Fishing Across Borders: China’s Cyber Police

Preface: I’m just making things up.

The “Haitang Incident” refers to a series of arrests that reportedly took place between late 2024 and early 2025, targeting authors who published BL, fan fiction, and gender-nonconforming romance stories on Haitang Cultural Online Literature City, a web novel platform said to be hosted in Taiwan but widely used by mainland Chinese writers. At least one author was allegedly tracked and detained by Chinese cyber police after posting on a foreign site, sparking widespread fear across writing communities. The incident, dubbed “distant-water fishing” by netizens, was seen as a symbolic escalation of China’s speech control—reaching beyond public platforms into intimate, semi-private spaces of self-expression. Though no official statement has been issued, the reaction among creators—mass account deletions, sudden silence, and a retreat into anonymity—speaks to the chilling effect. For many, this marked a turning point: the firewall had not just grown higher, but grown inward.

Notes:

• Haitang Cultural Online Literature City: A website primarily for publishing online novels. Readers must purchase "Haitang Coins" to access content. Most of the content involves fanfiction, danmei (boys' love), and gender-fluid romantic fantasies. It’s considered part of a fringe subcultural community. In recent years, there have been increasing reports of authors being investigated or tracked across provinces.

• Nobuta wo Produce: A 2005 Japanese high school drama about two boys attempting to "transform" an introverted girl. Featuring members of popular idol groups, it became a youth culture phenomenon in China.

• Kurosagi / The Black Swindler: A 2006 Japanese TV series about a protagonist who scams professional scammers to avenge his parents. It blends social critique with suspense and was widely pirated in China.

• Operation Love: A 2007 Japanese fantasy romance drama. The male lead time-travels to undo past regrets. Its theme of "youthful regret" resonated deeply with many Chinese viewers.

• The Prince of Tennis: A long-running Japanese sports manga featuring an exaggerated cast and dramatic match play. Initially intended as a coming-of-age sports tale, it was unexpectedly reinterpreted through the lens of BL (boys’ love) fan culture.

• Fanfiction (Tongrenwen): Non-official fiction or manga created by fans based on existing characters or worlds. Topics include romance, fantasy, gender-bending, BL/GL, etc. It’s a cornerstone of internet subcultures.

• Sohu: One of China’s early internet portals, mainly known for reposting rather than creating original content. Popular in the 2000s but gradually marginalized.

• Deep-sea fishing (metaphor): In internet slang, a satirical phrase referring to China's cross-border surveillance or arrests of Chinese individuals abroad. It originally refers to maritime fishing, but here it implies the covert "fishing" of people online from foreign platforms.

• Speech control: The system of censorship, suppression, and punishment of public expression. In China, this includes keyword bans, account takedowns, police warnings (known as “having tea”), and content removal. It’s a normalized governance practice.

• Firewall / GFW (Great Firewall): China’s national internet censorship system. It blocks access to sites like Google, YouTube, and Twitter, and suppresses sensitive domestic content. It is one of the world’s most extensive digital censorship frameworks.

• Provincial-level firewalls: In addition to the national GFW, provinces and cities have their own regulatory bodies (like local Cyberspace Administration and police), which can enforce keyword bans, delete posts, or censor content regionally.

• Baidu Tieba: One of China’s earliest online interest communities, structured around searchable forums. In the mid-2000s, it was a hub for fan creations and fringe subcultural discussions.

A:

Haitang Cultural Online Literature City is a platform for publishing online novels. It’s rumored that its servers are based in Taiwan, although I haven’t confirmed this. On the surface, it asks visitors to verify if they are of legal age and requires readers to purchase “Haitang Coins” to access content. The “Membership Benefits” section lists many suggestions for protecting account security, such as avoiding public Wi-Fi and staying within the bounds of the law. From my perspective, the site has tried its best to avoid any legal trouble. But if you look closer, all of the legal disclaimers focus on reader password safety — not on protecting authors. The site’s primary goal seems to be risk avoidance while shielding customers, not creators. While there is some mention of author privacy, it explicitly says legal matters fall outside that protection.

Back in middle school, it just happened to be the golden era of Japanese dramas. Nobuta wo Produce, Kurosagi, Operation Love — I still revisit them now and then. Early 2000s was arguably the peak period for high-density, high-quality J-dramas. Around the same time, I also got into a variety of manga. In a media landscape dominated by live-action TV, manga felt freer: all you needed was paper, a pen, imagination, and stamina — no film crew, actors, or departments to coordinate. Any theme could be tackled: boys, girls, adults, youth, R-rated, violent, antisocial, LGBTQ. There were uplifting ones, dark ones, and all shades in between.

At the time, I mostly watched sports anime like The Prince of Tennis, and occasionally more “girly” ones like NANA, though I never finished it. Most anime I watched were studio adaptations that had little to do with the original manga authors. I only read actual manga when the content was niche. All of it had to be found on forums like Baidu Tieba, where kind strangers would upload PDFs. That was my puberty.

Even with something like The Prince of Tennis, there were loads of fan fictions on Tieba — stories written by fans based on characters or scenarios from the manga. It was my first time learning the term “fujoshi,” which loosely refers to female fans who enjoy BL (boys’ love) content. This kind of fan reinterpretation and co-creation fascinated me. Don’t tell me straight girls shouldn’t “appropriate” gay male characters — it’s fiction, the characters are imaginary, they don’t mind (lol).

At 14, I was reading all of it, heart pounding, face flushed, embarrassed but unable to stop. It was probably the first time I realized how large and alive these non-hetero, non-mainstream fan communities were — and how many people embraced them.

B:

While looking for a cover image for this blog post, I searched “Prince of Tennis BL Fanfiction” and this image came up. I clicked in — it was a piece on Sohu Anime, originally from Hangzhou News. Sohu is notorious for copy-pasting content from other news sites. In my memory, they barely ever wrote anything original — but I took a closer look anyway.

