2021 Wikimedia Foundation actions on the Chinese Wikipedia

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On September 13, 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation took official action on the Chinese Wikipedia after investigating users from Wikimedians of Mainland China (WMC or WMCUG), an unaffiliated Wikipedia user group.

At 16:13, September 13, 2021 GMT (00:13, September 14, 2021 Beijing Time), the Wikimedia Foundation globally banned seven accounts from editing Wikipedia, revoked the administrative rights of twelve accounts, and warned twelve other users.^[1][2] Four of the top ten most active administrators on Chinese Wikipedia had their rights revoked.^[3] These actions were announced on September 13, 2021 GMT by Maggie Dennis, Vice President of Community Resilience and Sustainability for the Legal Department at Wikimedia Foundation.

Despite being censored in mainland China, and as VPNs are normally not allowed to edit Wikipedia, Wikipedia administrators from China have permitted IP block exemption for a select number of mainland users. Such users are recruited to change the editorial content on Wikipedia in support of China's viewpoint and/or to support the election of pro-Chinese government administrators on Wikipedia, with the aim of gaining control of Wikipedia as part of the Chinese Communist Party's coordinated efforts to push their preferred narrative on platforms that have respected worldwide credibility.^[4][5] There has also been an exodus of volunteer editors leaving Baidu Baike, a domestic competitor beset by problems of self-censorship and commercialization, to join Chinese Wikipedia because the "contributors wanted the privilege of working on a higher-quality internet encyclopedia" that also "carries a great deal of international power".^[6][7] Observers have suggested that such moves are not just due to patriotic mainlanders but a "larger structural coordinated strategy the government has to manipulate these platforms" beside Wikipedia, such as Twitter and Facebook.^[8]

In an announcement on Wikimedia about the actions, Maggie Dennis acknowledged the radical nature of the Foundation's actions but stressed that the decision was based on a number of considerations and an in-depth investigation.^[3] The Foundation decided to take action after Maggie Dennis told the media that editors had tried to manipulate the content of articles as well as the election of administrators and that other editors had been physically harmed. However, she did not intend to accuse the Chinese government.^{[9][2][Note 1]}

In response, Wikimedians of Mainland China posted an open letter on Qiuwen [zh], calling the Wikimedia Foundation's actions baseless (莫須有) and declaring its intention to resist the crackdown with practical action.^[10][11] The Global Times, a tabloid officially owned and operated by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, alleged that the Wikimedia Foundation "purged" the Chinese editors.^[12]

In an interview with the BBC Tech Tent program commenting on the latest obsessions about China, Maryana Iskander, the new Chief Executive of the Wikimedia Foundation, emphasized the autonomy of the Wikipedia community and said, "One of the very early things that I've learned in this process is that certainly the Wikimedia Foundation does not play a role in setting editorial policy and that these are the debates that happen in communities."^[13][14]

Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia, commented on these actions in an interview with BBC: "I have deep experience of talking to people all over the world, and the idea that people in China, for example, are so brainwashed that they can't see that neutrality is just false," but said "The idea that we are excluding China, is absurd. We welcome with open arms editors from China."^[15]

On October 7, 2021, at the 62nd session of the World Intellectual Property Organization, the People's Republic of China voted against the Wikimedia Foundation's application to become an official observer of the WIPO on the grounds that Wikipedia violated the "one-China principle" and "disseminated false information".^[16] China was the only country out of the 193 members of the organization to vote against the WIPO application,^[17] causing Wikimedia Foundation's application to fail.

A Wikimedian showed a screenshot to Voice of America of an announcement made by globally locked user "Walter Grassroot" in the Wikimedians of Mainland China QQ group after the foundation's application was rejected. According to the announcement, after the foundation blocked Chinese users, Chinese Wikimedians submitted relevant documents to the Chinese Embassy in Geneva through various channels. Walter Grassroot also suggested that the failure of the foundation's application was good news.^[18] From 2021 to 2023, all attempts by the Wikimedia Foundation and local chapters to join WIPO failed.

Qiuwen Baike
求闻百科

Type of site	Online encyclopedia
Available in	Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (support traditional and simplified conversion)
Predecessor(s)	Chinese Wikipedia
Owner	Wuxi Gongbi Quanshu Technology Company Limited (formerly Wikimedians of Mainland China) [citation needed]
URL	www.qiuwenbaike.cn
Commercial	No
Content license	CC Attribution / Share-Alike 4.0

In an interview with the BBC in late October 2021, globally-banned WMC member Yan "Techyan" Enming and 6 other users said the user group was attempting to create a "Chinese version of Wikipedia",^[19] a platform that would represent Beijing's views on some political issues for people in mainland China to access without a VPN with oversight from the People's Republic of China government and would use some of Wikipedia's content.^[19]

In December 2021, WMC member Techyan told Fast Company that "a tech giant" was negotiating a partnership with them, and that more than 40 Chinese Wikipedia editors had joined Qiuwen with has a total of 200 active editors. and that people would be involved in both Wikipedia and Qiuwen.^[20]

In February 2022, ByteDance's subsidiary Baike.com denied the existence of a partnership between ByteDance and WMC to provide technical and financial support for Qiuwen baike.^[21]

• meta:Office actions/September 2021 statement, the announcement of the Wikimedia office action
• 2021 Wikimedia Foundation actions on the Chinese Wikipedia (Chinese): The Chinese Wikipedia community page contains detailed information about sanctioned users.