The Crimes and Punishments of China's ‘Internet Auditors’
The Crimes and Punishments of China's ‘Internet Auditors’
China's “internet generation” has grown up inside the walls of online censorship. Now, some have become censors themselves. This is their story.
This article by author Qin Shi was originally published in Mang Mang (莽莽), an independent magazine based in Europe that was born out of the wave of resistance in China and globally in 2022 that became known as the White Paper Movement (白紙運動). Founded by a group of young Chinese expatriates, Mang Mang focuses on the Chinese community abroad — writing about activism, resistance, connection, history, and identity in what they call “a time of great dislocation.”
Read the original in Chinese here.
This is the third time Chen Zheming (陈哲明) has received psychological counseling.
On the phone, he tells me bluntly that his therapist charges RMB 400 (US$56) an hour — three days’ worth of his own income. He finds it painful but insists this is money well spent.
“At least, after talking with my therapist, I'm able to sleep for the next few days,” says Chen. Because the counseling fee is so high, though, he has found it impossible to follow his therapist's advice and go for weekly sessions. As a result, he suffers from sleepless nights over 10-day stretches each month. He has suffered acute hair loss and frequent fatigue and contracted shingles due to his weakened immune system. The pain from his shingles has made it difficult for him to sleep, and his lack of sleep has further deteriorated his mental state, locking him in a cycle of suffering. Yet there was nothing, it seemed, that he could do about it.
When did this pain begin? It was hard for him to say. But as for its source, he knew the answer in his heart.
Chen graduated with a history major from an ordinary college in southern China in 2019. After graduating, hoping for a cushy government job, he took — and failed — the civil service examination. Like many of his classmates, he then moved to Beijing to look for employment. But after spinning round and round for six months or so, he still had no prospects.
The beginning of 2020 coincided with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in China, and unemployment continued to climb as a result. Soon, though, Chen's fortunes turned around.
An Unexpected Opportunity
On February 6, 2020, Dr. Li Wenliang (李文亮) passed away in Wuhan, just as the Covid-19 epidemic was coming into public focus. Li, who had tried to expose the epidemic in late 2019 but was admonished by local authorities, was widely regarded as a "whistleblower" of the Covid-19 outbreak. Within China, his death served as a trigger for public criticism of official negligence as the pandemic death toll rose and life in Wuhan became a living hell.
To cope with the sudden influx of “politically sensitive” information stemming from the Li Wenliang incident and the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, Beijing-based internet companies began recruiting legions of auditors (审核员), tasked with monitoring user-generated content. The prospect of working for a prestigious "big factory" (大厂) — a special term used by Chinese media for large internet companies — enticed Chen Zheming. "At that time, I didn't even know what an auditor did," he says. "I only knew that I could snatch a position at a big factory and become the envy of others!"
Because of the time constraints and the urgency of the tasks at hand for the company, the recruitment process, which ordinarily would have taken at least two weeks, was fast-tracked in just four days. He was now an official reviewer of politically-charged internet content. He could hardly believe his luck in being able to take advantage of such an unexpected opportunity. But his stroke of luck was followed by physical and mental trauma he had never anticipated.
The Firewall Generation
Born into the world of the internet in 1997, Chen Zheming is a member, along with his contemporaries, of what has been dubbed “the internet generation” (互联网一代).
Just one year earlier, China's system of internet controls had been formally put into effect through Article 6 of the Interim Provisions on the Administration of International Networking of Computer Information Networks (计算机信息网络国际联网管理暂行规定). The document essentially mandated the creation of internet access points managed by the government. "No unit or individual may establish or use other channels for international networking on its own,” it read. These regulations would later be used to punish what was called "scaling the wall" (翻墙) — referring to users jumping the controls on the internet known as the "Great Firewall,” a collection of hardware and software systems that separate China from the global internet.
For young people in China, the advent of the Great Firewall meant navigating a "China-specific" information barrier. This "internet generation" has grown up within these restrictions.
How did the internet moderators responsible for enforcing these restrictions choose their line of work? How do they decide if certain information is too sensitive for domestic consumption or if something is acceptable within the Firewall? And how do they see the role they play and the impact they might have?
