid Xiao Zhan duwei, and the fan wars keep escalating, because they just keep lashing out at more and more different groups the more criticism they get." 2020-03-01.
*The fic writer posts an update on Lofter denying rumors that she was doxxed or expelled from university. "Continuing to spread false information about me is likely to further intensify the conflict. Personally, I don't want this tit-for-tat, eye-for-eye confrontation between groups to continue."Machine translation of , by mailedididi, 1 March 2020. This is the last post on this lofter account.
March 2:
*Various Chinese media outlets and websites publish the events leading up to AO3 getting banned in China.
*The Chinese Wikipedia article is created: 肖战粉丝举报事件 (Xiao Zhan fans reporting incident). (Wikipedia is blocked in mainland China.)
March 3:
*OTW's official weibo account posts an update affirming that the AO3 website is still up, no works have been deleted, and the block is on China's end. They further state that the OTW has not been contacted by the Chinese authorities., 3 March 2020.
March 4:
*Xiao Zhan Studio announces that their accounts on non-Chinese social media sites were hacked.
March 6:
*National Business Daily reports that Olay, one of the brands endorsed by Xiao Zhan, is under investigation by tax authorities after people reported it to China Consumers Association., 2020-03-06., Jing Daily, 14 March 2020.
March 7:
*OTW's official weibo account posts an update stating that the redirect archiveofourown.com is no longer working in mainland China., 7 March 2020.
March 11:
*The Procuratorate Daily, a state-run legal newspaper, weighs in on the Xiao Zhan incident. One article mentions magnusbene's 2016 tumblr post Honestly I don’t even care why ao3 was created as its example of how AO3 has "always" been controversial. Five articles are published, and Xiao Zhan fans argue with the newspaper, saying it doesn't understand the law.
April 21:
*Xiao Zhan Studio posts a weibo update saying they are pursuing legal remedies against anti-Xiao Zhan fans spreading misinformation about him.
April 27:
*Xiao Zhan's parent company allegedly pays weibo to delete the accounts of prominent boycotters."I don't know if it got out to the English speaking world, but there was an incidence ~10 days ago that, in short, attracted a lot more boycotters. In essence, the company behind his studio paid sina weibo in order to delete more than a dozen of the most vocal boycotting accounts on the night of 4/27. All of them had quite some following, so there were countless witnesses. This happened ~10 min after when XZ posted a vague sentence of (non?)apology on his own official weibo that did not address anyone or anything specifically. Naturally, this lead to another wave of rage, which, in turns, lead to new conflicts..." , 2020-05-08
May 6:
*In a video interview, Xiao Zhan apologizes for things he said on weibo before he was famous (that were dug up by anti-Xiao Zhan fans after the AO3 incident). He also says, "If it's because of such controversies that have impacted netizens and given them trouble, I want to sincerely say I'm sorry to them right here." He denies having a "boss/employee relationship" with his fans and then provides guidance: "to the people who like and support me, I hope they won't do anything so extreme that would hurt others, hurt themselves." 38jiejie.com, 6 May 2020. Xiao Zhan fans react by saying that he didn't need to apologize. Other people argue that he hadn't actually apologized for the reporting itself.
July 4:
*OTW's official weibo account posts an update on AO3 proxy servers and mirror sites. (accessed 18 July 2020)
July 13:
*Cyberspace Administration of China launches a summer Internet cleaning campaign focused on toxic idol fan behavior.Jiayun Feng. , supchina.com, 14 July 2020. (accessed 18 July 2020)
*The official Weibo Administrator account announces that they have been in talks with Xiao Zhan's PR team and that the team agreed to make more of an effort to restrain fan behavior. Weibo also closes several fan accounts "due to attacks on media organizations and the release of false information to guide the war, according to the relevant community rules." Banan's account is on the list. (accessed 14 July 2020)
August 14:
*AO3 rolls out a new banner that displays when users access the site via a proxy, warning them that a third party will see their password if they try to login., 17 August 2020.
February 27, 2021:
*For the anniversary of the 227 event, Xiao Zhan posts an apology message on his weibo account.(Chinese) 38jiejie: (English translation and writeup) 
==Fan Commentary & Discussion==
===General Commentary, Fan Reactions===
===Link to The Untamed Fandom, Wank & "Antis"===
When AO3 was banned, Chinese fandom was already in the midst of drama between fans who liked RPF featuring the actors Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo from The Untamed and non-RPF "solo" fans of Xiao Zhan. The latest round of drama was caused by one fanfic writer sharing links and fanart on Chinese social media of their latest Wang Yibo/Xiao Zhan fanfic, an AU featuring Wang Yibo as a high school student and Xiao Zhan as a prostitute and either a cis woman, cross-dressing gay man, or trans woman, depending on whether you were looking at the fanart or how far into the fic you read (see 《下坠》). Many fans of the ship (called BJYX) liked it, and posts about it spread quickly. The non-RPF Xiao Zhan fans, known as xfx, thought that portraying Xiao Zhan as feminine or a prostitute in fanworks would damage his career, and they felt the need to defend him. Word had spread rapidly that a group of xfx were engaging in a concerted campaign to have the archive banned by the Chinese government, and other fans were already fighting back against the xfx.
AO3 actually being banned increased the importance in people's minds of figuring out who to blame. Many people blamed xfx, and many also blamed Xiao Zhan himself (not without reason; see below). Targeting his career may also have been a method of punishing his fans. As a result, Xiao Zhan himself became a target, as people rushed to down-rate all of his shows on douban and boycott all of his brand endorsements. Of course, plenty of fic fans and other Untamed fans, not just the xfx, also liked Xiao Zhan and were upset by these developments, arguing that he should be left out of it. Many xfx insisted that it was simply individual fics or Weibo posts that had been reported, not AO3 as a whole, and that they were the target of a smear campaign by anti-Xiao Zhan fans. 
