Lying flat. Image from Flickr user Mitch Huang CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

China's Cyberspace Administration (CAC) announced the launch of a two-month campaign to curb content that incites antagonism and violence, and amplifies pessimistic and negative sentiments, on September 22.

The CAC has decided Chinese society has a negativity problem, and going forward, content that discusses familial trauma, parents’ frustration with their “unfilial children,” men’s antagonism toward “materialistic women,” women’s hostility against “cheating scumbag men,” workplace criticism of “unambitious young people,” and mocrkery of “bizarre bosses” are being flagged as negative sentiments in a widely shared online bulletin published by state-affiliated Chinese Central Television. The commentary stressed that the CAC's latest campaign aimed to stop the “selling” of antagonism and negative sentiments.

The CAC's announcement also specifies that the campaign encompasses all online channels, including social media posts, video and live-streaming platforms, hashtags, comments, trending topics, message boards, and more.

Within a week of the crackdown, four prominent mainland Chinese influencers, including Hu Chenfeng (戶晨風), Zhang Xuefeng (張雪峰), Lan Zhanfei (藍戰非), and Fangzhang (方丈), who each had tens of millions of followers, were banned. Their posts and videos across social media platforms — including Weibo, Weixin, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, and Bilibili — were all removed.

Additionally, users advocating for frugal lifestyles, also known as the so-called “lying-flatists” (躺平系), fan communities, and Gen Z online trolls (喷系少年) were also silenced or had their posts mass-deleted.

Overseas analysts suggest this censorship campaign is primarily targetting subcultures within online communities of young people. They believe the move is linked to the record-high youth unemployment rates and growing discontent among young people in mainland China.

According to data from China's National Bureau of Statistics, the youth unemployment rate reached 18.9 percent in August this year. This marks a new high, as the methodology for calculating youth unemployment rates was revised in December 2023, following a record high of 21.3 percent in June 2023. Upon the methodology tweak, the rate plummeted to 14.9 percent in December 2023.

The targets of the crackdown can reveal the rationale behind the censorship campaign.

The online influencers accused of “selling” negative sentiment

The four major influencers targeted in the current censorship campaign have been accused of promoting antagonism and anxiety.

The first is Hu Chenfeng, a full-time content creator who began livestreaming and producing videos in February 2023. He focuses on topics like “The Social Underclass,” “The Lives of Ordinary People,” and “What Can You Buy with 100 Yuan?” Recently, his most controversial topic involved dividing consumers into either “Apple people” or “Android people,” with the former portrayed as pursuers of high-quality living, while the latter were depicted as lower-middle-class consumers struggling to get by.

In September, he presented four criteria that young people should use to choose a city to settle in: the presence of a Sam's Club, an Apple Store, an international airport with direct flights to Japan, the US, Australia, and other destinations, and at least ten subway lines. His remarks were seen as stoking class divisions and encouraging citizens to adopt Western lifestyles and values.

Another of the targeted influencers is Zhang Xuefeng, an education consultant and a representative to the Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress, who launched a RMB 17,999 (approximately USD 2,530) “Dream Card” to help middle-class children gain admission to prestigious universities. Critics see his educational philosophy as excessively utilitarian. They lambast Zhang for dismissing foundational subjects like math, physics, and chemistry as employment traps, and hence fueling anxiety and undermining national talent development policies.

The third influencer is Lan Zhanfei, who rose to fame in 2018 by streaming online games and transitioned to travel vlogging in 2023, broadcasting his global travels — a move criticized as promoting hedonism and showing off his wealth.

Lastly, Fangzhang (real name Jiang Yucheng) gained fame on the video platform Kuaishou in 2014 by posting comedic videos. He later rose to prominence by picking quarrels and fights with other influencers. Recently, he was banned for cyberbullying a female video blogger and an anti-fraud blogger. 

In addition to influencers, online communities, including the lying flatists, trolls, and fan clubs, have also been dragged into the clampdown.

Lying flatists, fans, and trolls

For years, mainland authorities have tried to suppress the spread of “lying flatism” — a movement that criticises the phenomenon of “involution” (cutthroat market competition) and the myths of meritocracy and upward social mobility.

