When a Platform Dies The Silencing of Tencent Dajia

Luna Tian

“For the big questions, Dajia lived—and for the big questions, Dajia died.” — Jia Jia, founding editor

I. A New Level of Silence

As China entered its second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, its information ecosystem underwent a profound transformation. Behind the containment success stories and nationalism-fueled media campaigns was something quieter, more ominous: a sweeping erasure of dissent, critique, and even thoughtful questioning.

By early 2021, users on WeChat began reporting unprecedented waves of censorship. Private group chats disappeared overnight. Entire accounts were deactivated without warning. Some users who posted or shared sensitive content—such as investigative reports about the Wuhan outbreak or comments questioning official figures—were summoned by police for “tea” (informal interrogations).

In this climate of tightening control, a single platform’s disappearance might seem unremarkable. But when Tencent Dajia (腾讯大家) was abruptly shut down in early 2021, it marked a deeper rupture. This was not just another social media casualty—it was the digital death of a public intellectual space that had once represented the possibility of nuanced dialogue in China’s increasingly polarized information landscape.

II. What Was Dajia?

Launched by tech giant Tencent in December 2012, Dajia was a curated opinion and essay platform that gathered some of the most respected liberal voices in Chinese-language media and academia. The name “Dajia” (大家) literally means “great minds” or “masters,” and the platform lived up to that ambition.

Its contributors included university professors, public intellectuals, veteran journalists, and prominent cultural critics. Among them:

Wu Qiang, political scientist known for his analyses of Chinese social movements.
Hu Yong, media scholar and advocate for internet freedom.
Zhang Ming, outspoken historian and political commentator.
Yuan Weishi, a historian who famously challenged the official interpretation of the Boxer Rebellion.
Even Kong Qingdong, known for his controversial nationalism, occasionally contributed—highlighting the platform’s range.

Tencent invested heavily, promising million-yuan budgets, contractual writer compensation, and an infrastructure to sustain longform, high-quality essays. The launch was celebrated as a rare corporate attempt to reintroduce “reasoned debate” into China’s often sensationalized digital discourse.

The platform’s editorial motto—洞见、价值、美感 (Insight, Value, Aesthetic)—reflected its ambition to transcend both clickbait journalism and state-controlled narratives. For nearly a decade, it succeeded.

III. A Decade of Shrinking Space

Dajia’s closure cannot be understood without seeing the broader arc of China’s media environment. From 2013 onward, as President Xi Jinping consolidated power, China’s media landscape grew steadily more hostile to independent thought.

Key events along the way:

2016: Xi visited state news outlets and declared that “the media must bear the surname of the Party.”
2017: Crackdowns intensified against independent bloggers and even mild critics of the government.
2018: WeMedia accounts (personal public blogs on platforms like WeChat) began being deleted en masse.
2019: Prominent liberal outlets like “Q Daily” were warned or penalized for content moderation failures.
2020: The outbreak of COVID-19 provided new justification for information control in the name of “stability.”

Through it all, Dajia survived—but not unchanged. Its content grew more cautious. Some writers left. Others began self-censoring. Still, Dajia remained one of the last semi-public spaces where intelligent conversation could unfold.

IV. The Final Days: COVID-19 and the Silencing of Media

When the novel coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, China’s media briefly broke through the firewall of silence. For about three weeks in January 2020, investigative journalists from outlets like Caixin, Beijing News, and Southern Weekly published stories about the whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang, hospital shortages, and early cover-ups by local authorities.

But by February, the window slammed shut.

Authorities reasserted tight control over all pandemic-related coverage. The narrative shifted from transparency to triumphalism. Media were instructed to focus on “positive energy,” patriotism, and the government’s efficiency.