Due to the language barrier, when word that AO3 was blocked in China reached English-speaking fandom, the connection between The Untamed fandom drama and the ban was not as apparent and thus was treated with more skepticism. An added difficulty was that a lot of evidence had already been deleted and was only circulated in screencaps that couldn't be translated with machine translators. Moreover, the news coming out of Chinese fandom sounded bizarre and implausible to people unfamiliar with Chinese idol fandom and the entertainment industry. Many fans thought that the AO3 reporting spree was simply an unverified rumor. A lot of Chinese fans showed up on English twitter to give their version of events; the first to arrive seem to have been Xiao Zhan fans saying it wasn't their fault.For example: tweet by kg6373, 28? February 2020."The huge XZ fan accounts who do know what’s happening in mainland immediately started spreading the narrative that the gov’t was going to shut down ao3 regardless and that really just picked up like wildfire among all the people who followed them." Note that Twitter is also banned in mainland China.
Other Western fans, learning about the wank, drew parallels with anti-shipping and purity culture, in part because Western antis had been heavily criticizing AO3 and had even started a campaign to report AO3 to the FBI on the grounds that it hosted child pornographyThe FBI reporting was widely discussed; see AO3 is open source."have you reported archiveofourown.org for pedophillia to the fbi? well you should. here’s the link." by finnvanhelsing (formerly muslimfinn)"2k18 let’s pray ao3 gets destroyed by an FBI crackdown!" by lunaaltare. Some fans were angered by this meta-narrative, either because it ignored cultural differences between Western and Chinese fandoms or because anti-antis seemed to be overlooking the real issue--censorship in China--in favor of scoring points in their own arguments with anti-shippers. Some Western anti-shippers also weighed in, expressing varying degrees of satisfaction with the Chinese government's censorship of AO3.For example, this tweet was discussed on fail_fandomanon: tollmetron. , 29 February 2020. , ffa thread started 1 March 2020.Another example: lesbianweiying. , tweet, 29 February 2020.An ONTD post on the AO3 ban had people in the comments claiming AO3 hosted child porn: , 29 February 2020.
The various discussions of "antis" may have caused some confusion, as anti-fans in Chinese fandom are fans who hate on idols,"... wow, in the replies to this comment I still see the misunderstanding. Cfandom antis 黑粉 are more like classic haters, less like Western fandom antis. Like, they wouldn't say 'so-and-so is a pedo,' just 'so-and-so sucks at acting and is shamelessly riding others' coattails' or whatever." , anonymous comment on fail_fandomanon, 2020-02-29. and the anti-Xiao Zhan fans are ostensibly the angry AO3 users who lost access to AO3 (and sympathetic passers-by, but some may actually be just opportunistic trolls), rather than the fans who did the reporting. For example, the March 1 Vox article incorrectly reported that "critics of Xiao Zhan" were the ones who targeted AO3. To muddy the waters even further, the reporting backfired so spectacularly on Xiao Zhan fans that some people started accusing the fans involved in the reporting campaign of secretly being anti-fans."During the XZ thing, some people were labelling the people who reported AO3 as antis who were undercover and pretending to be fans. There definitely was a portion of people who WERE antis in disguise, but most of them were not. This lead to a lot of jokes along the lines of "there are more 'undercover XZ antis' than actual fans at this point", or "XZ fans are doing antis' jobs for them". , April 2020 Reddit post.
===Would AO3 Have Been Blocked Anyway?===
Xiao Zhan fans may have reported AO3 to the Chinese government, but people have been arguing ever since over whether AO3 getting blocked was a coincidence. Many people, both inside and outside China, believed the reporting action either had no effect or merely hastened the inevitable. Other people argued that AO3 could have continued to fly under the radar if the xfx hadn't brought it to the government's attention in such a public way. Some people acknowledged that we would never know for certain.
Part of the problem was that the Chinese government does not announce website blocks or give advance notice or rationale; the website is suddenly inaccessible, and people have to guess the reason.
Fans put forward several reasons for why AO3's block was inevitable:
*the website hosted content that was already illegal in China
*so many Chinese fans had started using the AO3 as a way to get around China's censorship rules that it made the news.Gita Jackson. Kotaku, 24 June 2019. Therefore, the government was bound to notice.
*New Internet censorship rules were slated to take effect on March 1, a few hours after the block was noticed.According to fail_fandomanon, the law in question is called 网络信息内容生态治理规定 (Provisions on Ecological Management of Network Information Content). . Wired's English translation. Stanford's English translation.
Examples of February 29-March 1 discussions on Twitter and Tumblr:
However, some fans started asserting, without evidence, that AO3 was definitely already scheduled to be blocked by the government, no question. This version of the argument seems to have been adopted widely among Xiao Zhan fans. The confusion may have been caused by the fact that the new law (but not any specific target) was announced in December, so people knew that the law was coming. (It has also been suggested that some Chinese fans were knowingly spreading misinformation to the international fanbase to protect Xiao Zhan.)
thumb|April 28 twitter search result for ao3 scheduled blocking
March 1 tweet:
March 1 Reddit thread:
March 2 Reddit comment:
March 31 tweet:
===Did Xiao Zhan Fans Report AO3?===
Xiao Zhan fans definitely reported something, but it's complicated.
Many Xiao Zhan fans have been arguing since the incident that only the fic/the weibo posts/the fic writer was reported and that therefore AO3 being blocked was not their fault. On February 27 xfx were already arguing that they had not reported the platform but only the weibo links and that the many, many people who were angry at them had been confused by Banan's tutorial pictures showing a screenshot of the fic on AO3. It was suggested that bad actors had deliberately escalated the situation by spreading misinformation about what the reporting campaign entailed.See comment thread started by 贯彻爱与真实的邪恶D in , 27 February 2020. "What Banan asked to report was always on Weibo. The picture she brought was to popularize the handwritten text to fans. That’s why there was the picture of ao3, but she didn’t put any external links of ao3 to let fans know. to report." xfx on twitter also tried to make the case that the popular understanding of xfx having reported the platform was the result of a disinformation campaign."Xfx saw and wanted The WEIBO acct to be removed. Not the platform (ao3)... Yxh used this to spread the rumor that xfx got ao3 closed down by reporting it and are the ones that gave lofter the low ratings. When in fact xfx has been asking people to rate it 5 stars to offset the low ratings." (yxh are "marketing accounts" that can be hired to do astro-turfing.) , 28? February 2020."Blocking AO3 has nothing to do with XZ fans... that narrative was spread by yxh and professional black PR as excuse for 227 but as you can see official media investigated and it's proven their innocence." , Sep 26, 2021. As of 2023, some twitter accounts are still spamming replies with this line at people who talk about the incident.2022 example: , tweet by RedRose_1005, 19 July 2022. ("1005" is Xiao Zhan's birthday.)May 2020 example of spamming: , by aethel, 11 June 2020.Two identical tweets by almightygodxz: , , 9 March 2023.
