Many online abuses on the Chinese internet are committed in the name of “patriotism” and often involve the participation of state agencies or state-backed media platforms. The abusers smear targets， stoking emotional nationalism among Chinese netizens, producing media storms, harvesting enormous online engagement, and profiting from their cruelty. WHYNOT combed through the timeline of Tzu-i Chuang and Michael Berry’s online abuse incidents, and found the patterns that reveal this unique characteristic of the Chinese internet landscape. "A lot of people told me that an online abuse would pass in two weeks, at most. But that hasn’t been the case for me.”says Tzu-i Chuang, a Taiwanese American chef and food writer. Chuang is married to the former US Consul General in Chengdu. When the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to revoke the permit for the establishment and operation of the US Consulate General in Chengdu on July 24, 2020, retaliating to the closure of the Chinese Consulate General in Houston by the U.S. government, Chuang made headlines the next day on the official WeChat account of Guancha Syndicate (观察者网), a new media site that widely regarded as promoting nationalism and convervativ political views. The article titled “Former US Consul General's Wife’s Nazi Remarks in Chengdu Cause Controversy” first appeared on Guancha Syndicate’s official WeChat account. It quoted a Weibo post by Chuang: "I had a sudden thought, wondering if this was how it was for Jews wanting to leave home to evade the Nazis before World War II, then shook my head not to get too emotional, and told myself I would be back soon." The post reflected her feelings when she evacuated with her young sons at the request of the U.S. State Department in early 2020 and was called "full of malice" by Guancha Syndicate. Guancha Syndicate also pulled one of her Facebook posts, which mentioned that her friend went to Hong Kong during the “most chaotic time” during the pro-democracy movement for a poetry festival. The post also mentioned that a composer friend hers worked with Uyghur and Tibetan compatriots, and that some friends risked reposting information that contradicted Chinese officials. Guancha Syndicate screenshotted a story from The New York Times, saying that the consulate in Chengdu was "the most valuable US diplomatic outpost in China." A few hours later, the article linking Chuang to the Hong Kong protests and Tibet and Xinjiang issues went viral and was reposted on the official WeChat account of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and The Paper, a state-owned Shanghai media outlet. Later that day, the English version of the Chinese nationalist tabloid Global Times reported the incident, and shared comments from Chinese netizens calling Chuang “a two-faced web celebrity.” At the same time, a blogger who has more than 6.5 million followers on Weibo, posted that Chuang was "a very typical two-faced person" and began to use sexually-insulting and racist language. The blogger asserted that Chuang "is particularly good at pretending to be a quiet bitch for years" and "helping her American husband brainwash Chinese people behind the scenes to spread the poison of Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan propaganda." Chinese netizens began to lash out at Chuang, hurling no shortage of obscenities at her. Many people suspected her of being “a spy engaged in subversive tasks.” Others said things like, “a disgusting face can't be hidden forever"; “yellow skin and white heart”; “human or witch? In the end we’ll find out”; “sad and disgraceful”, etc. On July 28, Internet celebrity Sima Nan (司马南), who has 2.7 million and 2.05 million followers on Weibo and Bilibili respectively, published an 18-minute video titled "The True Face of the Wife of the Former US Consulate General in Chengdu,” based on Guancha Syndicate’s article. In the article, he called Chuang "remarkably like a pro-Tibetan independence" and "remarkably like a pro-Hong Kong independence” supporter. The video got over 7,000 likes. A netizen asked Sima Nan: "Is this kind of stab at a family member wrong?" Sima Nan replied that his content “all came from public information." At the same time, Guancha Syndicate posted to Weibo, re-examining Chuang's “inappropriate words and deeds” which garnered 23,000 likes. Zhang Yiwu, a professor of Chinese at Peking University who has 9.2 million Weibo followers, forwarded this, calling Chuang "a Chinese loyal to the United States who attacked China and the Chinese nation." These attacks also spread to overseas Chinese media platforms, such as Canada Today, Australia’s Family Melbourne, and the College Daily, which claims to be "watched by two million Chinese youth every day". All of these platforms reposted the contents of Guancha Syndicate’s article. “US-China relations have reached a new historical low and as long as there is any conflict, I will be regarded as a symbolic figure."Chuang sighed. — Chart: How the State and private media coordinated to attack Tzu-i Chuang — This convergence of online influencers, nationalist tabloids, and Chinese state media also happened to Wuhan-based writer Fang Fang and translator Michael Berry. At the beginning