They climb the wall. They build the wall. They work constantly to reinforce it. So what does the “Wall” mean to them, and how do they survive in its shadow?
Becoming a “Wall Builder”
Wang Jiakai (王家凯) is Chen Zheming's college friend. He’s also the one who first introduced Chen to his boss and pushed to get him on board at the internet company where he works.
Unlike Chen, however, Wang is in good health, both physically and mentally. He also has a stronger sense of self-protection and information security, which is why he agrees only to communicate via email. His motivation for joining an internet company as an auditor, he writes, stems from a lifelong interest in history, which led him to pursue this major at university. He greatly admires some of the outstanding generals of Chinese history, such as Yuchi Gong and Qin Qiong from the Tang Dynasty. He hopes that one day, just like his heroes, he will be able to open up territories for the king and defend the land — that he will, in other words, do his patriotic duty and defend the country from harm on the information front.
“Becoming an internet auditor on political issues means filtering out information that could harm the country, ensuring that the nation is stable and peaceful,” he says. “In my view, this is no different from the ancient generals who helped the state and the king suppress rebellions. My job is about assisting in maintaining order in the nation.”
He is not shy about declaring himself a “Mao fan,” a supporter of PRC founder and paramount leader Mao Zedong. In his eyes, Chairman Mao's achievements are timeless. He expelled the Japanese and defeated Chiang Kai-shek, earning the title of “eternal emperor.” During his university years, Wang led a study group on The Selected Works of Mao Zedong.
History textbooks in China have undergone several revisions. In 2018, for example, the keyword “mistakenly” was removed from a longstanding phrase in the approved middle school history curriculum that said, “Mao Zedong mistakenly believed that the Central Committee had fallen into revisionism and that the Party and the state faced the danger of a capitalist restoration.”
Once this “Mao fan” became an internet auditor, he found the work challenging. “I didn’t understand these people online who were always saying this or that about our country is bad,” he says. “What good does it do them to be so pessimistic about their own country? When I came across these people online, I would immediately shut down their accounts. Let’s see how well they sell out their country with no account.”
For internet auditors, shutting down accounts is by no means difficult. The “right to life or death” (生杀大权) of every single account holder is in the hands of young internet auditors on the front lines. They don’t need to report their actions to their superiors. Nothing requires authorization and there is no requirement that they specify a reason or even give it much thought. They can single-handedly erase an account from the internet, just like that.
Because their views on their work gradually drifted in different directions, Chen Zheming and Wang Jiakai’s relationship went from close friendship to mutual tension and animosity over time. “To be perfectly honest,” says Wang of Chen, “I really don’t understand how he thinks.”
The “right to life or death” of every single account holder is in the hands of young internet auditors on the front lines.
Quite unlike his classmate, the enthusiasm Chen Zheming felt upon joining a major internet company had dissipated after just six months. He began to feel depressed and anxious, and a feeling of guilt started to develop. His work became enveloped in a sense of doubt.
“I don’t have the same strong sense of mission and values as he does,” Chen says of Wang. “I joined the company by chance, and if I hadn’t found this job I might have worked elsewhere. But to tell the truth, I didn’t find anything else.” For this reason, his choice to join the company was more just following the flow. The waves and current in that flow were the general decline in the Chinese economy and intensifying controls over online content in the face of the global pandemic, which meant more demand for internet auditors who could plug the gap.
Data shows that by the end of 2020, the first year in which the recruitment of internet auditors rose sharply, the popular short video platform Bilibili had 2,413 internet auditors working internally, accounting for 27.9 percent of the company’s total workforce. At Bytedance, the parent company behind Douyin (抖音) and TikTok and currently the country’s biggest internet firm, there are more than 20,000 internet auditors internally — over 20 percent of total staff numbers.
According to a Bytedance employee who asked not to be identified, “This is just data from 2020. Since the end of the pandemic, the sense of national secrecy has grown, public agitation has increased, and so we would only find a continued upward trend in [hiring of] internet auditors.”
Unlike their counterparts at major platforms outside China like Facebook and X, who largely deal with gore, violence, and pornography, internet auditors at Chinese platforms are chiefly responsible for the political vetting (政治审核) of content, swiftly ensuring that “unharmonious” (不和谐) voices are removed.
