KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior re­porter/pro­duc­er

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

BEI­JING, CHI­NA — Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der’s sug­ges­tion that T&T look to Chi­na to deal with so­cial me­dia threats has ig­nit­ed dis­cus­sions about pri­va­cy, free­dom of ex­pres­sion and the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of adopt­ing for­eign poli­cies.

His com­ments to “look at Chi­na’s so­cial me­dia poli­cies” came af­ter Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne said his fam­i­ly had been tar­get­ed with death threats via Face­book.

Days pri­or, it was re­port­ed that po­lice were in­ves­ti­gat­ing a woman ac­cused of post­ing threats against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Face­book.

But what ex­act­ly are Chi­na’s so­cial me­dia poli­cies? And are they as strict as Alexan­der seems to be­lieve?

Guardian Me­dia was on the ground in Bei­jing in­ves­ti­gat­ing how Chi­na’s mod­el ac­tu­al­ly works, not just on pa­per but in re­al­i­ty.

Chi­na’s on­line space is heav­i­ly reg­u­lat­ed.

It’s one of the most tight­ly con­trolled in the world.

Posts con­sid­ered dis­rup­tive or harm­ful to so­cial or­der can lead to crim­i­nal charges, with up to three years be­hind bars.

Pick­ing ar­gu­ments and pro­vok­ing trou­ble, in­clud­ing spread­ing ru­mours on­line, is con­sid­ered dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour and as such is pun­ish­able by law.

Ac­cord­ing to the Crim­i­nal Law of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, Ar­ti­cle 246, “Who­ev­er, by vi­o­lence or oth­er meth­ods, pub­licly hu­mil­i­ates an­oth­er per­son or in­vents sto­ries to de­fame him, if the cir­cum­stances are se­ri­ous, shall be sen­tenced to fixed-term im­pris­on­ment of not more than three years, crim­i­nal de­ten­tion, pub­lic sur­veil­lance or de­pri­va­tion of po­lit­i­cal rights.”

Al­so, Chi­na’s cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty law, da­ta se­cu­ri­ty law and pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty ad­min­is­tra­tion pun­ish­ments law all give au­thor­i­ties broad pow­ers to or­der so­cial me­dia plat­forms to delete con­tent, block ac­counts and re­port users to po­lice.

How­ev­er, en­force­ment does not look ex­act­ly like the ful­ly puni­tive sys­tem those liv­ing out­side of Chi­na may imag­ine.

While some cit­i­zens are con­cerned about how “strict” Chi­na’s laws are, Bei­jing na­tion­als tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to some lo­cals, the most that hap­pens is your pro­file will be black­list­ed.

One Chi­nese na­tion­al said, “In my ex­pe­ri­ence, first of all, we have very com­pre­hen­sive reg­u­la­tions in Chi­na to deal with cy­ber­bul­ly­ing… You can file a re­port about the mis­con­duct you ex­pe­ri­enced to the plat­form, and the plat­form will take mea­sures for ex­am­ple, they will freeze your ac­count or they can shut down your ac­count per­ma­nent­ly.”

Ac­cord­ing to Chi­na’s law, the plat­forms can be held in con­tempt if they do not re­move il­le­gal con­tent from on­line spaces.

Oth­ers ad­mit every­thing is mon­i­tored but they tell Guardian Me­dia things aren’t as se­vere as they may ap­pear to be.

“If you hear things like peo­ple get­ting ar­rest­ed for cy­ber­bul­ly­ing in Chi­na, I think that doesn’t hap­pen a lot but in ex­treme cas­es, yes, it can hap­pen,” he added.

An­oth­er Chi­nese na­tion­al said, “I think the strict law that you men­tioned be­fore, we do not con­sid­er it as a threat here.”

So, why ex­act­ly did Min­is­ter Alexan­der sug­gest look­ing to Chi­na?

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to en­quire about what as­pects of Chi­na’s mod­el the min­is­ter was con­sid­er­ing, his re­sponse was, “Word.”

This was fol­lowed by a link to a Tik­Tok ac­count which point­ed to a Sin­ga­pore mod­el on cell­phone us­age, not Chi­na. The video men­tioned, from 2026, re­vealed sec­ondary school stu­dents in Sin­ga­pore will be barred from us­ing their smart­phones and smart­watch­es dur­ing school hours. It al­so said there would be “bed­time locks” placed on learn­ing de­vices from 10.30 pm.

Asked if these are laws the Gov­ern­ment plans to im­ple­ment, Alexan­der did not re­ply.