Odd Lots Podcast Summary

Episode: The Surprising Similarity Between the US and Chinese Internets

Date: February 3, 2026
Hosts: Joe Weisenthal & Tracy Alloway
Guest: Yi Ling Lu, author of The Wall Dancers

Episode Overview

This episode explores the parallels and contrasts between the US and Chinese Internets, focusing particularly on how both spaces, despite vastly different governance regimes and levels of censorship, have evolved into surprisingly similar ecosystems—marked by centralization, tribalism, and the complex interplay between users, platforms, algorithms, and the state. The discussion features author Yi Ling Lu, whose new book The Wall Dancers investigates life behind China’s Great Firewall through the stories of individuals navigating the ever-changing terrain of online expression.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Lost Utopian Dream of the Internet

• Hosts reflect on the early, idealistic visions of a decentralized internet (01:07–02:55):
  • The 90s web culture was “decentralized,” about “communities, little sites,” and “the promise of democracy.”
  • Quote, Joe Weisenthal (01:41):
    “Very cool, it was very decentralized, right?... There’s no way authoritarian governments could ever control this and we’ll finally realize the true promise of democracy… I totally bought into it.”
  • Fast-forward to 2026: the internet is now marked by “sheer, like, sort of tribalism and conflictualism on every level… It’s heavily centralized.”
    “Cesspool. That’s a good one, too.” (Tracy Alloway, 02:44)
• Current trend: National governments—US included—are increasingly trying to exert control over digital platforms, sometimes looking enviously at China's model (03:26–04:51).

2. The "Wall Dancers": Navigating Constraints in China

• Origin of the term (05:40–06:45):
  • “The Wall Dancers” comes from “dancing in shackles” (a term for journalists operating under state constraints), now used widely (artists, musicians, engineers).
  • Quote, Yi Ling Lu (06:00):
    “It captured this idea that to live and navigate Chinese society is a dance... this dynamic push and pull between state and society… rich with innovation, yet rigidly constrained.”
• Her book’s approach: Tells the story of China’s internet through individuals, challenging the reductive binary of “economic juggernaut” vs. “techno-authoritarian regime” common in Western headlines (07:15–08:10).

3. Early Parallels and Divergent Paths

• Community Formation (08:10–09:29):
  • Both US & China: The early internet fostered connections for marginalized groups (e.g., a gay man in China building community online during repression).
  • “The story of the internet in China, at least, is a romance… the story of the World Wide Web was also a romance.” (Yi Ling Lu, 08:52)
  • The illusion that the internet—firewall or not—would lead inevitably toward freedom was widely believed on both sides.

4. Censorship: Nuance and Evolution

• How the rules work and evolve (09:29–13:44):
  • Early days: Clear red lines (the “three T’s”—Tiananmen, Tibet, Taiwan); focus on preventing collective action.
  • Post-2010s: Expanded to controlling ideology, morality, and even curbing displays of wealth or “sissy boys” (11:35–11:40).
  • The vagueness of censorship serves as a tool: “The censorship ecosystem thrives off vagueness, right? The fact that it’s vague, the fact that there are no Red lines is what allows it to function so effectively.” (Yi Ling Lu, 10:12)
  • Local incidents: Censorship is often a mix of top-down directives and platform-level, pre-emptive self-censorship (12:38–13:44).

5. Labor, Algorithms, and Nationalism: Universal Patterns

• Enforcing censorship is labor-intensive, aided but not replaced by algorithms (14:12–15:40).
  • "There were probably like 10,000 [censors at Weibo by 2020].” (Yi Ling Lu, 15:33)
• The “Wu Mao” and patriotic trolling:
  • Many so-called “patriotic” posters act not so differently from Western trolls or online mobs (14:33–15:40).
  • “There’s actually not too much of a difference between the Wu MAO and maybe some of the patriotic trolls and incels you see on X today.” (Yi Ling Lu, 14:33)
  • Patterns of “flooding” (content used to bury unwanted news) are seen both in China and abroad.

6. Platform Origin Stories and “Competitive” Censorship

• Weibo’s Origin (17:28–19:14):

  • Many microblog platforms existed. Weibo survived and dominated because it was “just better at censoring.”
  • Quote, Yi Ling Lu (18:44):
    “He did essentially the same thing as all these other companies. He just did a better job of censoring.”

• Centralized Directives, Decentralized Execution:

  • Censorship policy in China is analogous to decentralized industrial policy—local actors interpret somewhat vague national directives and compete to comply.

7. User Ingenuity: Code Words and Language Games

• Creative circumvention is rampant (22:05–25:49):
  • Users invent puns, homonyms, and codewords (e.g., “grass mud horse” sounding like a crude insult).
  • Chinese language, rich in homonyms, aids this (22:52–23:30).
  • Pros and cons: “These words become more and more obscure… sometimes I’m reading stuff and I have no idea what it’s referring to.” (Yi Ling Lu, 25:23)
  • Specialized sites like China Digital Times maintain “lexicons” to help people keep up.

8. Are Chinese and American Platforms So Different?

• Content Stereotypes, Cross-Cultural Ironies (26:41–27:59):

  • The trope: Chinese TikTok is “wholesome”; American TikTok is “garbage.” Lu says the difference is “massively overstated.”
  • “The Chinese Internet is full of crazy slop, too… when a young student... is just like scrolling through Douyin, they’re not just getting wonderful math content.” (Yi Ling Lu, 27:05)
  • There is more emphasis on “positive energy” and sanitized content—but there’s plenty of mindless (or trashy) content in both spaces.