On the other side of the argument is everyone else, including media outlets, saying that the fans did report AO3 to the government, and backing up their claims by posting the screencaps of now deleted posts showing the original fan campaign. Screencaps are more difficult to machine-translate than text, so fans who don't read Chinese have to take someone's word for it.
Based on a translation of Banan's weibo posts, it appears that Xiao Zhan fans' claim that they didn't report AO3 itself is technically correct (or not disprovable at least), but this distinction matters only to Xiao Zhan fans. It's also possible, even likely, that some of the fans did include AO3 links in their reports; even if Banan knew enough not to report it, the reporting campaign seems to have gone viral, so many of the fans who participated wouldn't necessarily know anything about AO3 or why it should be kept out of the reports. Regardless, everyone else came to the conclusion that the government reacted to the reports by blocking archiveofourown.org. Because AO3 is a foreign website, Chinese authorities don't have the power to get selected content removed from the site like they do with Chinese websites.
No one really knows how the report system works, but both sides of the 227 conflict had a theory that placed blame on the other side. During the initial reporting spree, bjyx fans worried that the AO3 links in xfx's many reports would trigger an automatic blocking of the website. Meanwhile, xfx, who argued bjyx fans were wrong to publish links on weibo to the unsavory fanfic and draw attention to it on a public platform used by minors, also claimed that the excess internet traffic to AO3 caused by interest in that fanfic would be detected by government systems and trigger a block.
On February 26, this post was forwarded by Banan, who added, "This kind of thing is calculated according to the traffic. When the external website reaches a certain traffic, it will automatically start the wall. It does not need any declaration and is fully automatic."Machine translation of "墙这种东西是按流量计算的,外网网站达到一定流量自动起墙,不需要什么申报,全自动的。" , February 26 screencap evidence on github. After the block happened, xfx continued using this theory of why AO3 got blocked.See talk page. See also this post by weibo user 天涯有侠气: , 15 September 2020. "After the event was fermented, many curious hunters began to cross the wall and log on to the AO3 website, resulting in abnormal traffic, the prevention mechanism was triggered, and the website was blocked." (machine translation)
An anon on fail_fandomanon pointed to a more plausible version of the argument: that the overall increase in AO3 traffic from China due to the coronavirus lockdown in February may have attracted the government's attention."Someone else made the comment (in Chinese, don't know how to track it down again) that traffic to AO3 increased naturally during the lockdown. A sudden increase of people with more time on their hands and only the internet for interactions with people outside their families. This person said it was possible AO3 was put on a block-list - or at least a further investigation list - when the amount of traffic to the site went beyond a certain threshold." , fail_fandomanon, 2021-01-01. Was there a detectable increase of site traffic caused by the one fic as opposed to Chinese AO3 traffic in general? As of March 2, the story had 845,739 hits, but it is unknown how many came from China before the block.《下坠》by MaiLeDiDiDi. Wayback machine copy from 2 March 2020. China is also the most populous country in the world, and Chinese fics on AO3 often have higher hit counts than English fics. As of December 2020, the top five most popular works on the archive by hit count are in Chinese; the second-most popular was posted in 2019, long before the ban.Using the Search Works page and sorting by hit count on December 13 yields: 1. 2. 3. 4. and 5. .
Banan, the fan leading the campaign, said in one post that they "didn't care about either underground publications or AO3," and they only wanted to "defend their rights and interests" because they believed "the reference to celebrities in porn fan-fiction is demeaning them and violating their right to reputation."screencap of a weibo post by Banan (archived), translation by djiange. 19:25 26 February 2020. 来碗甜粥吗 made a similar statement, claiming that Xiao Zhan fans' target was "the authors who write [underage] [prostitute] literature on public platforms such as [Weibo], not the platform or other creators."Marchine translation of "XZf只针对在【微博】这种公开平台撰写【未成年】 【PC】文学的作者本人,不针对平台,也不针对其他创作者。" It appears that attaching the AO3 link/screencap to their reports was meant as evidence of the author's misconduct. 
Banan provided instructions on how to report to the government and advised fans to use their real names as those reports would be taken more seriously. One post read,
If XZ fans weren't trying to get AO3 blocked, that leads to questions about what they hoped would be the result. As noted on fail_fandomanon, most people didn't believe their claim that they only wanted to get a weibo post taken down, because "weibo reporting is very easy and absolutely requires no govt intervention.", ffa thread, 4 March 2020. Instead, they may have wanted to get the fic writer arrested. Banan said in a draft of the report that the author and those who help distribute her work should "be legally liable for their behavior"screencap of a weibo post by Banan (archived), translated by djiange. 16:24 26 February 2020. but they didn’t take any justifiable legal action like suing her; they chose to report instead. Although reporting illegal content to the government censors is a common thing in China, it means no fair trial or other basic rights that one is supposed to have when facing charges.
===Chinese Censorship===
 
In response to news of the block, at least one Western antishipper argued that "censorship of dangerous and harmful content is good".tollmetron. , tweet, 29 February 2020. (Note that this is the same person who authored the tumblr post Honestly I don’t even care why ao3 was created.) Others took the view that what China did wasn't censorship (because it was good):
It's not clear how many had similar views, but it made an impression on other fan communities, such as fail_fandomanon:, 2020-03-11.
At least one anti-shipper weighed in to condemn both Chinese censorship and Western anti-antis for comparing anti-shipper views to Chinese censorship."I’m screaming ao3 is literally banned in China now which is fucking awful and y’all are really out here saying “ah yes this is what the anti shippers want” are y’all fucking okay? really? ah, yes, we who do not like incest and pedophilia but still enjoy fanfiction very much agree with the banning of an *entire* website ABOUT FANFICTION. i am absolutely FLOORED by this like …" , 18 March 2020. Meanwhile, other commentators noted that what happened in China was the future antis wantedAt least one tumblr user literally said this: "The future anti-shippers want." . Catchphrase/meme: "This is the future that liberals want.", and also that censorship of "pornography" was in practice a tool for oppressing women and LGBTQ+ people. The Chinese government can declare anything obscene, to get rid of people it doesn't like, because it's a totalitarian dictatorship and not a democracy.
