Online rumours like Cultural Revolution denunciation posters, says party journal

An influential Communist Party journal on Monday decried online speech critical of the ruling Communist Party and government, comparing internet rumours to denunciation posters during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.

“The internet is full of all kinds of negative news and critical voices saying the government only does bad things and everything it says is wrong.”

The magazine said online rumours were no better than ”big character posters”, hand-written signs put up in public places during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution to spread propaganda, often denouncing people and institutions as counter-revolutionary or bourgeois.

Qiushi said online rumours, like the posters, were often published under a cloak of anonymity and containing slanderous information. Party leaders have called out for a halt to the posters “resurrecting themselves online”, it said.

The Cultural Revolution sought to purge China of what were described as traditional and bourgeois elements and encouraged criticism of those seen as counter-revolutionary or capitalist. Millions were killed, tortured, imprisoned or publicly humiliated during its excesses.