• Moments of Unexpected Exchange (29:31–31:18):

  • When TikTok was briefly banned in the US, millions of American users flooded Xiaohongshu (“RedNote”), China's “Instagram meets Yelp.”
    “It was sort of like a reverse Berlin Wall moment… the way to escape [US Internet] was to then jump to arguably the most repressive.” (Joe Weisenthal, 30:57)
  • Lu delights in the sincere cross-cultural exchange it created.

9. Algorithms, Censorship, and Policy

• Algorithms play a moderating role but are ultimately secondary to policy in China (32:09–33:07):

  • In both China and the US, there are concerns about how algorithms moderate what people see.
  • China has more post-algorithm controls (content moderation happens even after algo sorting).

• Nationalism, Online Mobs, and Political Reinforcement (34:41–36:59):

  • Nationalist discourse was fringe in China but moved mainstream around the 2008 Olympics and financial crisis, echoing a similar ‘mainstreaming’ of online tribalism in the US.
  • “...the nationalist voice was very fringe. ... I would say today the Chinese Internet is largely fencing. They’re no longer called that.” (Yi Ling Lu, 35:18)
  • The rise of the “little pinks”—nationalist internet stans using fan-culture tactics.

• Is nationalism an endogenous online phenomenon? (37:52–39:18):

  • The nationalist/illiberal turn preceded Xi Jinping—rather than being imposed top-down, much of it was grassroots, finding resonance among both users and leaders.

10. AI and the Future of Censorship

• AI makes censorship “significantly easier” (39:49–40:16):
  • Even before generative AI, automated keyword flagging was routine.
  • China is notable for its algorithm registry, requiring all companies to submit their algorithm to authorities—a form of governance some note is lacking in the US.

11. Universal Trajectories and Root Causes

• Why have US and Chinese Internets ended up similar despite differences? (41:58–43:54):
  • “We were pretty naive about the fact that technology even moves in the direction of freedom.”
  • “It doesn’t matter if it is government... or a handful of tech oligarchs... At the end of the day, how different is Elon Musk’s control over X... from the Chinese government’s control of Weibo?” (Yi Ling Lu, 42:43)
  • Centralization—regardless of whether in the hands of state or tech bosses—creates similar outcomes: loss of decentralization, increasingly “tribalized” discourse.

12. Social Divisions: Technology’s Echoes

• Biggest cleavage in both US and China is now wealth/tech builder vs. user divide (44:30–45:37):
  • Those building AI or new tech are optimistic and empowered; regular users feel increasingly pessimistic, lacking agency—describing themselves as “NPCs” or non-player characters.

Notable Quotes

• On the evolution of censorship:
  “The censorship ecosystem thrives off vagueness, right? The fact that it's vague, the fact that there are no Red lines is what allows it to function so effectively.”
  — Yi Ling Lu, 10:12

• On platform similarity:
  “How different is Elon Musk's control over X or Twitter different from the Chinese government's control of Weibo? The whims of one man essentially dictates the way a platform plays out.”
  — Yi Ling Lu, 42:53

• On internet tribalism:
  “The word that always comes to my mind ... is just this sort of like, sheer, like sort of tribalism and conflictualism on every level…. It's heavily centralized, all of the sort of utopian promise… didn't really pan out."
  — Joe Weisenthal, 02:20

• On user ingenuity:
  “I’m someone who has made a career out of studying the Chinese Internet, and I'll often read social media posts and have no idea what's going on.”
  — Yi Ling Lu, 25:23

• On 2008 as a turning point:
  “2008, I think the big thing... was the Beijing Olympics and... the financial crisis... so there was this sense ... maybe liberalization is not the way to go.”
  — Yi Ling Lu, 37:52

• On centralization as the core issue:
  “We've taken this decentralized technology and made it highly centralized, and it doesn't matter under what political system that actually takes place.”
  — Yi Ling Lu, 43:08

Memorable Moments & Timestamps

• [06:00] — Origin of “dancing in shackles / wall dancers” metaphor
• [11:40] — “No sissies allowed” and censorship of “unhealthy” content
• [14:33] — “There’s actually not too much of a difference between the Wu Mao and... trolls and incels you see on X today.”
• [23:30] — The “grass mud horse” (cao ni ma): creativity in codewords
• [30:57] — The TikTok ban leads to millions of Americans on Xiaohongshu; “reverse Berlin Wall moment”
• [39:49] — “Does censorship become easier?” with AI
• [42:43] — Comparison of platform centralization in US and China: “[At] the end of the day, how different is Elon Musk’s control over X or Twitter from the Chinese government’s control of Weibo?”

Thematic Takeaways

• The “Great Divergence” between Internets in China and the US overstated: Despite different mechanisms and rhetoric, both ecosystems ended up concentrated, tribal, surveilled, and often toxic—with remarkable user ingenuity and subcultural phenomena.
• Censorship is partly central planning, partly competition: Vague top-down rules foster self-censorship and a “race to comply” for platforms.
• Technological optimism—now soured—was shared worldwide.
• Nationalism and online mob behavior are, ironically, universal effects.
• The real threat is centralization, not government per se.
• AI accelerates and automates moderation, but doesn’t resolve underlying tradeoffs about speech and power.
• The user-builder divide is the new social fracture in the tech age.

For Listeners Who Haven't Tuned In

This episode is a rich, nuanced, and accessible look at how two supposedly diametrically opposed Internet systems—democratic, corporate-dominated US; authoritarian, state-driven China—ended up looking eerily similar in user experience, governance, and social pathologies. The conversation blends expert interviews with real life examples, thoughtful analogies (Harry Potter’s Dolores Umbridge!), and memorable anecdotes (the TikTok/Xiaohongshu migration, the invention of puns to beat censors), making it essential listening for anyone interested in technology, global politics, or online culture.