Hu Xijin’s tens of millions of followers have heard nothing from him since late July. Some think one of his posts praising Beijing may have backfired.
One of China’s most influential, and garrulous, nationalist voices on social media has suddenly gone quiet, and the country’s internet is wondering why.
Hu Xijin, the former editor of the Global Times, a pugnacious Communist Party-run newspaper, writes and posts videos regularly on Sina Weibo, a social media platform, where he has nearly 25 million followers. But in late July, Mr. Hu stopped updating his page, baffling readers and gratifying some of his critics.
Mr. Hu has not explained his silence; nor have China’s internet authorities. But many in China think he has been censored, pointing to signs that party officials may have been irked — paradoxically — because Mr. Hu lauded them in the wrong way. In China, even misplaced praise for the party may be enough to draw the ire of censors.
A possible source of Mr. Hu’s trouble appears to be a Weibo post he wrote in July that extolled as “historic” the outcome of a party leaders’ meeting on economic strategy. In Mr. Hu’s view, the party used phrasing in its plan for the economy that suggested that China would reduce the status of state-owned companies, giving private companies a big boost.
The plan opened the way to “true equality” for private and state companies, Mr. Hu wrote to his millions of readers. “Not so long ago, some people were openly denigrating the private sector,” he wrote. “How ridiculous those voices seem today.”
Mr. Hu’s post soon disappeared from Weibo, but not before it set off a kerfuffle.
Mr. Hu’s praise may have seemed helpful to policymakers at a time when the Chinese government is desperate to restore the confidence of private businesses, which generate vital jobs and tax revenues. But he was assailed by hard-left critics who accused him of distorting the party’s words and undermining China’s commitment to state companies. “This blows open his fundamentally anti-party, anti-socialist thinking,” read a comment republished on Utopia, a far-left Chinese website.
“It does sound like there was some displeasure with his posts,” Ryan Ho Kilpatrick, the managing editor of the China Media Project, which also monitors internet censorship and controversies, said in an interview. “He kind of puts his foot in his mouth sometimes when he goes too far in supporting the party in the wrong way.”
The controversy showed, if nothing else, the pitfalls that even the Chinese government’s supporters can run into when trying to explain its decisions. The party has been trying to revive the private sector while preserving state ownership as a pillar of party power, a tricky balance that can create confusion about the priorities of China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
Speculation that Mr. Hu had crossed a line grew after the People’s Daily issued a commentary that defended the party’s commitment to the state sector. It did not name Mr. Hu. “As long as we adhere to public ownership as the mainstay,” the commentary said, China could strengthen its socialist economic system while also letting private businesses thrive.
That “mainstay” phrase stood out, because Mr. Hu, in his now-deleted post, had pointed out that the party’s economic plan had not explicitly called the state sector a “mainstay,” unlike a similar plan in 2013. Notably, too, the People’s Daily commentary appeared under a pen name, “Zhong Yin,” which sounds like “important voice,” and indicates a high-level response.
Mr. Hu may have read too much into the Communist Party leaders’ plan. The party’s wording on the private and state sectors was not very different from a speech that Mr. Xi gave to party leaders in 2022 in which he also did not explicitly describe the state sector as a “mainstay.”
“Hu Xijin’s comments do not make much sense to me,” Tianlei Huang, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington who monitors China’s private sector, wrote in emailed answers to questions. “Market-oriented reform is simply less of a priority for the leadership now compared to 2013 against the rising importance of self-reliance, national security and state control.”
Mr. Hu did not respond to messages from The New York Times. He told Sing Tao Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper: “Just go and read what’s online. Please understand.” Bloomberg News reported, citing an unnamed source, that Mr. Hu had been banned from posting online.
Mr. Hu retired from the role of editor in 2021, and his political antenna may not be as reliable now. In 2022, he caused a ruckus by writing that Chinese air force jets should intercept a plane carrying the then-speaker of the U.S. House, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan. Beijing said her visit to Taiwan violated its claim over the island. Chinese nationalists pelted insults at Mr. Hu after Ms. Pelosi landed safely in Taipei.
“Retirees don’t have access to certain documents and don’t have frequent interactions with top officials,” Fang Kecheng, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies China’s internet, said of Mr. Hu’s recent comments on the economy. “He may have misjudged the situation due to this.”
