Fake news in China worries relocating expat professionals

Western expats in Nanjing and down the east coast have been hit by fake news scaremongering on a WeChat page.

An article on the social media platform’s ExpatLife page claimed foreigners were being forbidden from travelling to Beijing and Shanghai during last month’s Chinese Communist Party’s 19th Congress, as well as stating large gatherings of expats were also forbidden. Those disobeying the prohibitions, it continued, would be subject to ‘oppressive inspection’ by the authorities. The page didn’t give any idea of its origin and similar WeChat posts were relayed across the internet, causing panic amongst China’s increasing expat business community.

The web page soon went viral, with foreign students joining in the panic, until one university released an announcement classifying the page as fake news and condemning ExpatLife and WeChat for not checking the sources before allowing the situation to escalate. It’s not the first time fake news has surfaced in China, with the ‘China shuts down VPNs for good’ headline causing the most chaos amongst Chinese as well as expat netizens.

Due to China’s very effective Great Firewall, websites outside China cannot be accessed without the aid of a Virtual Private Network, making the service highly popular amongst expats, students, researchers and millennials are well as businesses. Rumours of China’s continuing efforts to block all VPNs continue to circulate in Western media, with an article in Bloomberg News in July last year citing information from anonymous sources about a total block by February 2018. In a similar Guardian report published at around the same time, a 14-month ‘clean-up’ of Chinese internet services was cited.

Should the reports become reality, expat businesses from start-ups to international companies as well as academics, their students and other researchers will be harmed. For several decades, Chinese academics and researchers have been unable to contact foreign universities or refer to research in other countries via online overseas professional journals. Former communications supremo at Chinese tech giant Baidu posted online on the issue, saying the government should leave VPNs alone as banning them would reflect badly on China and its Communist Party.

Fake news or not, China’s rapid advancement won’t benefit from cutting off all internet contact with the rest of the world, especially as it’s now encouraging talented expat professionals to relocate to its major cities.