As Jack Ma's Media Empire Faces China Pressure, "Chairman Rabbit" Thrives

The media needs to have "social responsibility" and think about public sentiment, Ren said in a telephone interview. He added that China was still trying to find a balance between allowing different points of view while also ensuring the public doesn't lose confidence in political institutions.

Even as China moves to strip away media outlets from Jack Ma's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., authorities are allowing several patriotic upstarts to blossom in one of the world's most restrictive media spaces. One of the main voices is Chairman Rabbit -- the social media moniker for Harvard University-educated princeling Ren Yi, whose popularity partly stems from Chinese citizens tired of what they view as constant China bashing in Western media outlets. A former assistant to the late renowned Sinologist Ezra Vogel, Chairman Rabbit has built a following of more than two million fans on social media platforms Weibo and WeChat. The media needs to have "social responsibility" and think about public sentiment, Ren said in a telephone interview. He added that China was still trying to find a balance between allowing different points of view while also ensuring the public doesn't lose confidence in political institutions. Ren's success helps show where the line for permissible speech is under President Xi Jinping, who has further restricted space for dissenting and critical voices since taking power in 2012. Beyond booting out some foreign journalists and now pressuring Ma to sell properties like the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, China also frequently moves to quash new media platforms not under its control.