“Political stability and regime stability are the most important priorities for the Chinese government,” says a professor of political studies from a well-known Chinese university [who asked to remain anonymous]. “This is a difference between China and foreign [countries], and owing to its differing political system, the work done by internet auditors is different too.” The professor had his own account shut down as early as 2017 for pointing out in a post that “the constitution has become a piece of waste paper” (宪法沦为了废纸) [after the CCP introduced plans in October 2017 for an amendment removing presidential term limits]. Speech of this sort is exactly the kind that is subjected to complete suppression by auditors like Wang and Chen.
Many young people who choose to become auditors struggle to distinguish between “right” and “wrong.” This is because the information they could access online before was always of the politically correct type, [having already undergone a process of censorship]. Chen admits that when he chose to join his current employer as an auditor in early 2020, he had no idea what “sensitive information” was. He had no idea how to “scale the wall” — to circumvent internet controls — and he never knew what even lay beyond the wall.
So initially, when he accepted the offer for the auditor's position, all he had was the ecstasy of having found a job and finally having a chance to make his way into a major internet firm.
The Land Beyond
Li Wenbin (李文斌), a political auditor at another internet company, feels the same way.
Li was born in 1995, the year that China joined the global internet. As a child from a poor family, he scraped his way through his studies and into university. When he filled in his desired field of study after completing his college entrance examinations, having little idea of what different professions entailed, he filled in "business administration" — something that had a lofty sound to it. He never supposed that upon graduation there would be no related work whatsoever.
“If you're a poor kid, of course, you don't have the family business background or the connections to go straight into management, but I didn't know anything like that at the time," he said in a phone interview. "The outside world was impossible to imagine. When I was studying at university, there was still an image of Chairman Mao pasted on the wall of our family home. Before I entered university, the only channel for connecting with the outside world was to use the Baidu search engine on my phone."
A search for “Tiananmen Massacre” in the Baidu search engine turns out nothing related to the events of 1989. The images in the “Tiananmen Massacre” photo results at the bottom are unrelated, and the link does not open.
After he graduated from university in 2018, Li bounced between Shanghai, Hangzhou, Dongguan, and elsewhere. He worked as a warehouse manager, a sales agent for a foreign trade company, a safety inspector for a state-owned enterprise, and other odd jobs. This went on until 2020, when internet platforms started recruiting internet auditors on a wide scale. This took him to Beijing for the first time.
He feels this is the best job he’s managed to find so far. “The company pays full benefits, so I have nothing to complain about. I should be grateful, right?”
What also makes being an internet auditor worthwhile in his mind is that the job has opened up new worlds. “I've really learned a lot about many things I never knew about before, and I've acquired new skills like ‘scaling the wall,’” he says.
Scaling the Wall to Strengthen Its Defenses
What was the first thing Li did when he managed to “scale the wall?”
“I went and had a look at how users on Twitter commented about China’s Covid policies,” Li Wenbin says. This was also something he had to do in order to gain certification as an auditor.
“Scaling the wall” is not required by the company. But in order to take advantage of the hard-won opportunities afforded by his new job, Li privately asked colleagues how to do it and learned the skills on his own. Many of his colleagues felt that only by learning to climb over the wall and understanding what people beyond the wall were against could they better grasp which words and ideas were sensitive. Then, so to speak, they could turn exports into domestic sales — filtering, auditing, and deleting these sensitive words they found on the outside within the Chinese internet. If you are unable as an auditor to gain a good grasp of sensitive words and therefore make mistakes or omissions in your auditing work, the result is immediate dismissal. There is no room for compromise.
“Everyone is really nervous when we’re at work. All of us are afraid of making mistakes,” says Wang Jiakai. “We’re even more afraid of being fired. And so in this situation, we all tend to be extra focused. It’s better to kill a few thousand [posts] in error than let any slip by.”
This was the attitude that drove Chen Zheming to delete huge numbers of posts insulting senior Chinese officials and questioning China's epidemic control policies during his first month as an internet auditor. He also removed countless videos and images.
