Foreign forces
A catch-all explanation that externalizes domestic grievances and denies local agency or institutional responsibility.
境外势力Glossary
Glossary
65 terms expose the language used to criminalize dissent, manufacture consent, conceal responsibility, and connect digital censorship with offline coercion.
Language as an instrument
A grievance enters the propaganda machine
Official language changes the political meaning of an event before repression is defended or forgotten. The terms below reveal four recurring moves.
- 01Rename the peopleMasses who do not know the truth
- 02Criminalize the grievancePicking quarrels
- 03Control what can be seenVisibility governance
- 04Close the route to accountabilityMemory-index control
01 to 18
Criminalization, stigma, and regime language
These terms recast rights claims as security problems and present regime interests as national or popular interests.
Handled according to law
A phrase that presents political punishment as neutral legal procedure while hiding the power choice behind it.
依法处理Picking quarrels and provoking trouble
A vague public-order offense often used against dissent, independent witnessing, and public action.
寻衅滋事Positive energy
A demand that public expression conform to optimism, obedience, and gratitude, recoding criticism as negative emotion.
正能量Western double standards
A diversion phrase that moves discussion away from CCP accountability toward comparison and emotional mobilization.
西方双标Masses who do not know the truth
A phrase that denies public agency by framing dissenters as misled rather than as people with real grievances.
不明真相群众Whole-process democracy
A legitimacy phrase that substitutes managed participation narratives for competition, accountability, and checks on power.
全过程民主Hurting national feelings
A phrase that converts political criticism into emotional offense and moves discussion toward identity punishment.
伤害民族感情Stability maintenance
A frame that turns social conflict into an order problem and justifies repression, surveillance, interception, and censorship.
维护稳定Spreading rumors
A label often used to punish unauthorized factual circulation by shifting attention from truth to permission and political effect.
造谣传谣Malicious wage claims
A phrase that stigmatizes workers seeking unpaid wages by recoding rights claims as public-order disruption.
恶意讨薪Historical nihilism
A label used to suppress historical inquiry, public memory, and questions of political responsibility outside official narratives.
历史虚无主义The Chinese people will not accept it
A phrase that substitutes Party-state position for public will and erases plural views inside Chinese society.
中国人民不答应Rule by law
In propaganda usage, often a way to package legal instrumentalization as legitimacy while avoiding real constraints on power.
依法治国Defensive propaganda
A frame that treats external criticism as attack and presents propaganda, dogpiling, and diversion as defense.
正当防卫式外宣Spontaneous masses
A phrase that presents organized mobilization as organic public sentiment and makes power action look like social consensus.
群众自发Red-code stability control
The use or suspected use of public-health and mobility infrastructure to restrict rights claimants or protesters.
红码维稳Public mourning
Flowers, candles, blank paper, and silence can turn private grief into shared memory, making mourning a stability risk.
公共悼念19 to 39
Propaganda framing and emotional mobilization
These terms dictate how events should be understood and organize anger, shame, grievance, and manufactured consensus.
Framing command
Defining how an event should be understood before facts fully enter public space.
定调Official copy
Synchronized reporting created through shared copy, title templates, and reposting chains.
通稿Internal and external propaganda
Different messaging for domestic and overseas audiences, serving mobilization and suspicion reduction.
内宣外宣Agenda setting
Using entrances, ranking, and headlines to decide which questions become easier to discuss.
议题设置Public opinion handling
A governance chain connecting monitoring, framing, deletion, platform handling, and offline pressure.
舆情处置The big picture
A frame that suppresses concrete rights claims through abstract collective interests.
大局Insulting China
Rewriting criticism of a regime, policy, or institution as offense against China and Chinese people.
辱华Trending-list governance
Reordering public attention through trending placement, downgrading, removal, and keyword handling.
热搜治理Comment-section water level
Manufacturing majority feeling through account networks, repeated rhetoric, and ranking.
评论区水位Foreign validation
Using foreign people, overseas media, or expert identity to reduce suspicion around official narratives.
外籍背书Spamouflage
A term used by researchers for a pro-China cross-platform influence network using low-quality accounts, videos, and repeated content.
SpamouflageCognitive distribution
Turning readers' emotion, identity, and reposting behavior into part of propaganda circulation.
