Orwell Meets McKinsey & Co. in China’s Internet Control

China already has a reported two million online opinion monitors, but it seems that was not enough. Certificates are now being dispensed for those who take a training course, which instructs them in precisely what information to censor. Inductees become “online public opinion management specialists.” The development is an attempt by Beijing to further professionalize and entrench its management of opinions on the Internet.

The first training sessions for these specialists will be held in Beijing this month—they’ll be followed up with tests to ensure that the knowledge was retained, and then certificates will be granted.

Control of public opinion has always been a hallmark of communist rule in China. The rapid growth of the Internet and social media, however, caught the Communist Party off guard. It has now taken a variety of moves to reassert state control over social media channels.

The Communist Party takes seriously the threat of social unrest in China, and attempts to manage, manipulate, and control public opinion on the Internet to head off protests before they have a chance to emerge, according to the Party’s own literature on the topic.

The first six-day training session for the new certificates will be held from March 27 to April 1, and will be hosted by the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece news agency Xinhua, in cooperation with the National Public Opinion Standardized Test Center (NPST), according to Xinhua.

[link to www.theepochtimes.com]