A screen grab taken from CCTV news on September 15 shows the confession of Charles Xue, who was detained for soliciting prostitutes the previous month. Photo: IC

Charles Xue, a Chinese American Angel investor known online as Xue Manzi, used to be one of the most influential people on Weibo, with millions of followers online.

His account stopped updating on August 23 when he was taken away by the police on charges of soliciting prostitutes, which is perhaps one of the most important moments in the rise of Weibo, as the authorities tighten control over the "Big V's" who could easily sway the public opinion.

Weibo has occupied much of the headlines since it was created in late 2009. But if the past few years saw the influence of Weibo rising as an information and public discussion platform, this year witnessed a string of campaigns against online opinion leaders and a more active role for official microblogging accounts. A shift in balance seems to be shaping Weibo. 

New redline

Since its beginning, Sina Weibo has adopted the celebrity route, inviting popular actors and intellectuals to post online and attract users. The strategy has worked wonders. Those celebrities have tens of millions of followers on Weibo and quickly became opinion leaders. They are called "Big V's" because of the verification sign next to their account.

Since the detention of Charles Xue on August 23, his Weibo hasn't been updated.

On September 9, the Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate issued a judicial explanation on online rumors. A week later, China Central Television(CCTV) aired an interview with a shackled Xue in a detention center.

Xue, who helped initiate several charitable campaigns on Weibo, confessed that his growing popularity had "greatly satisfied my vanity" and made him reckless.

"I have irresponsibly reposted negative information without verification," he said on CCTV.

The campaign was supposed to be targeting the reckless making and spreading of rumors on social media, but the move has been interpreted by some as a way to deter discussion of public affairs.

On September 17, a 16-year-old student in Zhangjiachuan township, Gansu Province, was detained by the police for spreading rumors online. The student, surnamed Yang, had posted on Weibo accusations of wrongdoing by local officials. His posts were allegedly reposted over 500 times, and therefore counted as "spreading rumors" as per the newly released judicial interpretation. He was later released after an online outcry.

Kai-fu Lee, founder of Innovation Works and another active Weibo celebrity who is especially popular among mainland students, revealed on September 5 that he had been diagnosed with cancer and had gone back to Taiwan to seek treatment. He has since been posting much less on Weibo.
Declining usage

Data from GlobalWebIndex, a London-based market research firm, showed that the level of activity on Sina Weibo declined nearly 40 percent in the last quarter of 2012 as compared with quarter two. Other microblogging services like Tencent Weibo have shown similar declines.

Although many users feel Weibo has quieted down in the past few months, Sina announced in its Q3 financial report this year that its daily active users on Weibo had increased by 11.5 percent compared with the previous quarter.

It isn't just because of the recent high-profile "Big V" controversy that users are leaving. Issues like censorship and a lack of rational debate have been driving people away for quite some time. In one example, Zhang Ming, an outspoken political science professor at Renmin University of China, left in 2012, citing these reasons.

A shift in balance is quietly taking place, as indicated in a report released by the Public Opinion Monitoring Center under the People's Daily and china.com on October 30.

Since August 10, the number of microblogs posted by mainstream media and government agencies has surpassed those of "opinion leaders," according to the report.

The study tracked 100 active "opinion leaders" on Weibo. It showed that between August 10 and October 10, the number of posts declined by over 10 percent compared with the previous two months. The decline was especially prominent between September and October. For instance, real estate tycoon Pan Shiyi, with over 16.5 million followers, is posting 17 percent less than before.

Some online celebrities have also become more cautious when commenting on political issues compared with before.

Taking back the microphone

"There's an important change in the comparative strength of online public opinion; the positive force has started to 'take back the microphone,'" said Zhu Huaxin, secretary-general of the People's Daily Online public opinion monitoring center.

"The public opinion data shows that the Internet, the main battlefield of propaganda, is not lost. The Internet is manageable and controllable, and the Party and the government have taken the first step to take the initiative on this battlefield of public opinion," said Zhu.

For the past four years, Weibo has changed the media landscape and public sphere. In 2010, a family's ordeal with a forced demolition in Yihuang, Jiangxi Province, was broadcast live on Weibo, showing its power to spread information. In 2011, celebrities started to use their influence on Weibo to initiate charitable campaigns such as rescuing abducted children. In 2012, Web users went on Weibo to expose official corruption.

Weibo has lost some of its strength thanks to the crackdown on online rumors in 2013. When Typhoon Fitow caused a flooding disaster in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, online support was much less strong compared with in the past.

Data from Zhu's center shows that there were about 170,000 messages on Sina Weibo about the flooding, compared with over 4.9 million posts about the earthquake in Lushan county, Sichuan Province, in April this year, and 610,000 during the Beijing rain storm in July last year which killed at least 77 people.

Weibo has contributed a lot to everything that's happening in this period of social transformation, said Hu Yong, an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University and new media observer.

"Before Weibo, ordinary Chinese people didn't have a platform to express themselves or discuss public affairs or events that concern their own interests, nor could they exert any pressure on the authorities … Weibo changed all that," said Hu.

Although Weibo may become less influential, its role in China's public life will likely continue, Hu told the Guangdong-based Time Weekly in late November.

As the public's desire for expression remains strong, other social networking services have become increasingly popular. Over the past 12 months, WeChat, a mobile messaging service application by Tencent that reportedly boasts 500 million users, has become wildly popular.