of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its worst in Wuhan, Fang Fang began a diary on Weibo to record what he saw and heard during the pandemic. It lasted 60 days until she stopped writing on Mar. 25. After that, Guancha Syndicate published a commentary on Fang Fang's ideological "left and right" issues and the era's "Chinese and Western" disputes. On the morning of April 8, Hu Xijin, then-editor-in-chief of the Global Times, posted on Weibo that “The Trump administration’s primary purpose is to dump the blame on China,” and “At that time, Fang Fang's diary was being published by American publishers, which smells a little fishy." The Global Times reposted its article on its website and official WeChat account that night. State-owned media outlet China.org.cn(中国网) reported on HarperCollins’ plan to publish Fang Fang's diary, and denounced "the United States publishing this diary...with bad intentions, when the Western media is wantonly distorting the pandemic in our country." On the same day, Guyan Muchan (孤烟暮蝉), a Weibo influencer with more than 6 million followers, posted that "Fang Fang's diary is a strategy for the West to maintain stability in their society... They desperately need evidence to prove China can’t [handle the pandemic]." Guancha Syndicate's community Weibo account "Wind Community" (风闻社区) shared a screenshot of the English version of Fang Fang's diary on Amazon. Many Chinese netizens noticed Michael Berry as the translator. A day later, the Chinese left-wing website Red Culture Network (红色文化网) published an article claiming that “Fang Fang's diary, distributed globally, has become a butcher's knife of Europe and the United States.” It also claimed that "Fang Fang's diary is funded by Western hostile forces that hate China and have been vainly attempting the cry of a color revolution in China." Red Culture Network is a state-affiliated media outlet in China, and its mission is to "spread positive energy for the realization of the Chinese dream.” On April 11, Fang Fang was interviewed by the new media outlet Scholar (学人), when she mentioned the overseas publication of the diary and the communication and translation process with Berry, saying that "translator Mr. Berry has always been friendly to China”, “not everything is a conspiracy.” However, Sima Nan interpreted this as evidence of collusion with foreign forces. Malicious comments piled up on Michael Berry's social media: "The more you translate, the more Americans die, you’re just adding fuel to the fire”; “This white-skinned pig is foreign garbage, deport him, let him go back to the herd immunity of his own country.” Many people called him a “spy.” A few days later, a big-character poster (hand-written propaganda poster typically posted in a public place) “reporting on Fang Fang’s book” appeared on the streets of Wuhan. The author scolded Fang Fang for “taking advantage of others”, “doing things that seriously harmed and framed the country,” and “demanded Fang Fang hand over all her property, give up everything or apologize with her life, otherwise, we’ll use a 'chivalrous way' and carry out a 'cultural and military attack' against Fang Fang." Berry recalls that a group called “Little Red Soldiers” (红色小兵) appeared on WeChat at that time, using pictures of Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution; with the caption - “Who will be next (to be criticized and fought against)? Pay attention to Fang Fang's circle of friends." Berry says, “This is an open threat to people, demanding you to draw a clear line (between yourself and those being targeted). If you stand up (for them), you will also become a target to be denounced.” "This is a method right out of the Cultural Revolution playbook," says Berry, who has taught the history of the Cultural Revolution at UCLA for many years. He commented further that the violence, bullying, humiliation, and denouncement of those associated with the offender taking place on the Chinese Internet is a "digital version of the Cultural Revolution." In early July, Berry accepted an interview with RFI. “The purpose was to clarify, tell the truth, and directly respond to some of the attacks." He uploaded the interview to his Weibo account and it immediately received more than 300,000 views, but "two or three hours later, it was removed, ‘harmonized' [scrubbed by state censors].” “At the same time, the rumormongers took out parts of the interview and used it as material to chastise me." "I don't have a platform to speak," l Berry remarks to WHYNOT. "Weibo has become their world, which is really ridiculous." These out-of-context accusations, including the post by Internet influencer Wuwei Li Ye (无为李爷) that clipped a part of Fang Fang's interview, attracted more than 3,000 likes. The continuous attacks by Sweet Potato Bear Old Six attracted more than 2,800 likes. At the end of June, Berry published an op-ed in The Washington Post about his and Fang Fang's experiences of online abuse. While The Post’s website is not accessible in China, many Chinese internet influencers took screenshots of some of the sentences to use as evidence that Fang Fang and Michael Berry are “a collusion from the inside and outside.” For example, Zhang Yiwu posted some extractions from the