Military Content Restrictions Could Indicate Trouble Ahead

Executive Summary:

• New measures to control online information related to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could be an indicator of imminent military operations, further purges, or other military activity.
• The measures are drafted by 10 military and state bodies, indicating that Beijing places enormous importance on information security and continues to pursue high-level military-civil integration.
• Possible motivations for the measures include recent leaks of sensitive information, online content that has reduced support for the military, and growing disinformation that has included spoofs of official websites. This compounds ongoing problems in the military, such as corruption.
• Beijing sees regime security and stability as downstream of controlling information flows, as well as dependent on building sophisticated regulatory and institutional capacity. The new measures also support both these aims.

On February 8, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC; 国家互联网信息办公室) released a set of new measures to control online information related to the country’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The “Measures for Managing the Dissemination of Military Information on the Internet (互联网军事信息传播管理办法),” which enter into force on March 1, will impose restrictions on the kind of information that is allowed to appear online, as well as on the entities that are allowed to publish it (CAC, February 8). [1]

A total of ten entities co-signed the measures, signaling the importance with which Beijing views them—an importance that is reflected in official commentaries published since their announcement. The two key organs involved are the CAC and the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission (中央军事委员会政治工作部), and the cooperation between the two should be seen as evidence of military-civilian integration at the highest levels of the party-state. [2] Coordination between different entities on laws and regulations is common in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but the involvement of as many as 10 different military and state organs is less so. This suggests a substantial degree of concern about sensitive information appearing online.

Beijing Motivated by Need for Regime Security

The measures released last week were accompanied by a short transcript of a press conference about the regulations. These two items took up the entirety of page four of the following day’s edition of the military’s flagship newspaper, PLA Daily (PLA Daily, February 9, [1], [2]).

These documents all make clear that Beijing perceives the security of military information as critical for regime stability. As an official explainer declares at its outset, strengthening the management of military information “has a bearing on the overall situation of national defense and military construction, as well as on the image and reputation of the PLA (关系国防和军队建设大局，关系人民军队形象声誉)” (81.cn, February 9). In the words of another, network security and informatization “have a bearing on the long-term governance of the Party, and on the long-term stability of the country, its economic and social development, and the well-being of the people (事关党的长期执政，事关国家长治久安，事关经济社会发展和人民群众福祉)” (PLA WeChat, February 10).

There are internal and external factors that have led Beijing to this conclusion. Open-source information, including leaks and data on sensitive issues, can be accessed and used by the PRC’s adversaries. Meanwhile, information about problems within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), such as high-level corruption or veterans’ protests, could damage faith in the institution and loyalty to the regime (Kyodo News, August 2, 2024; China Brief, January 17). [3] The measures therefore should be seen in part as remedial efforts to mitigate these risks and shore up security for the regime.

One way in which regime stability is advanced is in the construction of “rule of law (依法治国)” society, a long-term goal of Xi Jinping. These measures support this ambition, contributing to a long list of regulations that have imposed more restrictions on and supervision of online discourse. As the measures themselves note, these include the 2017 Cybersecurity Law, the Preservation of State Secrets Law that was revised in 2024, the 2020 Provisions on the Ecological Governance of Network Information Content, and the 2022 Provisions on the Management of Information on Internet User Accounts. To this could be added an August 2024 proposal by the CAC in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Security (MPS; 公安部) for citizens to obtain cyberspace identification credentials, or the Network Data Security Management Regulations that entered into force on January 1 (Xinhua, August 24, 2024; People’s Daily, October 10; China Brief Notes, October 24).

Related to this regulatory work is the development of executive and implementing institutions. The new measures seek to advance the regime’s capacity in this area by encouraging more coordination between different institutions, including between military and state organs, furthering the military-civil integration that also has been a core part of Xi’s agenda. As one explainer writes, the measures “require the military and local governments to work together and coordinate, and jointly manage [implementation] (需要军地协同联动、齐抓共管).” The third chapter of the measures, on “Supervision Management (监督管理),” begins by noting that the CMC’s Political Work Department, the CAC, and other relevant departments at the central and local levels, have “established a coordinating mechanism (建立 … 协调机制)” for this purpose, and compels all of these organs to conduct activities such as daily inspections (日常检查) and random sampling (随机抽查), with the cooperation of service providers. The PRC’s apparatus of digital repression is extensive, but even by those standards these new burdens appear to require an impressive level of coordination, effort, and resources.