The article, published on February 22, 2008, was titled “Has The Prince of Tennis Been Labeled a BL Manga?” It only had a few lines: “Reportedly, it was categorized as BL due to the lack of female characters and a strong boys’ love vibe, which led to the emergence of many fan groups (e.g., Double Captain, Fuji x Echizen, 36 group, 82 group, Tezuka x Echizen, Tezuka x Fuji, etc.).” (lol) “The original author, Takeshi Konomi, hasn’t commented yet and is remaining silent. But the anime production team supports the Ministry of Culture’s designation and says they’ll turn the show into a high-quality BL animation — though the pairings are still under research.”

Why was the article in a mix of traditional and simplified Chinese? I have no idea how the anime team and the Ministry of Culture are supposedly linked. And is that Japan’s Ministry of Culture? Or China’s? I can’t imagine Japan caring about something like this. The final line is particularly funny — “they’ll make a high-quality BL anime,” but they’re still figuring out the best pairing. Did they ever find it? I don’t know. But I’m guessing the answer is no.

Anyone who’s watched The Prince of Tennis would be confused — why label it BL just because it’s all boys? That’s what shonen manga is — of course it’s mostly boys. It’s actually pretty fascinating: queer and non-male audiences reinterpret the material, and that reinterpretation feeds back into the original work’s meaning. I bet even Konomi never saw that coming.

C:

I’d never heard the term “deep-sea fishing” used this way before. But I’ve known for a while that speech in China has been tightening. You can even feel it in the books I recently bought off Temu — content that used to be openly discussed now has to be disguised as notes about Tang dynasty hairstyles or ancient customs. When reading, you get this eerie realization — “wow, they could still write that back then.” Compared to now, some things seem a bit more relaxed, but other things are totally off-limits.

Before I studied abroad, older mentors would always say, “Abroad it’s beautiful but lonely; here it’s chaotic but comfortable.” Now it’s less chaotic, probably more refined in many ways — but is it really more comfortable? It seems different people feel very differently about that. Some say it’s cleaner and more orderly, others say it’s stifling and dull. The more I ask, the more confused I become.

In 2016, I lived in Shanghai earning a decent-but-not-fancy wage. The streets were elegant, especially in the french concession areas — autumn strolls were lovely. But step into any random brunch place and it was 100 yuan for toast and eggs. Who were these brunches for? Sitting in an all-white expat cafe felt… weird. I’d rather eat a zifantuan (sticky rice roll) — tasty and cheap. I can make brunch at home; why pay for it? Unless I was meeting a friend, I couldn’t walk into those cafes without a little shame or hesitation. The food was okay, but the prices were ridiculous — at least for my income.

At the time, I didn’t really feel the speech crackdown. It wasn’t until 2019, when I worked in Beijing and Qingdao, that it hit me. Then I left. Details are now hard to access — information is sealed too well. But the Haitang incident really puzzled me. “Deep-sea fishing” takes effort — why go through all that just to arrest online writers? The warning effect feels too intentional.

D:

I doubt Haitang gave author information to the police, but honestly, the police don’t need their cooperation to find people. I saw a post on Threads saying: China doesn’t just have a national firewall anymore; each province has its own. I’m not sure about Hunan, but firewalls seem stricter in the north. As far as I know, local Cyberspace Administrations have their own censorship quotas and sometimes act even more aggressively than Beijing.

If something happens locally — a scandal, a protest — the region can block keywords, shut down Weibo trending lists, or control media reports. On top of that, internet cafes, schools, and company networks often have extra filters and whitelists — even beyond what GFW censors.

Each region also has its own propaganda departments, civilization offices, and social stability offices. They run network accounts, organize mass reporting campaigns (like “civilized internet volunteers”), designate trending topics for narrative control, and even push official messages through parent group chats, student groups, or workplace WeChats. Each city’s social media ecosystem is different, but they’re all under tight surveillance by local cyber-police.

China’s administrative structure is extremely hierarchical. Sometimes even one city can’t access another city’s internal files. A district’s decisions might not transparently reach local neighborhoods. Most official policies aren’t public, and “official lines” must be followed — often delivered verbally with no record. The smallest control unit is the community (shequ), which during COVID effectively became the border checkpoint.

The Haitang case is bizarre. Supposedly, the author was arrested across provinces — that means national-level coordination, because provincial law enforcement normally don’t collaborate. It must’ve been led or assisted by cyber-police. If they managed to trace authors from foreign websites, that means the person must’ve logged in from a domestic IP at least once. Patterns emerge easily — if you log in regularly, it’s clear who you are.

So now they’re arresting people for posting on foreign platforms. That suggests it’s either a deliberate campaign against “illegal overseas content,” or at least a very publicized one — to send the message: “Don’t think we can’t see you just because it’s abroad.” I’m making this up, but I’d bet I’m not far off.

Either the cyber-police are broke and trying to fund local governments through fines, or they have quota targets and are collaborating with local officials: the locals get the fines, the central authorities get the numbers. Maybe they’ve already arrested everyone they could find domestically, and now, post-COVID, they can’t lay off the extra cyber-police they hired — so they expand the net. Or maybe Beijing has been watching overseas discourse for a while and is now actively cracking down. I even saw a post on Instagram the other day claiming the CCP set up a police station in New York. No idea if it’s real. But if true, it’s outrageous — harassing Chinese people abroad? Of course they’d only dare to do that to their own.

Anyway, if they come after you, get a lawyer. Or apply for political asylum and go get that green card. China’s economy is tanking, and their actions are so egregious it’s turning everyone off. Can’t blame anyone for refusing to work with them. They brought this on themselves.