Chinaโs leading e-sport live streaming platform Douyu announced yesterday to close the channel of popular live streamer Chen Yifaer for distributing content that insulted historical facts.
The platform also said it would initiate patriotic education covering all live streaming channel owners. This will include visits to revolutionary sites and history museums regularly to help improve the streamersโ awareness of historical responsibility, according to Tencent-backed Douyu.
โPatriotic education with new media such as Weibo and WeChatโ has been an often repeated goal since Chinaโs Ministry of Education launched a campaign targeting Chinese youth in 2016. And the country is seeing increasing penetration of the campaign. In the past few months, Chinaโs media regulators have been tightening its content examination. Yesterday, Chinaโs leading video platform and Z-generation community Bilibili promised to fully cooperate with authorities to crack down illegal and improper content.
Live streamer Chen Yifaer (้ไธๅๅฟ) landed in hot water after netizens reported her to authorities. Local internet content and security department of the police in Jiangsu province published a release on Chinese Twitter-like platform Weibo stating that in 2016, Chen joked about historical content including the countryโs war trauma (in Chinese).
During a live streaming session, Chen mentioned the Nanjing Massacre (also known as the Rape of Nanking), a mass killing during Chinaโs war with Japan in WWII that is often studied with the Holocaust in world academia. Major media outletsโ official accounts including Peopleโs Daily reprinted the release from the police.
According to a video of Chen Yifaerโs comments, which the police put on Weibo for public reference, Chen happily said, โJapanese katanas are so fast and cruel!โ She also made comments in a relaxing and joking way when referring to Chinaโs territory loss of three northern provinces during the war.
Chen then issued an open apology statement on her Weibo where she has 5.03 million followers (including those who started to follow her for any shut-down follow-ups). Chen said what she did was โvery wrongโ, noting that she didnโt intend to โhurt anybody.โ
A part of internet commentators expressed anger towards Chenโs words but, on the other hand, suspicions were raised over the netizen(s) who reported Chen to police. Some Weibo commentators questioned why the insulting content didnโt receive any official criticism or punishment at the time when it was published in 2016. The 2-year time lag is not acceptable without an explanation, some have noted.
Douyu is also reported to be in preparations for an IPO in the US. Following local regulation and sustaining a stable business performance would be crucial to assure the finance marketโs confidence in Douyu.