It was during this shift that Dajia published its now-famous final article:

“Wuhan Pneumonia, 50 Days Later: All Chinese Are Paying the Price for the Death of the Media”

Written by a journalist with nearly three decades of experience, the essay was both a reflection and a eulogy. It identified January 20, 2020—the day Zhong Nanshan confirmed human-to-human transmission—as a turning point. Before that date, media tried to investigate; after that date, they served the state narrative.

The article argued that even the best-intentioned journalists failed to fulfill their basic responsibilities: to question, to warn, to serve the public interest—not the political one.

It ended not with anger, but with sorrow.

This was one of Dajia’s final publications. Within weeks, the entire platform disappeared.

V. Why Dajia Had to Die

Dajia’s final essays read like last confessions—bold, heartfelt, intellectually honest. In addition to the Wuhan piece, it published:

“The History of Human Violence Manipulated by Rumors Is Scarier than a Virus”
“This Era Has Abandoned the Elderly and Then Scolded Them for Not Wearing Masks”
“The World Is Big Enough to Let 5 Million Sick People Go Home”

Each of these pieces touched on taboo themes: governmental neglect, social cruelty, mass disinformation. They criticized not the virus, but society’s response to it.

In China’s political climate, that was enough.

Online commentators said the platform was “被自杀” (“beizisha“—“suicided”), a phrase typically used to describe political purges disguised as natural endings. As one netizen put it:

“Dajia didn’t die of natural causes. It was executed.”

Another wrote:

“Tencent can say nothing. Even Pony Ma has to bow his head under the eaves.”

VI. Even Giants Must Obey

Dajia’s deletion wasn’t the act of a rogue censor—it was emblematic of the deeper transformation of China’s tech industry. In the 2010s, platforms like Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu enjoyed significant autonomy and were often encouraged to experiment.

But by 2021, those days were over.

Under new regulatory regimes, platforms were expected to:

Build and enforce ideological “firewalls.”
Censor content proactively before authorities had to intervene.
Submit user data upon request.
Prevent “rumors,” even when rumors meant real-time reports from citizens.

Failure to comply risked multi-billion-yuan fines, executive detentions, or worse: being shut down altogether.

Tencent, like any rational actor, chose survival.

VII. The Expansion of the Censorship Toolkit

While the disappearance of a high-profile platform like Dajia made headlines in Chinese digital communities, another change unfolded more quietly: the expansion of censorship methods.

WeChat began:

Blocking images using automated visual recognition.
Deleting voice messages flagged by AI filters.
Filtering videos frame-by-frame.
Silencing entire groups based on topic discussions.
Flagging users for participation in certain comment threads—even when no rules were technically broken.

For many Chinese netizens, the pandemic became the moment they realized “封号” (account banning) wasn’t for activists anymore—it could happen to anyone.

VIII. What We Lost

Dajia wasn’t perfect. It sometimes played it safe. It published voices across the ideological spectrum—some of whom were controversial. But it was one of the few remaining places where Chinese people could read, think, and reflect in peace.

In losing Dajia, China lost:

A decade-long archive of cultural and political reflection.
A community of writers committed to intellectual honesty.
A model of what a thoughtful internet could look like.
And a fragile bridge between the governed and the governing.

Perhaps most importantly, it lost the possibility of slow thinking in fast times.

IX. Memory as Resistance

Dajia’s death was swift and largely unannounced. No official statement. No farewell post on Tencent’s homepage. Just a quiet vanishing. But people noticed.

Screenshots of its final essays circulated on Telegram channels. Archived PDFs were shared among diaspora students and journalists. Twitter threads mourned its passing.

In a nation where forgetting is engineered, memory becomes an act of courage.

To remember Dajia is to remember what could have been.

To speak of Dajia is to refuse silence.

The platform is gone. But perhaps, in the fragments it left behind, the conversation continues.

Note: In Chinese internet slang, “被自杀” (bei zi sha) or “being suicided” is a dark euphemism used to describe forced disappearances, mysterious deaths, or sudden deletions, typically under state pressure. It implies the death was not voluntary, but orchestrated.