How Equalitarian Regulation of Online Hate Speech Turns Authoritarian: A Chinese Perspective

Chen, Ge

doi:10.1080/17577632.2022.2085013

How Equalitarian Regulation of Online Hate Speech Turns Authoritarian: A Chinese Perspective

Chen, Ge

Authors

Dr Ge Chen ge.chen@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

Abstract

This article reveals how the heterogeneous legal approaches of balancing online hate speech against equality rights in liberal democracies have informed China in its manipulative speech regulation. In an authoritarian constitutional order, the regulation of hate speech is politically relevant only because the hateful topics are related to regime-oriented concerns. The article elaborates on the infrastructure of an emerging authoritarian regulatory patchwork of online hate speech in the global context and identifies China’s unique approach of restricting political contents under the aegis of protecting equality rights. Ultimately, both the regulation and dis-regulation of online hate speech form a statist approach that deviates from the paradigm protective of equality rights in liberal democracies and serves to fend off open criticism of government policies and public discussion of topics that potentially contravene the mainstream political ideologies.

Citation

Chen, G. (2022). How Equalitarian Regulation of Online Hate Speech Turns Authoritarian: A Chinese Perspective. Journal of Media Law, 14(1), 159-179. https://doi.org/10.1080/17577632.2022.2085013

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	May 27, 2022
Online Publication Date	Jun 21, 2022
Publication Date	2022
Deposit Date	May 28, 2022
Publicly Available Date	Jun 22, 2022
Journal	Journal of Media Law
Print ISSN	1757-7632
Electronic ISSN	1757-7640
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	14
Issue	1
Pages	159-179
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/17577632.2022.2085013
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1203835

Files

Published Journal Article (Advance Online Version) (1.8 Mb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance Online Version © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.