The measures set out two approaches to content management. One is positive; namely, cultivating a favorable image of the regime and its core institutions. This comes through in the readout from the CAC press conference, which describes the measures’ purpose and significance as “promoting the main theme and disseminating positive energy (弘扬主旋律、传播正能量)” (CAC, February 8). [4] The measures also evince a need for content to follow wider propaganda imperatives. Article 11, which appropriately lists 11 criteria for permissible military-related information, has as its first item content that “publicizes Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military (宣传习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想，宣传习近平强军思想的).” The press conference transcript also states that following “Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military” should be the first guiding principle.

The second approach to managing content is negative—removing content deemed sensitive, harmful, or dangerous. Article 13 of the measures lists 12 kinds of content that are prohibited, beginning with that which “endangers national sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity (危害国家主权、安全和领土完整的),” but also including posts that “denigrate the absolute leadership of the Party over the army and the system of presidential responsibility of the CMC, and disseminate erroneous political views such as ‘departyization and depoliticization of the army’ and ‘nationalization of the army’ (诋毁党对军队绝对领导和军委主席负责制，散布‘军队非党化、非政治化’和‘军队国家化’等错误政治观点的).” Other parts of the measures also detail prohibited content. Article 10 forbids accounts that post military-related information from using names that include any of a large number of military-related terms (or those that employ homophonous or similar characters, symbols, numbers, or letters to approximate the same). Article 14, meanwhile, prohibits content containing military secrets, national defense science and technology industry secrets, or unpublished information.

Measures Driven by Fear, Preempted by MSS & PLA Writings

Beijing’s desire for measures such as these has been evident for several years. In 2021, an article in the magazine Military Journalist (军事记者) listed “four constant tasks (四个不断)” for managing the “online military environment (网络涉军生态)” and doing public opinion guidance work. The third item on the list, “on strengthening platform supervision and the control of communications,” called for “accelerating the soundness of laws and regulations (加快法规健全),” including by formulating and improving rules on “the management of the dissemination of military information on the Internet (互联网军事信息传播管理办法)”—the exact wording of the title of the new measures (Military Journalist, May 2021).

In the months leading to their release, the perceived need for the measures became acute. In the civilian domain, the Party was rattled by a copycat article that impersonated its flagship newspaper the People’s Daily, issuing a warning that such phenomena could “trigger a crisis of trust (引发信任危机)” (People’s Daily, October 4). As the China Media Project observed, cases of alleged misuse of state media brands have been rampant in recent years, with the CAC documenting eight cases of netizens forging official government websites or documents to release false information in September alone (CMP, October 21, 2024). In the military domain, where information generally is more sensitive, Beijing sees untrustworthy content appearing online as even more serious. This has been a persistent problem, where there are many energetic military enthusiasts who historically have been a key source of information on PLA advancements. Several individuals have been arrested for photographing military bases and weapons, for example (Indian Express, February 10).

Fear underpins Beijing’s desire for these measures, not just of disinformation but more critically of people leaking sensitive or classified information. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) and the advent of generative artificial intelligence capabilities have made it much easier to acquire publicly available information online and gain insights from it. In 2023, the U.S. government’s Department of Defense stated its vision was to use OSINT as “the ‘first resort’ source of intelligence for decision makers and warfighters” (DIA, October 23, 2023). This has made Beijing vulnerable, as a December 2024 post on the official WeChat channel of the Ministry of State Security (MSS; 国家安全部) titled “Beware of Open-Source Information as a Source of Leaks (警惕开源信息成为泄密源头)” makes clear. “In the era of big data (大数据时代),” it begins, “the channels for putting out and disseminating information in cyberspace are becoming richer and more diverse (信息在网络空间发布、传播渠道愈发丰富多样).” It continues, warning that the Internet “has become an important source of open-source information for foreign espionage and intelligence agencies (成为境外间谍情报机关获取开源情报的重要来源)” who can use various methods to carry out “precise, continuous, and stable information tracking (对目标实施精准、持续、稳定的信息追踪)” to obtain valuable intelligence. Apparently, this is known to have taken place: the post admits that “occasional breaches of confidentiality have occurred (失泄密问题时有发生),” in part unintentionally due to “videos taken by netizens (网友随手拍摄的视频)” (WeChat/MSS, December 1, 2024).