Discussions about how Chinese censorship laws relate to the AO3 ban played out differently inside mainland China vs. outside. Inside, fans are constrained by the censorship laws themselves, as well as weibo's self-censorship, and any too-critical posts might not be visible on the site very long. These factors may have contributed to the campaign to destroy Xiao Zhan; an individual is a safer target than the government. 
Some fans have also argued that placing the blame with Xiao Zhan for not speaking up is nonsensical since to appease AO3 fans he would have to criticize the government's block, which is unwise. (Others argued that he could have discouraged toxicity in his fanbase before the AO3 incident; his fans already had a bad reputation.) 
Before AO3 was blocked, xfx initially argued that reporting the website to the government was their "right" as citizens. 1 March 2020. Post-ban, some xfx appeared to be arguing that people should blame the Chinese government instead of Xiao Zhan or his fans. Other people advanced the counterargument that xfx were trying to shift blame away from themselves and that the government was not at fault. Fans outside China condemned the Chinese government, and some argued that it was possible to blame everyone for the part they played. However, other people pointed out that arguments seemingly in support of the Chinese government should not be taken at face value, given mass surveillance. More to the point, posting criticism of the Chinese government in the #WeLoveYouXiaoZhan hashtag was dangerous and should stop:
In discussions about the AO3 incident, some Chinese fans seemed to assume that regulating speech on the Internet was a valid government responsibility, that the large population of China made regulation difficult (leading to a heavier hand and collateral damage), that there were minors on the Internet and no way to control what they saw. The problem of China not having a rating system that would have allowed some content that was appropriate for adults but not children was mentioned. Some fans argued that AO3 contained illegal content and was rightfully banned.For example, some of the comments in reply to a zhihu post complaining about xfx retroactively justifying their actions by posting statistical analyses of porn on AO3: "但是我翻墙看了中文AO3后觉得这个网站就是非法的， 平台管理不当是要整顿的， 如果不再管辖范围内那就封禁好了，合理合法。" ("But after reading Chinese AO3 over the wall, I feel that this website is illegal, and the improper management of the platform needs to be rectified. If it is no longer within the jurisdiction, it will be banned. It is reasonable and legal.") Another commenter suggested that the comment section had been infiltrated by the Internet Water Army, but did not point to which comments they thought were fake. , post by Tyrant Candy, 2020-03-13. Meanwhile, others could be seen lamenting that the wall was growing higher.
The anonymous Chinese language forum Pincong discussed fan reactions to the block, with one person commenting,
===Censorship of LGBTQ+ Content?===
No official statement has been given (or would likely ever be given) as to why AO3 was blocked. Many English-speaking fans arrived at the conclusion that AO3 had been banned for LGBTQ+ content., tweet, 1 March 2020., tweet, 1 March 2020., tweet, 29 February. There are several possible reasons for this. First, not everyone knew that an m/m fic was the fuse that started the reporting spree, but many English-speaking AO3 users were already aware that Chinese danmei writers had been sent to prison for writing sexually explicit m/m stories in recent years. (Meanwhile, at least some fans of Guardian and The Untamed, whose popularity in English-speaking fandom has been growing since 2019, were aware that LGBTQ+ content was censored for television, though the different treatment of the original m/m novels has been a source of confusion.) Probably the largest factor is that AO3 has a reputation for being majority slash, and many AO3 users do not know that sexually explicit writing of any kind is (maybe, probably, definitely in print) illegal in China.
Aja's article on the block, published in Vox only a day after the block and shared widely in English-speaking circles, also explained China's recent history of censoring online queer writing.Aja Romano. , Vox, 1 March 2020. Meanwhile, anons on fail_fandomanon thought it was presumptous to assume they could know the reasons behind Chinese censorship."It is quite another thing to claim to know why China is making moves on an internal censorship wave when she doesn't read Chinese and even expert journalists would be super fucking hesitant to speak definitively that the PRC did something for one reason or another." , 29 February 2020.
thumb|twitter trolls
Chinese fans may also have contributed to the perception that AO3 was blocked for queer content. Some xfx were spreading rumors on twitter to win sympathy from the English-speaking world; apparently, one claim was that Xiao Zhan was persecuted by the government for being queer.See talk page This seems to have morphed into what was almost certainly a trolling campaign by anti-Xiao Zhan fans spamming the #WeLoveYouXiaoZhan tag with poorly written claims about Xiao Zhan being a "good girl" who died of coronavirus and/or AIDS. 
Someone on Reddit said the goal was to screenshot their own tweets and fool weibo users into thinking these tweets represented what foreign fans genuinely thought.
Other fans commented that the anti-Xiao Zhan fans were clearly just as homophobic as the original xfx who reported the AO3.lilikoi_lacroix. , tweet, 9 April 2020. Based on the screencap evidence, it seems xfx did not report AO3 for LGBTQ+ content, though they may have been motivated by transphobia, homophobia, and/or misogyny. Why is it an insult for fanworks to depict a male celebrity as a girl? Other BJYX fanart, some more sexually suggestive than the art above but depicting both actors as cis men, was already circulating on weibo and hadn't caused a reporting spree.See for example art attributed to 未眠玫瑰 that was taken from weibo and circulated in other language communities: , 
A subthread on fail_fandomanon's discussion of the AO3 ban sought clarification on the legal status of LGBTQ+ people in China after a fan was surprised to learn that homosexuality was (technically) no longer illegal.Re: AO3 banned in China, 2 March 2020.
Global Times, a tabloid run by the Chinese Communist Party, published an article in English claiming that the AO3 ban was not due to homophobia:
A Reddit post linked to the article and noted that "this is the closest to an official explanation as I've seen, and that we're likely going to get.", r/AO3, comment by pvoberstein, 9 March 2020. 
Of course, just because an authoritarian regime says it's not homophobic doesn't make it true.