op-ed to Weibo and wrote, "Western media and politicians take this book as evidence to hold China ‘accountable’... Fang Fang is also an important member standing side-by-side and highly praised by anti-China and anti-Chinese nation characters, and this is what the translator and Fang Fang pursue." Guancha Syndicate reposted the posts attacked Fang Fang and Berry, accumulating nearly one million likes and comments. – Chart: There is a similar pattern of attacks on Michael Berry – The coordination between state media and private sectors set the propaganda tone The media site, Guancha Syndicate, played an important role in Chuang and Berry’s online attack incidents. Guancha Syndicate was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Shanghai. Its owners are Shanghai Observer Information & Technology Co., Ltd.. The website mainly focuses on news reviews. It launched a mobile app in 2013, and also has Weibo and WeChat platforms. At present, it has more than 18 million followers on Weibo, and its Weibo accounts "Guancha Syndicate Micro Lost Video" (观察者网微丢视频), "Wind Community" (风闻社区), "Guancha Syndicate News Client" (观察者网新闻客户端), "Observer Academy"(观学院) have tens of millions of fans. Guancha Syndicate also has more than seven million fans on the video social networking site Bilibili, with a total of nearly 5.3 billion views. According to public information, the predecessor of Guancha Syndicate was the online version of the Shanghai "Social Observer" magazine (《社会观察》). This was originally sponsored by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. In 2010, a media guru named Jin Zhongwei founded the Shanghai Chunqiu Comprehensive Research Institute and took over the magazine. Two years later, Jin Zhongwei established Shanghai Observer Information & Technology Co., Ltd., and Guancha Syndicate became independent from the magazine and was officially launched. Jin Zhongwei became the editor-in-chief of Guancha Syndicate. According to public information, Jin graduated from the Department of Journalism at Fudan University, and worked in media outlets such as Shanghai Legal News and Xinmin Evening News. He served as deputy editor-in-chief of Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post. After another two years, Jin Zhongwei's Shanghai Chunqiu Comprehensive Research Institute changed its name to Shanghai Chunqiu Institute for Strategic and Development Studies, called itself the "partner" of Guancha Syndicate, even sharing the same mailing address with Guancha Syndicate: 3, Alley 300, Panyu Road, Changning District, Shanghai. Many famous Chinese scholars contribute to Guancha Syndicate. Most of them are widely known for their nationalist positions, such as Zhang Weiwei, Dean of the China Research Institute at Fudan University; Hu Angang, from the Institute for Contemporary China Studies at Tsinghua University; and Professor Chen Ping of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University. There are simultaneous researchers at the Shanghai Chunqiu Institute for Strategic and Development Studies. These scholars are considered "State advisors" with extensive contacts in the government. In 2017, Shanghai Observer Information & Technology Co., Ltd. established Shanghai Deyi Culture Communication Company with a registered capital of 3 million yuan [roughly 4.75 million USD] and began operating the WeChat public account “Hu Xijin Observes.” Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of China's state-run Global Times, retired in late 2021. Although Guancha Syndicate is privately run and Global Times is a state-run media outlet under People's Daily, the two have been interacting for several years. On Weibo, the Global Times reposts several articles and videos from Guancha Syndicate every day. In addition, the People's Daily's Weibo account, with 141 million fans, and the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League Weibo account, with more than 16 million fans, frequently repost content from Guancha Syndicate. The previously mentioned allegations against Chuang and Berry is not the only time these outlets worked together. In October 2021, Guancha Syndicate and Global Times jointly made an online attack against Emily Feng, a Chinese-American reporter at National Public Radio (NPR) in Beijing. The attack emphasized that NPR was “overseas anti-China media” and Emily Feng was described as an "anti-China professional.” The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League’s Weibo also published similar content. In 2016, a similar situation happened to Taiwanese film director and actor Leon Dai. The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League posted its questioning of Dai's support for the Sunflower Student Movement and the “Anti-Black Box Curriculum Movement” [A 2015 Taiwan student protest against proposed high school curriculum changes], suggesting he may be connected to the Falun Gong movement. The Global Times and Guancha Syndicate joined the discussions and speculations about Dai's political position, claiming that "netizens’ monitoring" made Dai pay the price. According to Qcc.com and other public records, Guancha Syndicate had three funders: Jiang Shaoqing, Eric Xun Li, and Sha Ye. With the exception of Sha Ye, the