The MSS post proceeds to make the case for new measures. Although existing regulations require information to undergo confidentiality reviews before being made public, “it has been found that individual organs and units have failed to strictly fulfill the confidentiality review requirements when releasing information (但工作发现，个别机关单位在信息发布时，未严格履行保密审查规定).” As a result, the ministry recommends that relevant units should “strengthen the control of information disclosure from the source (加强信息公开管控)” and—crucially—that “platforms should strictly fulfill the main responsibility (网络平台应严格履行主体责任)” (WeChat/MSS, December 1, 2024).

This is exactly what the new measures call for: Article 6 states that Internet military information service providers (互联网军事信息服务提供者) must “set up … editorial organizations (设立 … 编辑机构),” while article 7 requires them to “conduct [account] verification (进行核验)” processes, article 8 compels them to make sure that military-related accounts and posts are appropriately designated as such, and article 9 requires that they keep a record of account holders’ personal data. Article 7 also notes that editorial organs, content reviewers, and fact checkers must be “people with a high degree of political literacy, military professionalism, and confidentiality literacy (具备较高政治素养、军事专业素养和保密素养的人员)” (CAC, February 8).

The new measures inevitably will contribute to the continual hollowing out of PRC’s digital domain. In 2019, China Brief lamented that information on the PLA already much more difficult than ten years prior (China Brief, July 31, 2019). This is part of a wider phenomenon. From July 2023 to July 2024, regulators removed over 57 million pieces of content and shuttered more than 4,800 websites and platforms (State Council, July 30, 2024). Chinese language websites as a proportion of all sites globally plunged by 70 percent in the last decade, in 2023 constituting just 1.3 percent of the total—a miniscule amount, considering that PRC citizens make up nearly one in five people on the planet (WeChat/He Jiayan, May 22, 2024; New York Times, June 4, 2024).

Conclusion

These measures, like most regulations, represent a reactive step taken by authorities. They follow apparent leaks of sensitive information, the publicizing of protests against the military establishment, and the proliferation of (at least some) copycat accounts spreading misinformation—all of which are damaging to the regime.

On another, potentially more dangerous level, they may also be proactive—or preemptive. Beijing has a history of shutting down online discourse, including on military topics, in advance of military or security operations. Recent examples include new censorship laws before activities in 2015 that militarized the South China Sea, controls on discussions about military movements and Taiwan policy before major military exercises around Taiwan in 2022, a crackdown on military bloggers before the 2020 India-China border clashes, and a ramping up of censorship of Hong Kong-related discussions prior to the violent suppression of the protests that energized the city in 2019–2020. The question this raises is whether the new measures should be taken as an indicator of imminent military operations, further internal purges or reforms, or of other similar events to come. For now, this question is unanswerable, but it is one which will nevertheless remain central to future analysis.

Notes

[1] Measures (办法) in the PRC context are a kind of implementation rule issued to clarify how a law or regulation should be executed. They have regulatory force but less authority than laws (法律) or administrative regulations (行政法规).

[2] The CMC Political Work Department oversees propaganda, morale, ideological indoctrination, and Party loyalty within the PLA.

[3] The measures themselves make oblique reference to this. Article 16 prohibits the dissemination of information that “incites military personnel, reservists, militia members, retired military personnel, and civilian personnel who have left the military to hold illegal assemblies, marches, demonstrations, and other activities that disrupt the social order (煽动军队人员、预备役人员、民兵、退役军人、退出军队文职人员非法集会、游行、示威等活动，扰乱社会秩序).”

[4] In CCP discourse, the “main theme” refers to the primary ideological line, and is always closely associated with “positive energy” in propaganda work (See Medium/David Bandurski, December 9, 2015).