===Creative Freedom===
According to YouTuber AvenueX (located in North America), Xiao Zhan solo fans and CP fans started arguing during the initial fic drama over "is it okay to talk about immoral things in literature." A Youtuber in mainland China described the fan arguments in similar terms: "are writers allowed to write whatever they want, do they have to be responsible for educating their readers...."Xiao Zhan, AO3, Fandom Drama: told by a Chinese fan, 3 March 2020. An early Chinese article reported that fans were arguing that prostitution was a literary trope and that if it were not allowed, then "at least half of the world's masterpieces" would not exist.
Banan, the fan leading the reporting campaign, argued that creative freedom was not sufficient justification for infringing on celebrities' reputation rights:
After fanworks started disappearing from Lofter and Bilibili, other fans got angry and started the 227 hashtag, arguing that they had a right to creative freedom. 
Many idol fans in both English and Chinese spaces are not fans of RPF. Some responses to a youtube video that exonerated Xiao Zhan of wrongdoing:, 10 April 2020.
Meanwhile, pro-AO3 Chinese fans posted the phrase 创作不死 (Creation is not dead/Creation is immortal) in many places, including in bilibili videos.
===Reporting Culture===
YouTuber AvenueX said one thing that scared her about the situation was that reporting "actually works" and that people would use laws to report writing they didn't like and "destroy their haven". She said it reminded her of the Cultural Revolution, during which family members would report each other to the government.
AvenueX was not the only person to make this comparison. Twitter user @Muge_Niu's thread on the AO3 block quoted another fan as saying "Ao3. Reason of death: spiritual red guards."@Muge_Niu. More Red Guard comparisons can be found in Chinese-speaking internet spaces.Example from zhihu.com: AO3的用户不会否认她们看的同人小说有黄色内容，路人愤怒的点、鄙视的点也不仅仅在于AO3本身，而是某粉丝群体动辄使用举报武器的行为非常恶劣，属于告密者的行径、红卫兵的遗风！xzf举报AO3完全不是因为AO3涉黄，关净网行动P个事，而是有人仅仅是不喜欢【下坠】这！一！篇！ Machine translation: "AO3 users will not deny that the fanfiction they read has pornographic content. The point of anger and contempt of passers-by is not only AO3 itself, but the behavior of a certain fan group who frequently uses reported weapons is very bad, which belongs to the behavior of informers, Legacy of the Red Guards! xzf's report on AO3 is not because AO3 is involved in pornography, and it is a matter of shutting down the net network, but some people just don't like [falling]! one! article!" , post by Tyrant Candy, 2020-03-13.Machine-translated example by yyyoub2020 on a kantie.org forum: "If you don't like a certain work, let the author delete the article, and 8,000 people go to the platform to report. Just like the style of the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution, right? AO3 has all kinds of articles, not only [porn]." 不喜欢某作品让作者删文就是了，8000人去举报平台。 简直就是文革红卫兵作风好吗？ 人家AO3什么文章都有，又不是只有小黄文。 Red Guards were a paramilitary youth movement during the Cultural Revolution.
A number of Chinese sources framed the issue as xfx misusing "public power" for their own ends. Some people remarked that the reporting tool was dangerous and xfx were foolish to think they could control it. Google-translated comments:
One Tumblr fan commented that the xfx had violated a fandom rule by getting the government involved:
Reddit thread:
Some people said that the anti-Xiao Zhan actions were intended to discourage other fans from using the same reporting tactics in future fan wars:
Although the government actively encourages citizens to report online content, state-run media also criticized reporting culture and harassment by idol fans:
*Global Times: (March 4, 2020)
*Global Times: (March 8, 2020)
*Procuratorate Daily: (March 11, 2020)
A Reddit user thought this might be a way of the government redirecting blame away from themselves."I agree entirely. I've seen in the CCP-run Global Times how the government is trying to shift the blame to the fans, in a sort of "look what you made us do" fashion, but at the end of the day the state bears full responsibility for this." , by pvoberstein, 20 March 2020. An NPR story in September commented that the government viewed private groups trying to use reporting culture for their own ends as a threat to the government's monopoly on power., 16 September 2020, timestamp minute 35. 
On zhihu.com, when someone asked how to interpret the commentaries on the Xiao Zhan incident published by the Procuratorate Daily, one person explained that the Procuratorate Daily was a high level political organ and that the meta-statement behind the articles was "We are paying close attention to these things, don't think we are blind and deaf."Machine translation of 这些事情我们都在密切关注，别以为我们是瞎子聋子 Post by Wang Yixin answering the question , 11 March 2020. The next zhihu answer was more blunt: "Under the manipulation of capital, the independent rules created by the fan circle may already threaten the party's rule. The behavior and ideas of these people have stepped on the party's red line."Machine translation of 资本操纵下，粉圈所创造的那一套独立的规则，已经有可能会威胁党的统治，这些人的行为和思想，已经踩在了党的红线上。 Post by Master Pseudo Mother Ling (极品伪娘翎少爷) answering the question , 11 March 2020.
===Was AO3 Really Blocked?===
Yes.
According to various English and Chinese news sources, as well as the OTW itself, AO3 has been inaccessible in mainland China since February 29, 2020. GreatFire.org shows that the domain continues to be blocked as of December 2023., GreatFire.org. (Accessed 21 December 2023.) , GreatFire.org. (Accessed 21 December 2023. However, there are exceptions. Some people have VPNs and may have used them to continue reading and posting to AO3. There also appears to have been a redirect URL that worked for a few days after the initial block. Some people also said that the method of blocking AO3 is DNS spoofing, which is easier to circumvent than some other methods. 
Unofficial mirror sites such as AO4 have also popped up, but people have warned each other to avoid them as they might be phishing sites or infested with malware. The OTW's official weibo account also posted about the situation on April 8:
thumb|more twitter trolls in action
Meanwhile rumors have circulated in Chinese spaces that the AO3 was not actually firewalled and is still accessible.A machine-translated example: "What blocks us is not a wall, but a rumor. Cherish this month. The ao3 server expired in May. Solemnly declare: All data as of 14:00 on April 8, 2020, can prove that the 227 incident did not cause ao3 to be walled. As for whether ao3 will be walled in the future, it has nothing to do with this matter" , posted on bilibili, 8 April 2020. A comment exchange on an AO3 meta post about this imbroglio:, 8 April 2020.