“At the time, there were many people in Wuhan posting videos asking for help from the outside world. There were all kinds: asking for medicine, begging for food, and of course, even more people pleading to get to the hospital to receive treatment,” says Chen Zheming. “I would delete these and cry at the same time. At that time I felt like I was doing evil, but I couldn't help it. It was my job and I had to do it." This was the initial source of his psychological distress.
“Everyone is really nervous when we’re at work. All of us are afraid of making mistakes.”
Between his stints on the job, to relieve the pressure he felt, he would also turn to his friends outside of Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, hoping to get some solace from them.
His friends stepped up to comfort him, saying the government was working hard to dispatch medical personnel to Hubei and the whole country was donating money to the province. If public opinion spun out of control at such a moment, they said, the whole country could be thrown into chaos. That could interrupt orderly medical assistance, which would do no good for anyone. His friends all seemed to arrive at the same conclusion — that Chen Zheming was doing something good, that his work was meaningful and instrumental to maintaining social order.
While others had a slightly consoling attitude toward the work Chen Zheming was doing, Wang Jiakai cut straight through the doubt, affirming the social value of their work as auditors. When Chen Zheming sought him out for encouragement, Wang said that they were Defenders of the Republic, a title bestowed by the government in 1989 on soldiers who had quelled unrest in Beijing. Wang said that every country had its problems. When he scaled the wall, he saw flooding in the United States and damage caused by hurricanes. He saw armies of homeless people and huge protests in both the US and Europe to criticize the American president. “All of this just goes to show that these countries aren’t any good either in the face of natural disaster,” Wang said. “Natural disasters like Covid cause loss of life and property everywhere. Our country has been working to provide relief, and discordant voices only make this more difficult.”
As for the human causes behind this “natural disaster,” myriad questions remain. Why did China spend lavishly on a system for monitoring and reporting infectious diseases in the past two decades, only to have the system fail in this case? Why did local officials collectively fail in their duties at the outbreak of the epidemic? Why did the city of Wuhan shut down so suddenly, without making any necessary preparations — leading to severe supply shortages?
Wang admits he doesn’t have the answers. But he says that answering such questions is not his job.
Boom and Bust
Wu Qing (吴清) joined China's largest internet engine search company precisely when content audit work returned to normal in early 2023. After the pandemic, China's economic downturn was so severe that the company relocated all of its staff outside core departments to small, fourth-tier cities to cut costs. As the advertising agency where he worked closed its doors during the pandemic, Wu Qing found work at the internet company as an auditor.
Thanks to this change, Wu also got his first opportunity to learn how to scale the Great Firewall.
The chance to learn this came with the job training. The manager in charge of the company's content audit work gave a PowerPoint presentation running through the basics, with photos and text. They were given a few keywords: 1989, 64, Tiananmen Square, massacre, suppression, the People's Liberation Army, and so on. They were told that when they encountered these keywords, they should be entirely blocked out, and there could be no exceptions.
Aside from these topics, they underwent regular training at the company on things like concentration camps in Xinjiang, the Falun Gong, and so on. The process each time was simple. Their bosses did not want them to understand these issues in any detail. They just wanted them to gain a grasp, like machines, of related keywords — and then root them out, just as mechanically, whenever they came across them online. Review and delete. Review and delete.
For Wu Qing, who was born in 1997, this was the first time he heard anything about many of these events and their keywords. Shocked by their implications, he wanted to know more, but his bosses rejected the idea. There was no need for him to know more than that, they said — he just had to be familiar with the keywords.
Chen Zheming's induction training was much like Wu Qing's — brief and to the point, no questions allowed. “The company and our bosses seem to be very afraid of us knowing about these things, always stammering through them," he said. "And of course, for fear of being fired, we generally didn't dare ask many questions." Unable to ask his bosses and coworkers openly, Wu Qing taught himself how to scale the wall, and the first thing he did when he opened YouTube was to check out what the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989 were really about.
After watching many videos, he suddenly realized that this was what had happened: students had protested, threatening national security, and the government had moved in to suppress it — all as might be expected. What was the big deal? He couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Therefore, every year around June 4, as he deleted the relevant posts and discussions, he didn't hold back. Even outside of the AI review, he would take the initiative to find loopholes left by the machine and report them to his superiors, who would then make adjustments.
