The Clubhouse Affair: A Stark Reminder of China’s Information Isolation
A brief opening on an audio conversation app allowed Chinese users to speak freely with the outside world.
February 22, 2021
A man stands near an advertisement for Huawei’s Honor brand 5G phones in Beijing on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020.
Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan
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Chinese government censorship focuses in large part on stopping people in China from accessing independent reports about events in their own country. But another major goal of the censorship apparatus is to restrict or distort information about the rest of the world, and to isolate Chinese citizens from conversations with outsiders – especially Chinese speakers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the diaspora who are critical of the regime in Beijing.