The 50 Cent Party, also known as the 50 Cent Army or (; from ), are Chinese government employees posting online comments to divert public attention or promote positive sentiment. The program was created during the early phases of the Internet's rollout to the wider public in China. Government workers produced about 448 million out of 80.4 billion (or 1 out of 178) posts on the Chinese internet every year, concentrated heavily on official government websites and during major events.
The name "50 Cent Party" is derived from claims that government hired commentators are reportedly paid RMB¥0.50 (5 jiao) for every post in order to shape public opinion in ways favorable towards Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies.
Some Internet commentators describe themselves as (, short for , , ), stating that they express voluntary support for China and are not paid by authorities.
A study published in 2017 points out that almost everything known about the 50 Cent Party in the past had been wrong. Most combative posts and commentators attributed to the 50 Cent Party were instead linked to private nationalistic individuals. Actual 50 Cent Party content largely avoids heated discussions, controversial or sensitive topics, and focuses instead on cheerleading unrelated valence issues. This is likely meant to distract, change the subject, or promote positive sentiment. These posts are made by government employees contributing part time outside their regular jobs and not paid for extra, which would cost an enormous sum every year. Approximately half of these are posted on the government's own websites.
History
In October 2004, the local CCP Propaganda Department of Changsha started hiring Internet commentators, in one of the earliest known uses of professional Internet commentators. Screenshot
In March 2005, the Ministry of Education enacted a systematic censorship of Chinese college bulletin board systems (BBS). The popular "Little Lily" BBS, run by Nanjing University, was forced to close. As a new system was prepared to be launched, school officials hired students as part-time web commentators, paid from the university's work-study funds, to search the forum for undesirable information and actively counter it with Party-friendly viewpoints. In the following months, party leaders from Jiangsu began hiring their own teams. By mid-2007, web commentator teams recruited by schools, and party organizations were common across China. Shanghai Normal University employed undergraduates to monitor for signs of dissent and post on university forums. These commentators not only operate within political discussions, but also in general discussions. Afterwards, some schools and local governments also started to build similar teams.
On 23 January 2007, Chinese leader Hu Jintao demanded a "reinforcement of ideological and public opinion front construction and positive publicity" at the 38th collective learning session of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. Large Chinese websites and local governments have been requested to publish the sayings of Hu, and select "comrades with good political quality" to form "teams of Internet commentators" by the CCP Central Committee () and General Office of the State Council ().
Negative reporting of local authorities has increased on the Internet since then.Nan, Wu. Chinese Bloggers on the History and Influence of the “Fifty Cent Party” . China Digital Times. 15 May 2008 In one instance described on the China Digital Times, the Jiaozuo (Henan) City Public Security Bureau established a mechanism to analyze public opinion after criticism of the police handling of a traffic incident appeared on the Internet. The Bureau responded with 120 staff calling for the truth to be revealed in line with the public opinion, which gradually shifted and eventually supported the police position, denouncing the original poster. In the aftermath of the 2008 Weng'an riot, Internet forums were filled with posts critical of the local authorities; the China Newsweek later reported that "the major task of the propaganda group was to organize commentators to past [sic] posts on websites to guide online public opinions."
In 2010, the Shanghai Communist Youth League's official website published a summary, saying that there were more than 200 topics by Shanghai Municipal Authorities' Internet commentators posted at People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency, Eastday (), Sina and Tianya after many incidents in 2009, including the Lotus Riverside incident, the forced installation of Green Dam Youth Escort software, the Putuo Urban Administrative incident, the control of H1N1, the Shanghai entrapment incident (), the self-immolation of Pan Rong (), etc. It was praised by the Shanghai Internet Publicity Office.
In December 2014, a Chinese blogger hacked into and published email archives for the Internet Propaganda Department of Zhanggong District in Ganzhou, including over 2,700 emails of 50 Cent Party Internet commentators. For instance, on 16 January 2014, Shi Wenqing, secretary of the Ganzhou branch of the CCP, held a televised "Internet exchange" in which he answered questions from a local news website forum; 50 Cent Party commentators were instructed to post seven discussion points, such as (translated) "I really admire Party Secretary Shi, what a capable and effective Party Secretary! I hope he can be the father of Ganzhou for years to come."
In the 2020s, the Chinese government began outsourcing these types of astroturfing and censorship jobs to private for-profit companies for better precision and cost effectiveness.
Range of operation The Ministry of Culture now holds regular training sessions, where participants are required to pass an exam after which they are issued a job certification. As of 2008, the total number of 50-cent operatives was estimated to be in the tens of thousands, and possibly as high as 280,000–300,000. Every large Chinese website is instructed by the Information Office to create a trained team of Internet commentators. The Cyberspace Administration of China (shortened as ) directly recruit and provide continuous training for internet commentators () to respond to online emergencies under new forms of public opinion dissemination channels on various social media platforms, and state-owned entities regularly hold commemoration ceremonies for outstanding staff on the provincial and county-levels.