This argument even reached English Wikipedia, where an editor removed content from the Boycott against Xiao Zhan Incident page and then argued on their user talk page,
Meanwhile, at least one twitter user (a bot?) was spotted trying to spread a rumor that AO3 was blocked on February 16 instead of February 29. It's not clear if anyone fell for it.
===Cyberbullying===
In Chinese fandom xfx and the 227 movement have both been accused of cyberbullying. xfx' original reporting action targeted the fic author and other RPF fans of Wang Yibo/Xiao Zhan, as well as AO3, and the retaliation by the 227 movement sought revenge against Xiao Zhan. For months Xiao Zhan fans have argued that Xiao Zhan was the main victim of bullying. However, in addition to the main targets, many other people have been cyber-bullied. In various discussions fans have mentioned a wide variety of victims: xfx, cp fans, 227 and/or anti-Xiao Zhan fans, the fans who posted suicide notes on March 1, other fans of Xiao Zhan who did not approve of or were not involved in reporting AO3, other non-fans who posted in support of XZ, anyone who mentioned XZ in passing, the author of one of the Procuratorate Daily articles, and the OTW. Initially the xfx seemed responsible for most of the bad behavior people complained about, but widespread anger at the xfx also seems to have devolved into anti-fan counterattacks and rumor-mongering.
In general it seems a lot of xfx and anti-Xiao Zhan fans have each overlooked or denied the bad behavior on their own side while blaming the other side for all the toxicity.
March 1 fail_fandomanon comment:
March 1 Reddit comment by a Chinese AO3 user:
March 8 Youtube video by a BJYX fan:
April 10 weibo post by the OTW:
April 13 AO3 comment:
April 21 weibo post by Xiao Zhan Studio (translated by a twitter user):
 
October 31 YouTube text post by AvenueX:
===Xiao Zhan's Responsibility?===
Many people retaliated against Xiao Zhan because they held him responsible, either indirectly in that they believed his PR team approved/encouraged the reporting action or directly in that they assumed he himself likely knew about it. The tale seems to have grown in the telling, with some people claiming that he himself contacted AO3 or reported it to the government.
Fans on various platforms have tried to explain the context to a flabbergasted English-speaking fandom. There are also many articles in Chinese publications that describe the situation of Chinese idol fandom. Economic forces at work in idol fandom do make a case for questioning Xiao Zhan's role. Young Chinese idols rely on their social media fanbase for career advancement far more than in other countries: devoted idol fans will organize themselves to promote their star online and buy up all their star's brand endorsements to show how popular the star is, so that the star will get more acting work or more brand endorsements. There are complaints that directors will cast popular idols in their dramas regardless of how unfit for the role the idols are because the directors know that more people will watch the dramas. So the idol fans have a vested interest in demonstrating that their idol is popular, while the idol has a vested interest in encouraging fannish devotion. In the short run, extreme fannishness is desirable for the idol's career, but the downside is that radical fans can and often do go too far (cyberbullying, doxxing, etc.), so the idol not reigning in the fanbase when things get out of hand is considered by social media users to be irresponsible and unethical. People argued that other idols had successfully calmed down their fans when they became a menace, but Xiao Zhan didn't do anything, so he was responsible for their behavior.
Meanwhile, the reason for thinking that Xiao Zhan or his PR team were involved stems from the pattern of close coordination between fans and idols. As explained by an anon on fail_fandomanon,
Youtuber AvenueX (who used to work in the Chinese tv and film industry) explained in a March 19 livestream how all the top idols had "professional fandoms" that were organized hierarchically and conducted themselves in a structured, almost military fashion. The top of the fan hierarchy coordinated with the idol's management. There were three parts to fandom operations, she said: comment control (spamming comments in reply to any post that mentions the idol so that passersby would see only positive comments), anti-hei (countering heifen operations or in truth harassing anybody who says anything critical about their idol), and refreshing data (streaming?). She said that idols benefit from the labor of their fandoms and there's no way they don't know what goes on. She also stated that there had been previous incidents where Xiao Zhan's fans had crossed the line, and he never said anything to stop them; she said if he had spoken up earlier to urge restraint, the current situation (his fans reporting, the strength of the backlash against him) might never have happened. She hypothesized he might have done nothing because he was afraid of offending his fandom, because as a non-traditional idol he was in a precarious position. Most idols are trained as teenagers and still only have a shelf-life of two years, whereas Xiao Zhan had started in his twenties after going to a normal college and holding down a real job. AvenueX also noted that because Xiao Zhan became popular so quickly, he would have made enemies - and nothing in his background suggested to her that he had inside connections to help weather the storm. Hence she concludes that undoubtedly some of the backlash was encouraged by paid agitators hired by his enemies. From the point of view of his company, she claims Xiao Zhan was just another disposable idol, who can be replaced tomorrow.#7 Live Stream - Stay Home Stay Safe/Chinese Fandom + Xiao Zhan Situation/March C Dramas, 19 March 2020
Some commenters on AvenueX's video argued with her take, saying that most Xiao Zhan fans were not so extreme, that they didn't appreciate her calling him replaceable, that he was too a good actor, that he had always tried in interviews to guide his fans to be more rational. One person mentioned his 2016 vlogs as evidence. However, others agreed that he was often too "lenient" toward his fans.
When someone asked on zhihu, "Fans made a mistake, is Xiao Zhan responsible?" one person gave a similar answer as AvenueX, explaining that the expectation of having a very short career encouraged him to amass a huge fanbase very quickly without providing any management. "Under such a deformed relationship, the probability of his fans making mistakes will definitely be higher, and Xiao Zhan should naturally take responsibility for the mistakes made by fans that are directly related to him."Machine translation of "在这种畸形的关系下，他的粉丝犯错的概率肯定会比较高，肖战也自然应该对粉丝犯下的跟他有直接关系的错误承担责任。" , 2020-05-13.