other two are no longer shareholders of Guancha Syndicate. However, all three are partners at Chengwei Ventures, a venture capital firm established in 1999. Eric Xun Li is the most well-known of the three and is famous for his TED talk and online battles with MIT scholar Huang Yasheng. In recent years, Li has actively marched along with the state propaganda. In a speech, he stated “study On Theory (Qiushi,《求是》, the official journal of the CCP Central Party School), make investments.” Feng Bo, the founder of Chengwei Ventures, is a “second generation Red,” and his father Feng Zhijun was a counselor at the State Council. The capital behind Guancha Syndicate is considered to have ties with “red capital” as well as overseas capital. According to public information, those who have become Chengwei Ventures investors include Donald Rumsfeld, who twice served as the US Secretary of Defense, and US venture capitalist George Leonard Baker. WHYNOT checked information available from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and found that although Chengwei Ventures claimed to be headquartered in Shanghai, it was registered in the Cayman Islands and Delaware under the name of Chengwei Evergreen Capital. In March 2021, it submitted materials to the SEC to raise 1.5 billion in funds. The discussion of whether American capital is behind both Guancha Syndicate and Hu Xijin appears from time to time on Chinese social media but is usually drowned out amid Guancha Syndicate’s hundreds of millions of hits and tens of millions of fans. – Chart: The ties between state media and private media – Profiting from spreading nationalist rhetoric The coordination between capital investment power and official media extends to Sima Nan, an pro-CCP online influencer. According to the public records on Tencent, the operators of Sima Nan's WeChat official accounts "Sima Nan Channel" and "Sima Nan" are Beijing Zhongyi Wangtian Information Technology Co., Ltd. and Nanjing Lingsi Technology Co., Ltd. respectively. The legal representative of both companies is Rao Jin, who also operates accounts of nationalist internet celebrities such as Jin Canrong and Li Yi. Rao Jin graduated from Tsinghua University. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he founded the nationalist website Anti-CNN, which became very popular. This website was later changed to the nationalist political review website "April Network.” Jiang Shaoqing became an investor. Rao Jin also owns domain names including Anti-BBC and Anti-VOA. According to public information, Sima Nan, whose real name is Yu Li, was born in 1956 and has worked as a civil servant, newspaper reporter, and news anchor. He also made a cameo appearance in the sitcom “I Love My Family” in the 1990s. In the early 1990s, he became popular for exposing fake Qigong and fake doctors, but his popularity on social media started in 2020. At that time, the Chinese Reignwood Group (a Chinese investment firm) and the Thai Tencel Group were in litigation over the trademark for the Red Bull energy drink, both sides having initiated several lawsuits. Sima Nan seized this opportunity and published popular videos with themes such as "China Red Bull Was Bullied" and “Thailand Tencel Involved with Hong Kong and Taiwan Independence.” People called him a “patriotic influencer.” Also that year, the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League invited Sima Nan to be a guest in a live broadcast to promote the “Made in China'' plan, drawing more than 500,000 online viewers. A few months after the closing of the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, Sima Nan launched a second round of attack against Chuang in early 2021. He successively released videos on Weibo, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms, saying that "Chuang's true identity is a sex worker who was assigned by the Taiwan authorities to the American diplomat.” This strongly racist and sexist rumor was picked by many Internet influencers, who immediately joined the online attack against Chuang to gain more attention and website traffic. Fake information spreads wider and more easily. For example, a marketing account, Sweet Potato Bear Old Six, which usually focused on advertising and selling goods, out of thin air and the basis of rumors claimed that Chuang “couldn't show a marriage certificate”. Even Chuang’s mother was not spared, with him saying on Weibo that she was “probably a concubine.” According to public information online, Sweet Potato Bear Old Six’s real name is Liu Ludong. He published the comic book “Bear, Old 6” in his early years, under the pseudonym Brother Sweet Potato. Some netizens commented that he “specializes in sinking markets” and is very popular among those with a limited or lack of an education. His rhetoric garnered lots of online traffic and flowed unimpeded on the censorship-ridden Chinese internet. In addition to hurling abuses, Sweet Potato Bear Old Six's Weibo account focuses on goods and advertising. The Economist reported that, in China “anti-foreign paranoia would become a nasty but profitable game” - “If you have a lot of clicks you become influential, and influence drives revenues.” Ironically, as soon as this report was published, Guancha