Concerning these practices, Wu Qing speaks frankly. "This is my duty,” he says. On top of this, he stresses that, as a content auditor, he can always ferret out shortcomings in the AI. The artificial intelligence is incapable of adaptation — and will only, for example, mechanically review the keywords. But human beings, in order to work around censorship, will invent new cryptic words, or homophonic combinations, which demands constant gatekeeping by human intelligence.
Generally, the work of the auditor requires three phases. The first phase is to set the keywords to be monitored within the AI system, which carries out the initial filtering. Next, the human content auditor makes an initial review of the content that has been allowed through by the filtering process, searching for homophonic phrases and other human workarounds. Finally, more senior personnel double-check their work to ensure that nothing has escaped the net.
As a senior auditor, Wang Jiakai offers a succinct summary of these three levels:
“If we only apply machine technology, there will be a lot of problems. For example, in the case of the word ‘democracy,' the machine will automatically identify this as a sensitive word, and will automatically replace 'democracy' in the text with the label 'sensitive word' (敏感词). Of course, it would not be acceptable for internet users to see this 'sensitive word' label either. So in the human [auditing process] such words can be directly audited away (审核掉). After that, making sure other words used [for democracy] like 'Petri dish' and 'Pig Min' [which are homophones of democracy] are found and removed so that a lot of information ultimately can't get out. This needs the top-down judgment of language context by human work.”
The Gun Barrel that Can’t Be Lifted
In China's current economic environment, unemployment is like a ghost hovering over the heads of China's young people.
In June 2023, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) ceased publication of China's youth unemployment rate, triggering widespread speculation [of a cover-up]. Prior to this decision, the unemployment rate for those aged 16-24 had climbed for six consecutive months to hit an all-time high of 21.3 percent.
But Chinese netizens already had questions about the accuracy of the bureau’s data.
“You can't blame the public for losing trust in the government, since it is an open secret that the NBS has falsified data," says one professor of social science who asked to remain anonymous. "My team and I have privately based our calculations on a number of comprehensive data released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, colleges and universities, local tax revenues, and social security bureaus — and we have found that China's current unemployment rate is at least 40 percent at present, which means that at least half of the population is in the state of not having work and being unable to find work." This professor teaches at a Project 985 world-class university in China.
The fear of not being able to find a job after quitting is the reason why Chen Zheming was slow to make up his mind about resigning as an internet auditor, despite his grief and depression.
“To be honest, deleting June 4-related content doesn't make me feel much,” says Chen. “After all, this event is so distant from us — it's hard for us to feel empathy. But the people I audited out earlier [during the pandemic], who were tied up [in quarantine] by the government in Wuhan, Xi'an, and Shanghai, and the videos of their pleas for help from the outside world — all of that disturbs me deeply, to the point that I can't sleep when I think about it."
So when he saw those videos, did Chen ever think that he might "raise the barrel an inch” — purposely sparing posts rather than killing them in the firing line? In the long run, did he not think it was more important to save lives [by letting others speak out] than saving himself?
“Not at all,” he says without hesitation. In his opinion, to "raise the barrel an inch” is just an intellectual fancy. Doing so would be a major work error for a content auditor, and he would then face a new series of difficulties — including losing his job. The beneficiaries of his self-sacrifice would never even know he existed, let alone appreciate him, but he would still be left to bear all the negative consequences for himself. He could not accept such an outcome.
At the same time, his best friend was also cautioning him to think hard before quitting.
The way his friend saw it, all of China’s major internet platforms had been branches of the state since their inception. The political vetting seemingly carried out under the auspices of these platforms was a necessity for the state. If Chen didn’t carry it out, someone else would have to. “It’s not your problem,” his friend reassured him, “you’re not at fault.” If he truly could not carry on, Chen’s friend told him, he’d have to think long and hard about how he’d make a living after.
Chen’s therapist told him that he was just following his superiors’ arrangements and that there is no such thing as absolute right or wrong. None of this advice made his decision any easier.
After the initial high of “opening his eyes to the world” wore off, the work of a political content auditor also became more and more difficult for Li Wenbin to accept.
“Every day I need to focus on 60 to 70 thousand pieces of content,” Li says. “During National Day, June 4th, and when the Xinjiang camps are back in the international spotlight, I need to work overtime every single day. In spite of this, though, my salary has never increased.”
