Hu Chenfeng’s Accounts Wiped from the Entire Internet, Zhejiang Propaganda Accuses Him of “Three Hidden Arrows”

Since mid-January 2025, hundreds of thousands of U.S. TikTok users have flocked to the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (RedNote). (Screenshot composite / Dajiyuan)

[People News] On September 30, the official WeChat account of Zhejiang Propaganda (Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial CCP Committee) published an article titled “What Is the Purpose Behind Forcibly Dividing People into ‘Apple Users’ and ‘Android Users’?” criticising blogger Hu Chenfeng.

The article accused Hu of hiding “three arrows” behind his behaviour: 1. Using worship of the foreign to dissolve consensus – belittling domestic products, attacking traditional Chinese culture. 2. Exploiting young people’s anxiety for targeted harvesting – playing brands against each other, provoking vanity among young consumers.  3.  Distorting values through extreme emotions – undermining public order and common decency.

Excerpts from the original text:

This time, the crude “group firing” attacks against large numbers of netizens by certain bloggers are not simply driven by business logic; behind them lie three hidden arrows.

Using worship of the foreign to dissolve consensus. In videos promoting a dichotomy of “Apple users” versus “Android users,” denigrating domestic brands and unconditionally elevating foreign brands has become standard practice. In these bloggers’ mouths, product quality is no longer determined by actual performance, but instead by stereotypes—using domestic products means being low-class and cheap, while using foreign brands means high-end and classy. In addition, such bloggers often launch unfounded attacks on traditional Chinese culture, even proclaiming that “McDonald’s tastes better than New Year’s Eve dinner.” The essence of this is to use foreign worship to provoke controversy, create division, and harvest torn-apart traffic.

Exploiting young people’s anxiety for targeted harvesting. Young people entering society today indeed face many difficulties, and emotional consumption has become one way for them to seek psychological compensation. Some online accounts exploit this habit of emotional consumption, engaging in brand-bashing and consumption-based classification, stimulating vanity and a sense of satisfaction in some young consumers, thereby achieving precise harvesting.

Distorting values through extreme emotions. Some netizens believe that dividing people into superior or inferior categories based on being “Apple users” or “Android users” is essentially a cyber-version of social Darwinism. Yet bloggers who promote such views defend themselves by claiming to be frank and straightforward. In reality, classifying people into upper, middle, and lower tiers based on their consumer choices, and then engaging in continuous ridicule is not candour but rather irrational emotional manipulation that breaks through the boundaries of public order and social decency. This only erodes society’s capacity for empathy.

Afterwards, netizens noticed that Hu Chenfeng appeared to have been permanently banned across all Chinese platforms (a so-called “account wipe”). His Bilibili account could no longer be found, and his Douyin and Weibo accounts had lost their profile pictures.

From September 16, Hu’s accounts on multiple platforms inside China were gradually banned; by the 20th, all accounts were gone. The Cyberspace Administration of China had meanwhile announced a two-month-long “special campaign to rectify the malicious incitement of negative emotions,” targeting malicious reinterpretations of social phenomena and the creation of viral memes, slogans, and catchphrases. Netizens believed that Hu’s case was directly tied to these “crimes.”

Selected Twitter comments (compiled by China Digital Times):

Cheu1Cheung: How fragile is the foundation of the nation, if a small influencer can shake it?

Cieth1512: The account ban is only surface-level. The deeper issue is: who sets the boundaries of what can be discussed?

heseyinliao: This is like “Dynamic Zero-COVID”—mobilising the stability-maintenance machine to suppress anyone who sticks out. Just as Zero-COVID collapsed, this “Clean Internet” campaign will collapse too.

xlemonism: In China, even praising the U.S. or Japan in a classmates’ chat group or family group could get you criticised.

freedom78787: The Party is the law. Whatever it says, goes. No legal basis at all for banning accounts.

Ailisusu: His self-media career inside China is indeed over. Hopefully, he can move to YouTube and keep making interesting videos.

yuhou63009212: The saddest part is that a guy who gained traffic by spewing anti-intellectual nonsense and staging online cockfights is now being elevated to the status of “public intellectual” and “enlightener.” Shows how long it’s been since people had any real quality content to consume.

Particlespear: With Hu Chenfeng banned, he was “sainted overnight”—now Android users are everywhere.

Aileo777Leo: Same treatment as Li Keqiang.

ZKKZTT: Letting Hu Chenfeng speak won’t bring down the sky.

(Source: China Digital Times)