One March 11 opinion article in the state-run newspaper Procuratorate Daily commented,
Regarding the AO3 incident specifically, rumors circulated that his PR team had been in contact with Banan, one of the fans who orchestrated the campaign to report AO3. The first English-language Reddit writeup took this view, though later recantedLine crossed out: "Recently, with permission/guidance from the actor's own management" . Fans shared screencap evidence indicating that Xiao Zhan's official PR team not only knew about the existence of the fan club to which Banan belonged, but also had been in close cooperation with it, and that Banan was communicating with the fanclub's leadership over how to handle the fallout.One of these screenshots shows that they reposted the fanclub's post and asked people to follow the fanclub account. March 1, 2020 weibo postSee talk page. The other two screenshots in this post are chats between the former VP of the fanclub and her successor. After the blast the former VP insisted they should "act at Banan's will" and they would "wait for Banan to wake up" and then decide how to react to the situation because they "respect Banan's suggestions." The op who seems to be a senior member(? if it’s a thing...) of the fanclub was pretty upset after communicating with the management and getting the same responses as the former VP’s: "If all you guys can do is just sitting there and waiting for the [PR team] to clean up the mess, then what's the use of you bunch of shits? If it's inappropriate for the fanclub to make a statement first, will waiting for the [PR team] to do it be better? The duty of the [PR team] is to protect and promote Xiao Zhan himself; it's not to manage the fandom." Banan had also apparently mentioned a PR team in her earlier posts"Whether or not to apologize now does not depend on me alone, nor does it even depend on Xiao Zhan fans. Not coming out to apologize for the time being is a choice after weighing the pros and cons and discussing with public relations, because I am not sure what the black public relations team will do, and I am worried that after the apology, we will not be able to control the situation and will be sent back to the hot search to make things worse." Machine translation of 事到如今是否道歉已经不取决于我一个人,甚至也不取决于肖战粉。暂时不出来道歉是权衡利弊和公关商量后的选择,因为不确定黑公关团队会做什么,担心道歉后我们会控制不住事态走向,会被反手送上热搜让事情向着更恶劣的方向发展。 from a screencap of Banan's weibo post shared on douban, 29 February 2020. (Accessed 2 September 2022.), which may have reinforced the impression that the AO3 reporting was driven by Xiao Zhan's own team; she stated in her March 1 apology that these were her personal friends in the industry and not Xiao Zhan's team.
People also believed that he had been trying to distance himself from what made him famous--acting in a drama based on a BL novel--and that this desire made it more likely he/his PR team would have approved the AO3 reporting. Context from fail_fandomanon:
Context from [Chinese Fandom Culture] Chinese Idol Fans vs. The World (A primer on Chinese Fan Culture) on :/r/hobbydrama:
However, the question of whether or not Xiao Zhan the individual is actually responsible for the AO3 incident is only one factor in the boycott against him. The boycott is also intended as a deterrent for his fans and fans of any future idol from reporting fansites to the government. (It's also about revenge.)
===Mischaracterizing the Reported Fanfic?===
From the beginning of the conflict fans have defended the fanfic, and some argued that the xfx clearly hadn't read it because it did not contain the material that xfx claimed. 
To be clear, the character of "Zan Zan" (Xiao Zhan) in 《下坠》 is not a pedophile. The story has the "Underage" warning on AO3 due to site rules; any sexually explicit fanfiction featuring a character under the age of 18 must have either "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings" or the "Underage" warning. Within the story itself, Wang Yibo is 16 but is the one actively pursuing a relationship with Xiao Zhan, Xiao Zhan is 22, and the age difference is a relatively minor issue compared to everything else happening to the characters, including the various terrible things that happen to the sex workers, Wang Yibo's parents not noticing that he lives in a brothel, and Xiao Zhan turning to prostitution due to being outed in high school and thinking he needs to become a woman just so he won't be gay. Xiao Zhan, who is clearly very traumatized, may also have been disowned by his family, but this backstory is not made explicit. ("They don't want my dirty money.")
====Portrayal after the incident====
In 2022, a candidate running for OTW's Board of Directors claimed that "AO3 is no longer accessible in my home country due to some incident related to a piece of pedophilic work.", 5 August 2022. (Accessed 1 September 2022.) Chinese fans familiar with the incident were outraged and spoke out against this framing, and some questioned whether the candidate was a Xiao Zhan fan due to the similarity in rhetoric, 12 August 2022..
==Chinese Fans on AO3: A History==
Many of the xfx who reported AO3 to the government in February 2020 were unfamiliar with the website and didn't realize how popular it was. They had been told that it was just a website for people writing erotic novels and thought that reporting it would have the same result as reporting something on weibo. They did not seem to understand that AO3's terms of service explicitly protected the novel they were angry about from being taken down.
The first fanwork in Chinese on AO3 was uploaded a week after the site entered open beta.According to an interview with Claudia Rebaza, the first Chinese fanwork was a Harry Potter fic posted on November 23, 2009. , pedaily.cn, 9 March 2020. In recent years the site has become increasingly popular among Chinese fans, in part due to growing restrictions in China. As of 2020 Chinese works still make up only 4% of the archiveBased on Work Search results (29 March 2020), 253157 out of 5818404 works have 中文 selected for the language field., but Mandarin is now the second most popular language on the site after English.The Chinese language tag was split into more specific categories in mid 2020; 316449 works have the Mandarin tag (中文-普通话 國語) as of 24 November 2020. See the Languages page for a complete list of available languages and work counts. (According to destinationtoast, Russian was the second most popular language on the archive in 2015. by toastystats (2015-03-10))
A 2019 paper in Transformative Works and Cultures described three waves of Chinese censorship campaigns that resulted in fandom migration, noting that the last pushed fans toward AO3:
After the 2018 influx of Chinese users, AO3 was increasingly referred to by Chinese fans as a "parking lot" (停车场) for porn. Many Chinese users only posted sexually explicit works or just the sexually explicit chapters of their works to AO3, using the site as a workaround for censorship of their preferred domestic fic posting sites. As a result, the percentage of Chinese fanworks rated Explicit or Mature is much higher than AO3 works as a whole. Other fans were annoyed by this reputation, and wrote in support of AO3 as much more than a parking lot. For example: 我为什么不提倡把AO3只当作停车场 (Why don't I advocate treating AO3 as just a parking lot) by cinnabary by cinnabary, reposted 2020-02-28 to AO3, from an earlier lofter post., twitter thread by Ventwindelle, tweet by Ventwindelle, 29 February 2020..