According to the Chinese Communists' opinions of the recruitment of university Work Committee (tentative), the university Internet commentators are mainly selected from cadres or student cadres at the local CCP Publicity Department of universities, Youth League, Office of Academic Affairs, Network Center, Admissions Employment Department, Political Theory Department, Teaching Department and other units."为认真贯彻落实《中共中央、国务院关于进一步加强和改进大学生思想政治教育的意见》（中发〔2004〕16号）和《教育部、共青团中央关于进一步加强高等学校校园网络管理工作的意见》(教社政〔2004〕17号)精神，牢牢把握网上舆论主导权，为我省高等教育改革发展稳定提供良好的舆论环境，努力构建社会主义和谐校园，现就加强高校网络评论员队伍建设提出以下意见。"
The court of Qinghe District, Huai'an organized a team of 12 commentators. Gansu Province hired 650 commentators, sorted by their writing abilities. Suqian Municipal Publicity Department's first 26 commentators' team were reported by Yangtse Evening Post in April 2005. According to high-profile independent Chinese blogger Li Ming, the pro-Chinese government web commentators must number "at least in the tens of thousands".
A 2016 Harvard study estimated that the group posts about 488 million social media comments per year.
According to a post by Xiao Qiang on China Digital Times, the following was a leaked directive sent to 50 Cent Party Internet commentators.
In 2010, a contributor to The Huffington Post stated that some comments she received on one of her posts were from the 50 Cent Party; she also stated that the 50 Cent Party monitors popular US websites, news sites and blogs and posts comments that advance Chinese governmental interests.
Terminology There is an alternate official term for the Internet commentator, as well as several unofficial terms coined by netizens for them: Chinese ( / ) Pinyin Literally in English Commonly in English Note Official name (primary) / wǎngluò pínglùn yuán Internet commentator Abbreviation in Chinese: / (wǎng píng yuán) Official name (secondary) / wǎngluò yuè píng yuán Internet examiner and commentator N/A Unofficial term / or simply wǔmáo dǎng or wǔmáo Five-dime Party, or simply "five dimes" 50 Cent Party, 50 Cent Army. The most common name, used pejoratively. Unofficial term / wǎng píng yuán ape that comments on the 'net N/A A pejorative pronounced identically with the Chinese abbreviation above, punning (; "ape; monkey") for (; "personnel, staff member"). Other English terms / , / hóng mǎjiǎ, hóng wèibīng red vest, red guardZhong, Wu. China's Internet awash with state spies . Asia Times. 14 August 2008 The Chinese translation for these English terms are rarely used.
Among those names, "50 Cent Party" () was the most common and pejorative unofficial term.
According to Foreign Policy, Chinese cyberspace is also noted for its ideological contests between "rightists" – reformists who advocate Western-style democratic reforms, versus "leftists" – conservatives and neo-Confucianists who advocate Chinese nationalism and restructured socialism. In this backdrop, rightists sometimes refer to leftists derogatorily as "50 Centers", regardless of their actual employment background.
The Hong Kong-based Apple Daily reported that although a search for "" ("50 Cent Party" in Chinese) on a search engine produces results, most were inaccessible and had been deleted."China hires, trains 'online commentators' to influence public opinion – daily". Apple Daily. 5 October 2007
Some internet commentators label themselves (, short for , , ), stating that they are not paid by authorities and express their support for the Chinese government out of their own volition. Journalist Shuyu Zhang writes that this "voluntary 50 cent army" displays "a genuine faith in the party and its commitment to rejuvenate the nation, together with distrust of Western liberal-democratic ideals. They portray themselves as not only more patriotic, but also more rational than most citizens in 'defending the nation against online sabotage and emphasizing facts and logic.'"
Reception Accoridng to China analyst David Bandurski, the activities of the 50 Cent Party are consistent with what Hu Jintao described as a new pattern of public opinion guidance in 2008.Bandurski, David (2008-06-25). "Propaganda leaders scurry off to carry out the "spirit" of Hu Jintao's "important" media speech". China Media Project. Archived from the original on 26 June 2024. Retrieved 2024-08-08.
David Wertime, writing in Foreign Policy, argued that the narrative where a large army of paid Internet commentators are behind China's poor public dialogue with its critics is "Orwellian, yet strangely comforting". Rather, many of the Chinese netizens spreading nationalist sentiment online are not paid, but often mean what they say.
Misuse Patrick Winn of The World noted that in the English-speaking world, wumao is often used as a pejorative term against perceived supporters of the Chinese government. In this way, it is often misapplied to nationalist Chinese posters acting out of their own volition, thus making it easier to discredit their beliefs and to rile them up. An analyst from the Wilson Center noted that ethnic Chinese are more likely to be called wumao than other groups of people in the English-speaking world. She attributed some of this to racism and the perception that they are less critical of the Chinese government.