As the global leader in mobile internet traffic, China commands one of the largest and most active online populations in the world. With this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) engages in a constant battle over image sovereignty, recognizing that the focal arena for public opinion is the media. The country’s drive to maintain control over public discourse has pushed the development of legions of government-backed trolls, with an estimated 22 million active accounts flooding online discussions. A large portion of these trolls belong to the 50 Cent Army, a group of experts hired by the government to spread CCP propaganda. Exemplified by their roughly 488 million social media posts per year, the group emphasizes praise of the CCP, Chinese nationalism, silencing dissent, attacking Western democracies, and conspiracy theories. These individuals range from students to government clerks, earning small sums for each contribution, the very practice that inspired the name “50 Cent Army.” Although trolling is extensively present throughout the political landscape in China, what is unusual about this faction is their unwillingness to engage with other online users, whether that be in debate or in argument.
The 50 Cent Army is the symptom of a larger state of affairs: the capacity for online actors to exacerbate social issues, namely gender inequality. In addition to political discourse, a growing corner of China’s digital world is its manosphere. This realm incorporates various groups of men on websites and in forums characterized by their misogynistic and anti-feminist content, focused on denying rights and respect to women and promoting gender-based violence. These groups thrive on popular Chinese social media platforms like Weibo, Bilibili, Zhihu, Hupu, and Douyin. Since censorship prioritizes state stability and not gender equality, these platforms rarely ban or suspend misogynistic accounts. For example, hashtags like #MeTooChina has been repeatedly banned, whereas anti-feminist rhetoric on Weibo thrives.
The manosphere collectives on these sites share one central ideological tenet: the advancement of women’s rights is done at the expense of men. For them, knowing this makes you “red-pilled,” a term far removed from its original meaning in The Matrix (1999), where taking the red pill symbolized awakening to truth and freedom rather than embracing misogyny. Being “red-pilled” is to be aware of their twisted notion that feminism has brainwashed men into being weak and that women are inherently hypergamous. They believe modern men have been weakened by feminism and that they must make a return to “traditional masculinity.”
The notorious virtual forum called Sun Xiaochuan Ba, or Sun Ba for short, is known for its extreme aggression towards women. Dominated by incel-type misogynists, millions of men exchange personal information about women, organize cyberbullying programs, and target feminists. In March 2023, a video blogger exposed the derogatory content. Men posted images of women from social media along with insulting and at times explicitly violent comments about them. These insults were “obscene and unbearable […], and even borderline pornographic.” As of March 2025, Sun Ba contains more than 5.72 million active members.
These online attacks inevitably spill into women’s everyday lives, fostering a climate of fear, self-censorship, and psychological distress for women constantly facing the threat of being targeted or humiliated online. Feeding a long history of significant gender inequality in China, this harassment silences feminist voices and reinforces patriarchal control. Chinese feminist Lü Pin, known for founding Feminist Voices, one of China’s largest media platforms focused on gender-based discrimination, was detained for her activism in alignment with the state censorship. While she was in the U.S. for a conference, the Feminist Five were detained in China for planning protests against sexual harassment on Chinese public transport. She decided not to return to China after learning the police visited her apartment, forcing her to begin a new life on a whim.
China’s online ecosystem actively perpetuates gender inequality. From the 50 Cent Army’s paid nationalism advertisements to the manosphere’s brutal misogyny, these forces silence dissent and fuel fear for Chinese women. The manosphere chooses the poisonous red pill day after day, mistaking its true intent.
Edited by Kirit Ghumman and Norah Nehme.