认知分发Nationalist emotion factory
A system that links pride, humiliation, revenge, and identity defense so public questions become patriotic performance.
民族主义情绪工厂Victimhood narrative
A frame in which a powerful state presents itself as bullied or smeared to avoid accountability.
受害者叙事Patriotic shaming
Compressing complex factual judgment into a moral test of patriotism and using shame to force alignment.
爱国羞辱Dogpile opinion warfare
Using volume, insult, reporting, screenshots, and offline pressure to turn a critic into a public enemy.
围攻式舆论Entertained propaganda
Packaging political conclusions inside short videos, jokes, edits, memes, and casual tone to lower suspicion.
娱乐化宣传Short-video propaganda chain
Breaking official material into swipeable emotional fragments that enter daily consumption through platform recommendation.
短视频宣传链KOL endorsement
Borrowing the personal trust of influencers, experts, creators, or foreign faces to reduce suspicion around official narratives.
KOL 背书Origins narrative war
Turning questions of transparency, responsibility, and evidence into bloc blame and using suspicion to suppress inquiry.
溯源叙事战Secondary distribution node
A user who forwards emotional content without verification, moving propaganda from official channels into private trust networks.
二次传播节点40 to 56
Platform censorship, surveillance, and visibility
These terms explain throttling, search manipulation, cross-system data linkage, and target identification.
Visibility governance
Controlling whether information enters public view through search, trends, recommendations, comments, and account weight.
可见性治理Search rewriting
Changing what readers can find through official explanations, unrelated content, and ranking shifts rather than only empty results.
搜索改写Platform interface
The execution point where regulatory demands become community rules, review standards, ranking weights, and account penalties.
平台接口Keyword politics
Controlling event names, sensitive combinations, search results, and substitutes to shape how reality can be named.
关键词政治Self-censorship feedback loop
A loop in which opaque punishment and observed cases teach users to shrink speech before platforms act.
自我审查反馈环Recommendation-pool exclusion
Content remains online but is ineligible to enter recommendation feeds.
推荐池排除Author-only visibility
A hidden state in which authors see their content while other users cannot.
仅作者可见Shadow throttling
Reach disappears through search exclusion, ranking loss, and fewer notifications without an explicit ban.
影子限流Exemplary account punishment
Punishing one account to teach observers which speech carries consequences.
账号示范惩罚Group-owner liability
Shifting content-control pressure to group owners, encouraging preventive removal of members and speech.
群主责任Data linkage
Combining phones, devices, location, payments, and relationships into an identifiable profile.
数据拼接Post-generation filtering
Reviewing an answer after generation and withdrawing, rewriting, or blocking it.
生成后过滤Politicized model safety
Merging political boundaries with privacy, fraud, and dangerous-operation risks.
政治化模型安全Entry censorship
Blocking access before users reach content through app removal, site blocking, and tool restrictions.
入口审查Purpose drift
Repurposing public-service data for risk identification, tracking, or stability control without adequate authorization.
用途漂移Information-suppression chain
Deletion, account handling, relationship identification, and offline pressure occurring around one event.
信息压制链Memory-index control
Restricting event names, locations, search, and anniversaries so later readers cannot reconstruct memory.
记忆索引控制57 to 65
Evidence preservation and offline enforcement
These terms connect digital records, grassroots grids, political-legal organs, and coercion against individuals.
Evidence grading
Separating confirmed, reproducible, suspected, and indeterminate information.
证据分级De-identified archiving
Preserving facts and metadata while hiding faces, phones, addresses, and identifiers.
去身份化存档Control-system convergence
Propaganda, platforms, data, and security institutions dividing work around one event.
控制系统合流Political-Legal Committee
The Party interface coordinating police, courts, procuratorates, judicial administration, and security bodies.
政法委Tea talk
Informal police questioning that creates boundaries through warnings, deletion demands, or promises.
喝茶Source-level stability control
Preventive interception before petitions, grievances, or gatherings become publicly visible.
源头稳控Sensitive period
A period around major meetings, anniversaries, disasters, or political events when control escalates.
敏感时期Grid management
Dividing communities into recordable and reportable units for service and risk detection.
网格化管理Red-code stability control
Using health-code infrastructure to restrict rights claimants' movement or prevent gathering.
红码维稳