China Outside China
They are drawn to the platform’s community-moderated, discussion-based format, which allows for more fringe voices to thrive.
Jeff Cao, a finance worker from China, still remembers when the popular discussion forum Kai Fang Qu, or “Open Realm,” was banned from the country’s internet four years ago. Kai Fang Qu was part of Chinese sports commentary platform Hupu, which shut down the forum in a move to curb politically sensitive content.
An avid member of Kai Fang Qu, Cao was sad to see his community disappear. On Hupu, stereotyped as being dominated by young, college-educated men venting about their dating struggles and debating NBA results, the forum had been an outlier — a rare community where participants discussed current events, and more serious topics such as the war in Ukraine and China-U.S. relations.
Shortly after the ban, Kai Fang Qu members migrated to an alternative home outside of the Great Firewall — the American website Reddit. Inspired by the recent science-fiction blockbuster, The Wandering Earth, they created a subreddit and named it “Wandering KFQ” in Chinese. Like the film’s protagonists, they too were escaping a hostile environment in search of a new habitat. Since then, the subreddit, known as r/China_irl in English, has grown into one ofthe largest Chinese-language subreddits on the platform, with over 180,000 subscribers. Popular discussion topics include the recent Texas mall shootings and whether or not TikTok will get banned.
R/China_irl is one of many popular Chinese-language subreddits that have emerged on Reddit in recent years. As China has tightened its grip on online speech, the platform has become an unlikely refuge for banned Chinese internet groups such as Kai Fang Qu, Japanophile community Kanagawa Chonglang Hub, and popular gossip forum Goose Group which migrated from Chinese social media platform Douban. Because Reddit is banned in China, users in the country have to use virtual private networks (VPNs) to jump the firewall. But since January 2022, r/China_irl’s subscriber count has still tripled.
According to Thomas Qitong Cao, a PhD candidate at Stanford University studying information and political behavior, the Covid-19 pandemic might have contributed to the surge in Chinese Reddit users. “Crisis that undermines a regime tends to stimulate greater demand for banned information,” Cao told Rest of World. “When the Chinese government strengthens control over domestic cyberspace, more people will jump the Great Firewall.”
Reddit’s unique appeal among exiled Chinese internet users is its community-moderated, interest-based discussion format, which allows more fringe voices to thrive. According to Deng Jinju, a 25-year-old product manager and former member of Douban’s now-defunct Goose Group, Reddit is a social media platform that is more issue-driven than influencer-driven, granting greater visibility to ordinary users. Moderated by community members themselves, the platform also enables more democratic discussion, Deng told Rest of World. “At a time when social media is dominated by algorithms, I like that everyone can get their voice heard,” she said.
Transplanted into Reddit, the demographic of the Kai Fang Qu community has evolved over the years. Jeff Cao, a moderator of r/China_irl, told Rest of World he has noticed that the subreddit increasingly attracts new users in the Chinese diaspora who are unfamiliar with its Kai Fang Qu origins. He estimated that at least two-thirds of the current active members of r/China_irl are based outside of China. Despite this shift, Cao hopes that “China_irl can provide a space for Chinese people within China to freely discuss social issues in their native language.”
But in comparison to the original Kai Fang Qu, r/China_irl members tend to have more negative views of the Chinese Communist Party and are more pessimistic about China’s future, said Cao. Many of the group’s members, for instance, use the phrase “the pit” to refer to China. “In college, I used to believe that Chinese people’s lives could improve, but after studying abroad and experiencing 3 years of the pandemic, I have lost all my hope,” wrote a user named Sea_Desk1647.
Douban’s Goose Group also mutated after migrating to Reddit. Originally a celebrity gossip forum, Goose Group became a hub to discuss feminism and other social issues. After Douban banned it as part of a government crackdown on online fandoms, some of its 680,000 active members — who called themselves “wandering geese” — started rebuilding their community on Reddit through the subreddit r/doubangoosegroup.
Like Kai Fang Qu, Goose Group became angrier and more anti-establishment after its members migrated to Reddit, according to Claire, 30, who frequently participates in the subreddit’s discussions. She preferred to be identified only by her English name due to fear of nationalist trolls and backlash. A once-vital hub of China’s internet culture, Goose Group wasn’t just a source of countless memes but a forum where young women supported each other. Today, on its subreddit, some female users often direct their anger at Chinese men, calling on fellow members to leave China and Chinese men for good.
The absence of Chinese government censorship has empowered users to speak their minds, but also encouraged more extreme opinions. In May 2022, Reddit banned r/cltv, a subreddit known for its strong anti-China sentiments and hateful speech, for doxxing other users. R/cltv (a variation of r/chonglangtv) originated from Chinese discussion forum Kanagawa Chonglang Hub, a controversial community on Baidu Tieba for its rampant use of racial slurs and extreme anti-China views.
Cao, who has noticed the increase in hateful comments and derogatory slurs on r/China_irl, is still committed to his work as a content moderator. Calling it a “pure labor of love,” Cao said, “I believe moderating a forum is no different from managing a company or governing a country. I hope to create an environment that encourages different opinions as long as they are respectful.”