Syndicate published an article claiming that The Economist distorted the interviewee's words with “deep malice” .At the end of the article was the banner link to Guancha Syndicate’s e-commerce platform for readers to purchase Lunar New Year’s goods. During the second wave of online attacks against Chuang, she again received large numbers of malicious and private messages. Her husband later publicly clarified that he and Chuang were legally married and deeply in love, but this failed to stop the bullying and slander. In April 2021, after the Chengdu hot pot restaurant incident [where Xiao Meili, a feminist activist from Chengdu, called someone out for smoking indoors], Sweet Potato Bear Old Six pointed to Xiao Meili, and suggested she had a connection to Chuang. After the incident where a student committed suicide by jumping off a building at the No. 49 Middle School in Chengdu, people were dissatisfied with the way the school and local government handled the situation and went to the school gate to mourn. Sweet Potato Bear Old Six said with certainty that this was related to the "foreign forces" represented by Chuang. Sina Weibo, Guancha Syndicate, did not respond to Wainao's invitations to interview. "What stays on the Internet is determined by someone." Do these internet influencers emerged out of social media hum along to the main theme of China's official propaganda just to please the party? Or have these non governmental civil forces found a new way to engage with, or even rewrite the official ideological narrative with social media breaking the monopoly of information? It is hard to know. What is certain is that these mobilized online predators have been tacitly accepted by officials, or even outright condoned. Both Tzu-i Chuang and Michael Berry have tried to defend their rights. “I clicked on the report function, but it seemed to have absolutely no effect, people sending hateful messages were still able to continue posting," Berry recalls. “In China, the entire Internet is tightly controlled. If so many people are sending out that much information, there are at least some people behind the scenes that will allow it to achieve some political objectives," he speculates. Chuang sent a letter from her lawyer to both Sina Weibo and Tencent. “Weibo did not reply at all. Tencent deleted several examples within the lawyer's letter and did not reply again. Only after doing so did I realize how difficult it is to defend one’s rights.” However, for those who supported her, “either the things they wrote disappeared, or their accounts were destroyed," Chuang says. "What stays on the Internet is determined by someone." "Online attacks are not an end in itself, but are tools and means." Jaw-Nian Huang, a scholar who studies politics and media at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, explains toWHYNOT. Past research has shown that attacks on Chinese social media generally do not exceed two weeks. "When some major and controversial events occur, such as during the Two Sessions (the meeting of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference)or some disaster occurs, these events may potentially affect the regime's rule, and officials will manipulate the information — so that the people can't say anything. It’s censorship; or encouraging people to say something, it’s guiding the public opinion.” However, the online attacks against Chuang and Berry have corresponded with the fluctuations in US-China relations and has persisted even to the present. Huang thinks that “on one hand, these two cases are really of value in use.” On the other hand, “Take Chuang as an example. She is the wife of a diplomat and Taiwanese, and she is married to an American.” “It’s actually a dual structure of oppression, one is xenophobic sentiment, and the other is patriarchal oppression and misogyny.” Huang believes that these two cases can be regarded as “a manipulation of information for China's domestic needs”; “manufacturing external enemies”; “letting the voices of the Chinese people hum along with the main theme”; and that continuous online harassment can be understood as "the aftermath of China's official information manipulation.” Whenever a subject of online abuse is stirred up by state media accounts and online influencers, ordinary netizens are mobilized, and nationalist trolls run rampant, from Weibo to WeChat, from Bilibili to TikTok in China, from Douban group to Baidu message forums, from private messages to crowdsourced information… Wainao searched many accounts involved in online abuse from Weibo accounts such as Guancha Syndicate and Sima Nan, and found a considerable proportion of fans adopt usernames associated with the Chinese flag to show patriotism, and whenever topics such as “insulting China'' and “foreign forces'' break out, they first use hashtags to post on the topic, calling themselves “onlookers'' and “trend followers'', reposting attacks toward the person involved, and then delete Weibo after a few hours or days, turning into a “ghost” on social media. They are also obsessed with inventing or recreating Internet slang terms, such as "NMSL" (your mother is dead) [an acronym of the Chinese 你妈死了nǐ mā sǐle] and “climb away for daddy” [vulgar internet term