Episode summary
The Surprising Similarity Between the US and Chinese Internets | Odd Lots
Odd Lots
· · 51 min · Hosts: Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal · Guests: Yi-Ling Liu
Summary
The discussion argues that the Chinese internet and the American internet have converged in surprisingly similar ways: both became more centralized, more tribal, and more shaped by nationalism and conflict than the early web’s utopian promises suggested. Yi-Ling Liu, author of The Wall Dancers, frames the Chinese internet as a “dance” between state control and user creativity, where censorship is often vague, decentralized in practice, and enforced through both regulators and platform self-policing.
Liu says the Chinese system has evolved from clearer red lines around dissent and collective action to a broader effort to shape ideology, behavior, and even “positive energy” online. She also emphasizes that the rise of patriotic online mobs, keyword evasion, and algorithmic control has parallels in the US, where tech oligarchs and platform dynamics can also narrow discourse. The episode’s broader point is that the real divide is less between China and the US than between builders and users, and between those with agency over digital systems and those being acted on by them.
A recurring theme is that censorship and moderation are labor-intensive and intentionally ambiguous. That vagueness pushes users and companies into self-censorship, while also creating a market for better keyword databases, moderation tools, and compliance strategies. Liu argues this has helped make the Chinese internet more controllable, but not fundamentally different in kind from the internet elsewhere.
Key takeaways
- Yi-Ling Liu says the Chinese internet’s censorship system works best because it stays vague, forcing both users and platforms to self-censor.
- Liu argues that Chinese online nationalism became mainstream after 2008, especially around the Beijing Olympics and global criticism of China.
- She says Weibo’s edge was not innovation alone but better censorship, which helped it survive where rivals failed.
- Liu sees a strong parallel between Chinese patriotic mobs and American online factionalism, including influencers and flooding tactics.
- The biggest divide, in Liu’s view, is between technology builders and ordinary users, who increasingly feel like “non-player characters.”
Notable quotes
“the censorship ecosystem thrives off vagueness, right? the fact that it's vague, the fact that there are no red lines is what allows it to function so effectively”
“I would say today the Chinese internet is largely fencing. They're no longer called that”
“he just did a better job of censoring that's really what happened”
“we've allowed too much of technology to be centralized within the hands of a few people”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts, radio, news. — Hello and welcome to another episode of the OddLocks podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal. — And I'm Tracy Aloway. Tracy, remember how like in the late 90s like the internet was starting to become a thing and people thought it would bring like liberalism and democracy utopia.
I totally bought into that. Like I I you know people look back at that and like oh they were naive. Like I don't blame them. Like I think I bought into that too. — I mean there was something very wholesome about the sort of mid9s internet culture where you could go to everyone's like little individual blog and people were mostly talking about their hobbies and things like that. or at least that was my experience of it. Probably colored by the fact that I was in middle school at the time. But it seemed very innocent.
It was very cool. It was very decentralized. Right.
So now we associate the internet with a handful of tech oligarchs that control various kingdoms maybe you could even say within the internet whether it's the Meta Kingdom or the Amazon kingdom or whatever. But it was very decentralized. Everyone had their own little sites cobbled together and so forth.
And I totally bought that idea. I was just like, "Oh, we're all going to talk to each other. We're going to work things out and there's no way that authoritarian governments could ever control this and we'll finally realize the true promise of democracy and all that stuff.
I totally bought into it.
Fast forward to 2026. How would you describe the internet now? — I mean the word that always comes to my mind and there are many words is just this sort of like sheer like sort of tribalism and conflictualism on every level, right?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- internet liberalization
- china internet censorship
- online nationalism
- us vs china internet comparison
- social media connectivity
Watch the episode
Watch “The Surprising Similarity Between the US and Chinese Internets | Odd Lots” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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