As Beijing’s purges of its officials continue unabated, an underground market for leaked information about officials under investigation has emerged in China, with public employees allegedly selling confidential personnel information to social media operators, who then use coded posts to hint at impending personnel changes before regime authorities make them public.
A recent investigation by Banyuetan, a magazine published by China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, described a network in which insider information is circulated through paid chat groups before being repackaged into cryptic social media posts that signal an official’s imminent downfall.
According to the report, some social media influencer accounts publish the full biographies of officials shortly before they are formally announced as targets of corruption investigations, while others use homophones, nicknames, or other coded language to avoid censorship….
China’s Corruption Purges Fuel Underground Market for Insider Information
