Controversies about Chinese Wikipedia

The Chinese Wikipedia is the Chinese version of Wikipedia created on May 11, 2001. Members of the Chinese diaspora edit on the site, including those from the People's Republic of China (PRC), where Wikipedia has been banned since 2015. The diversity of Chinese Wikipedia's userbase does not exist without controversies, some of which received media attention and even Wikimedia Foundation's intervention.

Events

2010 administrative abuse

In April 2010, Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported the large-scale censorship related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and Hong Kong-related content, on the site, involving an administrator named "Shizhao". The report also mentioned the failed recall of the administrator due to vote stacking by pro-communist users.

State-sponsored administrators

Despite being banned in the PRC, and as VPNs are normally not allowed to edit Wikipedia, PRC-associated Wikipedia administrators have permitted IP block exemption for some PRC-based users, who are recruited to change the content on Wikipedia in support of the Chinese Communist narrative and/or the election of pro-communist administrators to control the site. 

The resultant pro-communist Wikipedia community, known as the Wikimedians of Mainland China (WMC), was never recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation, as they had refused to sign legal documents to guarantee the privacy of other users.

Intimidation of Taiwanese and Hong Kong users

Pro-communist Chinese users made death threats towards Taiwanese users. One Taiwanese editor said that the origin of those threats was not limited to pro-communist Chinese users, but a "larger structural coordinated strategy the [PRC] government has to manipulate these platforms" beside Wikipedia, including Twitter and Facebook. 

Pro-communist Chinese users threatened to report Hong Kong users to Hong Kong Police's national security bureau over the disputed article "2019–2020 Hong Kong protests". A Hong Kong-based user, who remained anonymous for safety, noted: 



The anonymous editor also stated:

Bans on state-sponsored administrators

At 16:13 GMT, September 13, 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation globally banned seven Wikipedia users and removed administrator rights from twelve PRC-associated users. Maggie Dennis, the foundation's vice present of community resilience and sustainability, said that there had been a year-long investigation into "infiltration concerns" that threatened the "very foundations of Wikipedia". Dennis observed that the infiltrators had tried to promote "the aims of China, as interpreted through whatever filters they may bring to bear". 

The investigation had also found that an unrecognized group of PRC-associated users, with about three hundred members, had been involved in vote stacking to manipulate administrative elections. Suggesting possible ties to the Chinese Communist regime, Dennis said:

Response from Taiwanese users

After the Wikimedia Foundation took action against the WMC editors, Taiwanese users said that this was long overdue:

Related pages

 Turkish Wikipedia
 Croatian Wikipedia

Footnotes

References

W
Category:Politics
Category:Wikipedia
Category:21st century
Category:Controversies