Weeks before the CAC announced its campaign, several video bloggers who present their “lying-flat” lifestyle were banned, including “Xiao A is online” (小A在上網), “Internet Cafe Girl Xiao Qing” (網吧少女小青), “Ten-Year Internet Cafe Legend” (十年網吧大神), “Liu Er Gou” (劉二狗), and “Xia Lao Er” (夏老二).

Their content primarily documented how they sought to survive capitalist expectations, which involved avoiding regular employment, spending their time online, taking on odd jobs, and actively adopting frugality and reducing their consumption. For instance, “Xiao A is online” documented his nomadic life across China, embracing a low-desire lifestyle — staying in 400-yuan-per-month (approximately USD 55) hostels, sleeping in internet cafes, and eating one cheap takeout meal per day — to make the most of each day. According to his fans, Xiao A neither plays the victim nor accepts donations, relying solely on minimal platform Ad revenue to survive, and he often looks cheerful.

According to platform administrators from the Chinese social sites Douyin and Bilibili, these creators were removed for “content violations,” though no further details were provided. Analysts suggest the “lying flat” trend falls under the “negative and pessimistic sentiments” outlined in the CAC's notice. As the lying flatists vanished from the public eye, major social media platforms are now promoting “adversity-defying” narratives that encourage young people to maintain optimism in low-paying jobs.

The CAC spoke out more explicitly on its crackdown against troll groups, accusing them of organizing and inciting antagonism and violence through activities such as doxxing, where a person's personal details, such as their name, address, employment, etc., are revealed online.

In July 2025, a domestic media outlet exposed the existence of a cyberbullying industry that operates through a gang-like hierarchical organization of online troll groups, with a core team that picks the targets, senior members who teach doxxing techniques, and a community of angry youths who harass the targets, both online and offline. These young people are typically active in fan communities, online games, and parody or secondary creation circles.

While some cyberbullying acts involve organised crime, ordinary citizens sometimes also expose the personal data of privileged individuals as a pressure tactic to force government authorities to address public concerns.

Recently, Chinese netizens questioned the seemingly suspicious death of 37-year-old actor Yu Menglong (于朦朧), throwing accusations against high-profile figures from the entertainment industry and sharing conspiracy theories about the “unspoken rules” (often sexual in nature) within the sector, which reflects widespread distrust of the official ruling that he died from an “accidental death.”

In response to the public outcry,  between September 11 (the day of Yu's death) and 23, Weibo alone deleted over 100,000 posts for spreading unsubstantiated rumors, cancelled over 1,000 accounts, and suspended the comment functions of more than 15,000 accounts. In addition, Beijing police arrested three online rumor-mongers, forcing discussions about Yu's death to migrate to overseas social media platforms.

The CAC's September 22 announcement also spelled out what it views as problematic behavior within fan club subcultures:

挑動群體極端對立情緒的操作是借社會熱話和事件，與個人身份、地域、性別等信息聯繫並污名化，挑動群體矛盾，又借影視、脫口秀和體育賽事等，鼓動飯圈粉絲群體惡意攻擊、謾駡和舉報等。

Operations that incite extreme group antagonism exploit trending topics and events by channelling the discussions to personal identity, regional background, gender, etc, to stigmatize individuals and provoke group conflicts. They also leverage films, talk shows, and sporting events to incite fan communities to engage in malicious attacks, verbal abuse, and complaint reports.

However, the crackdown is not confined to malicious attacks, but also to posts addressing social conflicts. For example, comments such as “stay single and childless for peace of mind” and “all men are alike” under a post about domestic conflicts are also considered inciting extreme group antagonism, according to CCTV’s online commentary.

Similar online clampdowns in the past have primarily targeted content that challenges government authorities or socialist values. This latest campaign, however, extends the crackdown to the so-called negative views on life and labels opinions on gender, lifestyle, employment, education, and family values that diverge from official narratives as damaging and extreme. 

Commenting on such an extensive suppression of expressions on BBC News, Simon Luo, a Singaporean professor of public policy, warned that the plan could potentially backfire, as the negative sentiment circulating in mainland China has stemmed from real socioeconomic issues, and ideological control cannot resolve economic stagnation or fierce job market competition. Luo fears that the clampdown could have the opposite effect and might just deepen young people’s pessimism.