Li’s monthly pay is RMB4,700 (US$658). After deductions for insurance and social security, he’s left with RMB40,000 (US$560). Living on this salary in Beijing has pushed him to his limit. Our interviews with auditors from several platforms show their salaries range from RMB 4,000 to 7,000 (US$980), leaving them very little after basic expenses in an expensive city like Beijing.
“There’s no hope in this job,” an auditor at Bytedance told us. “All it can do is keep us from starving and help us get a foothold in a big city.”
Besides the pressures caused by his low income, Li’s position and the work itself have also left him feeling lost. Competition among auditors is fierce, making promotions hard to come by. If you can’t get promoted, the big internet companies all see auditors like him as pawns they can use and discard whenever they please.
“When an audit error occurs, like failing to promptly detect sensitive information like a top official’s name, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Tibet, we’ll be immediately dismissed without compensation for gross misconduct,” Li says. “And when the platform faces questions about what went wrong by authorities like the Cyberspace Administration of China, the company will probably push us out to take the blame and dismiss us on the spot.”
Unlike the auditors at ByteDance, Kuaishou, or ride-hailing app DiDi, Li is employed by an outsourcing company. For auditors like himself, it’s almost impossible to defend his rights under PRC labor law. The platform’s only relationship with them is as a project partner.
“Squeezing grassroots employees like us is a conspiracy between the state and big business,” says Li Wenbin indignantly. To this end, he went over the wall to search for European and American laws regarding the use of outsourced employees by large companies. He found these laws require companies to outsource no more than 20 percent of their total workforce, while outsourced employees can also join trade unions to safeguard their rights.
“There are no jobs in China,” he said, so he decided to “ride a donkey while looking for a horse” — to continue in an unsatisfactory position while actively looking for something better.
After spending months on job search sites, Li got just one offer from another short video platform. The position was also as a political auditor. He submitted his CV for marketing, sales, advertising, and admin jobs but all of these sunk like a stone in the ocean. At least the offer from the other platform was for a staff position, not an outsourced one. Ultimately, he decided to take it. “I need to let myself grow,” Li reasoned, “a new company may be a good move.”
A Life Held Captive
But the growth he hoped for never materialized. Management at this new platform was strict. Every second the auditors spent away from their workstation was recorded by camera. Even when they went to the bathroom, they would be fined if they didn’t change their status to “away.”
Auditing video also requires more concentration than auditing graphics. A lot of sensitive information can be hidden in the details, and these are easily missed if you’re not paying close attention. If a map of China flashes onscreen for just a second, you need to make sure it includes Taiwan. In World War II dramas, you need to make sure there’s nothing at all disparaging of the CCP. Content on ethnic minorities can’t express doubts about Party policy. Reviewers need to be extra vigilant about “reactionary” messaging hidden in these videos.
Missing such messages would be a fatal mistake if reported or discovered by supervisors. According to PRC Labor Law, employers can immediately terminate even full-time staffers when they cause the firm substantial losses. And in these cases, no compensation is mandated. When signing their contracts, employees have no room to negotiate with their employers.
“What China lacks least is manpower,” Li says. “Employers never have to worry about not being able to recruit more workers.”
More than the terms of his employment, Li is angrier about his compensation. “My monthly salary is still about RMB 4,000, which is not proportional to the work I do. The company’s attitude is ‘do the job if you want, or just quit.’ If I don’t accept it, I’ll be unemployed.”
It is an indisputable fact that China is experiencing an ongoing economic turndown. Various macro data shows that people in all walks of life have lost confidence in the country’s economic prospects. Public sentiment has ebbed to point that they call this the “garbage time of history.”
During this “garbage time,” unemployment keeps rising as wages keep falling. Scholars have commented on official media that young people are unemployed because they refuse to take off “Kong Yiji’s gown” (孔乙己的长衫). The titular character of a story by literary giant Lu Xun, Kong Yiji was a penniless would-be scholar who continued to wear his long scholar’s robes and affect an air of superiority even as he lived the life of a drunk and laughing-stock of the village. Young, university-educated Chinese are only unemployed, these commentators insinuate, because they refuse to put aside their intellectual airs and do real, hard, physical labor.