meaning ‘f… off’ 给爷爬 gěi yé pá]. These words have variations using emojis, onomatopoeia, and dialects and usually fill the entire screen like locusts, and without traceability and accountability. Online influencers who initiate or promote online attacks regularly receive official commendations. For example, Guyan Muchan, who has 6.4 million Weibo followers, "drew up the list" during the Hong Kong demonstrations in 2019 and called out ordinary people who supported Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement. She posted these individuals' social media accounts, phone numbers, and photos on Weibo, encouraging netizens to “crowdsource” them and to carry out large-scale online attacks. In July 2021, Guyan Muchan was named "Guangdong Network Civilization Propaganda Ambassador" by the Guangdong Provincial Internet Information Office. Another nationalist influencer, Ziwu Knight (子午侠士), a self-proclaimed “online technology blogger,” focuses on attacking Chinese feminist activists. In April 2021, during the Chengdu hot pot incident with Xiao Meili, Ziwu Knight exposed a photo of Xiao Meili holding a "Pray for Hong Kong" sign, tagging it as “Hong Kong Independence,” and mobilizing netizens to attack Xiao Meili, further reporting it to the Internet police. Even Xiao Meili's online store was not spared. So far, Ziwu Knight’s most liked Weibo post is still a long article about feminists, claiming that the CIA is behind the scenes. This post has nearly 20,000 likes. Initium Media [a Singapore-based digital media outlet] once commented, “The reason why China's nationalism is particularly impressive to the world is related to its impulsive and aggressive character.” In terms of economic, military, and diplomatic strength, China has skyrocketed to the center of the global arena. Such "impulsive and aggressive" Chinese-style Internet spirit also swept into the global Internet like a whirlwind. Teng Biao, a human rights lawyer based in the U.S., tells WHYNOT that although the Chinese government has blocked his name and articles on the Internet in China, “’Little Pinks’ （小粉红, online nationalist youths）can go over the wall and spread fake news and conspiracy theories on Twitter and Facebook, launching the 'fifty cents' (a reference to the ‘50-cent army’, Chinese cyber nationalists paid to patrol the Chinese internet)to attack.” Jiayang Fan, a Chinese-American staff writer for The New Yorker, also received countless malicious posts and private messages on Twitter because of her coverage of China and Hong Kong. At first, she didn’t understand the flood of “NMSL” comments and had to search online. Emperor Conquest (帝吧出征) and Little Pink Conquest (小粉红出征) have become well-known online wonders in the international community. As the severity of China's Internet censorship continues, the voice of opposition gradually fades from the cramped space of speech, and the standards are constantly being raised for what is patriotic and what is loyalty. Everyone is likely to be examined with a microscope in these cyber spaces. The bottom-line criteria for humiliating China is constantly being elevated, and online reports and witch hunts are becoming more and more frequent. Amidst the chaos, Hu Xijin, an "old friend" of Guancha Syndicate, has also been attacked online. On May 1, 2021, “China Chang’an Network” (中国长安网), the official Weibo account of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, published two real “ignition” pictures comparing China and India. One was the moment when China's Long March series of carrier rockets launched , and the other was the tragic scene of a staff member in anti-epidemic attire somewhere in India setting fire to the body of a person who had been infected with Covid-19. This Weibo post caused a lot of controversy. Shen Yi, an associate professor of the Department of International Politics at Fudan University and a Weibo celebrity, defended Chang’an Network, "This picture is very good... bitch, if you want to paint your good feelings, please go to India to burn some firewood." Hu Xijin responded, "It's time for the account of the official institutions to hold high the banner of humanitarianism and express sympathy for India." For a time, netizens attacked Hu’s Weibo, accusing him of being “a wall flower,” “disloyal to the country,” and “worse than public intellectuals,” accusing the Global Times of a “turncoat”. Hu himself was put under the magnifying glass of the Internet and subjected to “political trial”. When he was interviewed by Southern People Weekly ten years ago, he had talked about wishing to be born in the United States, which became “criminal evidence” for netizens to try him. Perhaps to quell the infighting among nationalist groups online, the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League said online that “the 'business of patriotism' should be put to rest,” referring to many online influencers “under the banner of 'patriotism'" and "building praise on a foundation of forged evidence”; “in fact, it harvests people's emotions and earns profits from web traffic”; “it is a kind of 'vulgar red’.” However, state media and online influencers are simultaneously shouting "color revolution is happening,” looking for their next spoils of war.