The increase in Chinese users was also noticed by OTW staff, as indicated by a series of AO3 News posts in 2018-2019:
*A December 2018 post explained how to import works from Lofter and noted that new users did not need to send a Support ticket to introduce themselves.http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/11910
*A February 2019 post noted that "During January, Support received 1,165 tickets, nearly 200 of which were in Chinese." 
*A May 2019 post commented directly on the increase:
A Support volunteer added their thoughts on tumblr:
A twitter user described the migration to AO3:
Many of the people commenting on Chinese fans' migration to AO3 predicted that AO3 would get blocked.
==Fanworks Created in Response to the Block==
thumb|"WHO IS NEXT?" by lofter user wdtsmy123
Some Chinese fans started posting Donald Trump/Xiao Zhan fics to AO3 to "punish" Xiao Zhan."Why can't we post our works here?I will insist on posting works that humiliate Xiaozhan such as marry him to Trump until his fans give ao3 back to us." Their ship name is apparently 特战队 ("special team"). As of August 2021, the Trump/Xiao Zhan tag has 32 works, the earliest of which was posted on February 28, 2020, but most of which were posted after the block. According to a timeline posted on github, the ship was inspired by an example that was used during the initial fan arguments over whether celebrity fanfiction was ok; someone pointed out that Trump remained unaffected by the hundreds of fanworks featuring him on the AO3., timeline posted on github, updated 11 March 2020.
On AO3 227大团结 was used enough times to become a canonical tag: Boycott Against Xiao Zhan Incident | 227 Incident (first canonized as Event 227). Chinese fans posted AO3/Lofter anthropomorfic on both AO3 and Lofter. hasebaes. , tweet, 1 March 2020.
Some fanart reflecting on the block has been created. For example, by twitter user loadingzt, who says they were banned from weibo after posting it there.Translation found on medium.com: by B Tong, 15 May 2020. (Accessed 22 March 2021.)
==Further Reading & Meta==
===February 28, 2020===
*news.qq.com: 
===February 29, 2020===
*Reddit: Fans of The Untamed get mad at fanfiction about the actor and report AO3 to the government, getting AO3 blocked in China; archive link in HobbyDrama subreddit
*Reddit: , earlier Reddit thread started by the same? individual, in FanFiction
*Fail_fandomanon: , thread
*jikipedia: 
===March 1, 2020===
*Tumblr post: ask answered by stardust-rain
*Fail_fandomanon: , another thread
*Vox: China has censored the Archive of Our Own, one of the internet's largest fanfiction websites by Aja Romano
* Global Times: 
*Youtube video: AO3 Being Blocked in China and Xiao Zhan - What Happened by AvenueX
*guancha.cn: (reposted in several places, originally from WeChat account “北戴河桃罐头厂电影修士会”) 
===March 2, 2020===
*laiyuan.com: 
*NetEase: posted on news.163.com
===March 3, 2020===
*Youtube video: Xiao Zhan, AO3, Fandom Drama: told by a Chinese fan by Fefe H
*South China Morning Post: 
* Sixth Tone: Fan-Fiction Site Blocked in China After Celeb’s Stans Complain
*dwnews.com: 
*38jiejie.com: 
===March 4-10, 2020===
*fail_fandomanon: Re: AO3 banned in China, one timeline by a commenter (March 4)
*yilanad.com: (March 4)
*dwnews.com: (March 6)
*Jing Daily: (March 6)
*Youtube video: Xiao Zhan & AO3: final update + unboxing by Fefe H (March 8)
*Google Drive: Anti-Xiao Zhan powerpoint (March 8)
*pedaily.cn: (March 9)
*GQ Report: (March 10)
===March 11-31, 2020===
*news.sina.com.cn , republished from Procuratorate Daily (Xiao Zhan Incident: How to comment on right and wrong) (March 11)
*GitHub timeline: (March 11)
*Business of Fashion: by Casey Hall (March 12)
*Youtube video: #7 Live Stream - Stay Home Stay Safe/Chinese Fandom + Xiao Zhan Situation/March C Dramas by AvenueX (March 19)
*Sanlian Life Weekly: by Chen Lu (March 20)
*AO3 meta: by actualao3user (March 22)
*South China Morning Post: (misidentifies a photo of Ji Li as Wang Yibo) (March 22)
===April 2020===
*Youtube video: How Xiao Zhan Got Caught in the AO3 Controversy and the 227 Incident by Yule Updates (April 10)
*Reddit: in HobbyDrama (April 12)
*Weibo video chat: Henry Jenkins answers readers' questions, posted by Sanlian Life Weekly (April 14)
*Fail_fandomanon: Re: How in touch are you with what's popular on AO3? (April 25)
*Fail_fandomanon: Re: Cnovels - Xiao Zhan drama (April 26)
===May 2020===
*AO3 meta: The TRUTH of This Mess, As I Know It by Mephistophilia (May 2)
*Fail_fandomanon: (May 7)
*bilibili meta: by 夜蝉秋鸣. Debunks claims made by Xiao Zhan fans. (May 31)
===September 2020===
*NPR: (September 16)
*Fail_fandomanon: Product Placement, Underage Fic, and Doxxing: How AO3 Got Banned in China (reaction to the NPR story) (September 18)
===November 2020===
*38jiejie: (November 16)
===February 2021===
*Poison Eye, weixin.qq.com: (February 28)
===September 2021===
*Pang, Yudan. 2021. "Censorship and Chinese Slash Fans." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 36. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2021.1977. (September 14)
*Wu, Xueyin. 2021. "Fan Leaders' Control on Xiao Zhan's Chinese Fan Community." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 36. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2021.2053. (September 14)
===August 2022===
*Erika Ningxin Wang & Liang Ge (2022): "Fan Conflicts and State Power in China: Internalised Heteronormativity, Censorship Sensibilities, and Fandom Police", Asian Studies Review, DOI: 10.1080/10357823.2022.2112655
===July 2023===
* “We are snowflakes”: Minor transnationalism and the cultural resilience of slash fanfiction community in China by Fan Xiao, DOI: 10.1177/20594364231188350
==See Also==
*Blocking of AO3 in Russia
* Chinese-Speaking Fandom
==References==
Category:Chinese-Speaking Fandom
Category:Archive_of_Our_Own
Category:2020 Events