China does not really like GitHub, because it can not control it. So it tried to totally block it in 2013. That created a backlash from the programmers behind the GFW, so much so that the government reversed the blockage, a very rare movement indeed.
At about the same time, Gitee was created as a Chinese alternative. It is about one tenth of GitHub in terms of number of users and repositories, and many of the repositories were cloned from GitHub.
On May 18th, Gitee announced on Zhihu (a Chinese Quora site) that “it will temporarily close public code repositories so they can be reviewed before they are made available to the community again, which comes amid tightening online censorship in the country.”
Very quickly, internet reacted with jokes:
Can you tell what the joke is from the above pic?
It is an imagined message from the Gitee review team. It says that the two line code contains a sensitive word, “av”, the pull request is rejected. “Please revise the code and try again.”
“AV” stands for Adult Video, obviously sensitive. Not to be mistaken with the HK comedy movie AV
For now, GitHub is still available in China, but many are wondering for how long.
Unlike the outspoken Jack Ma, Pony Ma rarely makes public comments so when he spoke, people reacted. Lately a screenshot of his Wechat moment is drawing attention on social media:
Pony Ma was quoting an article untitled “Apart from Hu Xijin, no one cares about Chinese economy.” Hu Xijin appeared in our 39th Newsletter, he is infamous for being ultra-nationalistic, and many people believe he is a CCP shill. Pony Ma says that he agrees with Hu: “Some netizens care about economy this way: company can go bankrupt but they can not lay off people; company can go bankrupt but they can not force their employees to work overtime. As for what is Chinese economy, they don’t understand and they don’t care, they only care about the chips manufacturing and so called hard-code technology. As for daily needs such as clothing, food, housing and transport, these are too trivial to them. Of course, if their food delivery is late for 10 minutes, they will curse and blame the delivery men more than anyone else. “
Many of his friends on Wechat liked and echoed his comments in the screenshot. Of course, Wechat only allows your “friends” to see and comment on your moments.
Others who are not Pony Ma’s Wechat friends seemed to disagree strongly. The overtime work culture in China is so pervasive, there have been many stories of employees died of exhaustion or depression of overwork. In fact our 2nd Newsletter is about a game developer, who was a Tencent employee, committed suicide due to work pressure.
But Pony Ma is not speaking only to defend an overwork culture. He is laying off massive amount of employees, according to the internet, 10-15% in various departments. And it is not just Tencent, Alibaba, JD, etc, are also laying off people. The wave of laying off also spread to manufacture sector. There is not much official news but internet seems to be quite sure of the trend.
Many people think the massive layoff is related to a few factors: the “common prosperity” agenda pushed by our dear supreme leader, the particular harsh censorship on online speech and crackdown on video games, and the COVID lockdown that is spreading to dozens of cities. But Pony Ma’s anger is targeting a very particular group: the public that does not like him forcing his remaining employees to overwork.
The public hit back with comments that it was Pony Ma and Tencent who actively curbed public speech and if internet is becoming more and more irrational, Pony Ma is the one to be blamed.
He said he was still alive and so was Anthony. It has been 11 days, he posted a picture of 11 sausages as day count.
In our Newsletter 48, we talked about a grassroot movement that translates outrageous comments trending on Chinese social media to show to the world the toxic online environment Chinese internet users breath in and out everyday. Lately, the Atlantic published a report that gives more details on this movement: The Volunteer Movement Enraging China.