A bachelor’s degree is the basic requirement for being an auditor. Some companies say they will accept certificates from professional training colleges but, in reality, these are usually weeded out in the recruitment process. That means auditors tend to have bachelor's degrees or higher. It also means those who have already taken off “Kong Yiji’s gown” have not escaped life’s tribulations. On the contrary, they are under constant pressure. Even after throwing away their pride and individual dignity, they can never escape the fate of being a mere beast of burden.
The auditors interviewed by Mang Mang are all nearing marriage age, according to Chinese social custom. But their salaries of just a few thousand RMB a month can’t even support living costs in a first-tier city, much less enable them to buy a property. In our subjects’ view, a love life is a luxury. “We’re deprived of almost all the rights of being a human,” one interviewee said. “No matter how hard we work, it feels like we’ll never climb out of this trap of life.”
Screws in the Machine
“Working hard gets you nothing in return,” Wang Jiakai sighs.
Even as a qualified content auditor who regards himself as a “defender of the nation,” Wang has had challenges of his own. His struggle has been to earn a pay raise by dint of hard work and to cast away the stigma of being an “external contractor” (外包). It took him two years to achieve the first goal, but becoming a formal employee of the internet company, which would bring benefits like cafeteria privileges, afternoon tea breaks, shuttle bus services, and opportunities for further advancement — this has continued to elude him, visible but out of reach.
“I'm now a quality inspector, the final position in the content auditing chain,” he says, “but further promotion and the transition to a formal position seem like a pipe dream.”
Aside from these benefits and conveniences, what draws Wang to the idea of a formal position?
Becoming a full-time employee would mean moving into a position with greater authority, he explains, where he could do things like formulate audit strategies, learn more about national policy directions, and interact directly with government bureaus. "Compared with the auditor's job, these jobs are more valuable and meaningful. Such positions better reflect one's intellect, not just simply executing one's tasks like a robot.”
As to why he has been unable to advance to a formal position, Wang supposes that what the company and the government feel they need are elites. For a person like himself from an ordinary family, with an ordinary education, the only option is to be a chunk of ore in the mine — pressured from all sides, until all that is left is slag.
He was keenly aware, he said, that he had nearly become just that. But he couldn't say what the road ahead had in store for him. With content auditor being the only job experience listed on his resume, he struggles in the job market. And aside from such practical matters, there is the further issue of the disgust much of the public feels for the work of content auditors.
On China's internet platforms, moral judgment against content auditors is relentless. Some netizens have suggested that auditors like him will be judged harshly on the scales of history.
Chen Zheming feels that perhaps he is suffering from “karmic retribution.” He finds himself unable to sleep, and this reckoning seems to be evidenced further by his worsening physical condition. Wang Jiakai, by contrast, feels indignant about the comments online. In his view, being a content auditor is simply doing a job — a job just like that of a cab driver, a programmer, or an employee at a state-owned enterprise. A content auditor is essentially a public servant, he feels. There is no difference. “Everyone is just making a living, and there's nothing wrong with that. Survival is more important to us than moral judgment on the internet,” he says. “If we can't even live, how can we possibly consider morality? And are all those who point fingers on the internet every day necessarily more moral than content auditors like us? I doubt it.”
“If we can't even live, how can we possibly consider morality?"
Setting aside such ethical arguments, many auditors remain uncertain about their career choices and how they will sustain themselves in the future. As they get older, it becomes more and more difficult to cope with the physical strain of night shift work, and the market is flooded with younger people who have graduated and are unable to find other jobs — ready to replace them at the drop of a hat.
Many people chipping away in their content auditing positions have a fairly clear understanding that they are “screws in the machine” (螺丝钉). Wu Qing, when looking back at his own short stint as an auditor, also realizes that he did not seem to have learned any transferable skills. He just mechanically repeated the instructions sent to him by others. All of that hard work was just to scrap together the basic necessities for survival.
Where should they go from here? No one has a clear idea or a path forward.
“The only way is to take things one step at a time,” Chen Zheming says. For his part, he can't possibly quit his job just yet. After all, he still needs to afford those monthly counseling sessions so that he can temper his sense of guilt and get on with work and life.
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