How China’s internet police went from targeting bloggers to their followers

In recent months, followers of influential liberal bloggers have been interviewed by police as China widens its net of online surveillance

Late last year, Duan*, a university student in China, used a virtual private network to jump over China’s great firewall of internet censorship and download social media platform Discord.

Overnight he entered a community in which thousands of members with diverse views debated political ideas and staged mock elections. People could join the chat to discuss ideas such as democracy, anarchism and communism. “After all, it’s hard for us to do politics in reality, so we have to do it in a group chat,” Yang Minghao, a popular vlogger, said in a video on YouTube.