When Solidarity Becomes a Crime: How China Silences Support for the Vulnerable

Luna Tian

I. The War Reaches the Censors

On a winter evening in early 2022, the Chinese actress and former talk show host Jin Xing posted a simple message on Weibo: “No war.” It was a rare moment of moral clarity from a public figure in a country where the line between personal opinion and political danger is vanishingly thin.

Within hours, her post vanished. Soon after, her entire account was suspended.

Jin had done nothing more than publicly oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In any other nation, such a statement might have been seen as courageous, or at the very least, reasonable. But in China, where the state views global conflicts through the lens of domestic control and political allegiance, even the mildest support for Ukraine can mark someone as a threat.

While missiles rained down on Ukrainian cities, China’s censors launched their own assault—against empathy.

II. Why China Sides With Silence

To understand why China suppresses pro-Ukraine voices, one must first understand who the Chinese Communist Party sees as its friends—and who it sees as its enemies.

China has avoided directly supporting Russia’s war, but its state media and diplomatic narratives lean unmistakably in Russia’s favor. Official coverage is framed in “neutral” language that avoids calling the invasion what it is. Words like “special military operation” mimic the Kremlin’s euphemisms. The reasons are strategic: China and Russia share common ground in opposing NATO expansion, Western democracy, and the global liberal order.

But this alliance of convenience demands loyalty—not just from the Party, but from the people. Criticizing Putin or supporting Ukraine risks being interpreted as undermining the Party’s foreign policy, or worse, aligning with the West.

In February 2022, a state-affiliated media outlet, Horizon News, accidentally published internal instructions for reporters. The memo warned journalists to avoid content that “is unfavorable to Russia or pro-Western.” The leak was quickly erased, but the message was clear: there is a correct way to think, and it does not include solidarity with Kyiv.

III. Voices Silenced

In the days following Russia’s invasion, Chinese social media briefly lit up with posts expressing grief, confusion, and support for Ukraine. Some users tried to organize fundraising campaigns. Others posted messages of peace or translated frontline reports from Ukrainian journalists. Then, one by one, the posts disappeared.

Accounts were muted. Hashtags were blocked. Private group chats received warnings. On platforms like WeChat, even profile pictures featuring the Ukrainian flag were reported and removed.

The censors moved swiftly, and ruthlessly. A Beijing-based university student who shared pro-Ukraine art in a campus group chat was summoned by school authorities for a “conversation.” He was told his actions risked “political misunderstanding.” Afterward, he changed his profile picture to a blank grey square.

“It’s not worth it,” he texted a friend before leaving the group. “I just wanted to show I care.”

Even celebrities were not immune. Jin Xing’s silencing was one of the most high-profile cases. But countless lesser-known users faced digital erasure or real-world consequences for expressing views deemed “sensitive.”

IV. Trapped Between Two Worlds: The Case of Jixian Wang

Perhaps no one illustrates the human cost of this suppression better than Jixian Wang, a Chinese video blogger who lived in Odesa, Ukraine, when the war broke out.

Wang began documenting life in the city as air raid sirens sounded and Russian missiles fell. His videos were raw, honest, and unflinchingly humane. At first, Chinese netizens praised him. But as his tone turned critical of both the war and China’s silence, support morphed into backlash.

Wang’s WeChat account was suspended, cutting off his only line of communication with family and friends in China. He received online death threats. Some accused him of “colluding with hostile forces.”

In early 2023, Wang was arrested by Ukrainian authorities, accused of filming sensitive military sites. He was later handed a suspended sentence. He had survived bombings, surveillance, and censorship—only to become a scapegoat in a war that was never his to fight.

“Maybe I don’t belong anywhere anymore,” he wrote on a now-deleted blog post.

If censorship is the stick, propaganda is the carrot.

Alongside silencing dissent, the Chinese government has worked hard to shape a “correct” narrative about the war—one that casts blame on NATO, praises Russia’s restraint, and warns citizens against falling for “Western lies.” On state television, talking heads parrot Kremlin talking points. Social media platforms push conspiracy theories suggesting that U.S.-run biolabs in Ukraine triggered the conflict.

This narrative does more than protect Russia. It builds a wall between Chinese citizens and the global consensus. The idea is simple: if support for Ukraine is merely Western manipulation, then opposing the war becomes unpatriotic.

A 2022 online post from CCTV’s international channel argued that “the Ukraine crisis is the result of Western arrogance and interventionism,” while prominent military bloggers on Weibo cast Ukrainian refugees as opportunists faking trauma for sympathy. The platform’s algorithms ensured these posts spread widely, even as posts mourning Ukrainian civilians were flagged or buried.

To question this narrative is to invite suspicion. What kind of Chinese person defends the West? Who benefits from sympathy for Ukraine? These are the silent questions that hover over every censored comment and erased image.

VI. The Chilling Effect: When Empathy Becomes a Risk

This is not just a war of information—it’s a war on the very act of caring.

Inside China, many young people watched the bombings of Kyiv and Mariupol with the same horror felt by people across the world. Some tried to donate to Ukrainian charities but found their payment apps blocked the transactions. Others shared links to international news, only to see them disappear from chat threads. The more determined turned to VPNs and encrypted messaging apps—tools that have become synonymous with subversion in the eyes of Chinese authorities.

In universities, professors warned students to avoid discussing the war “too loudly.” In high schools, teachers asked students to write essays supporting China’s neutral stance, or praising “peacekeeping diplomacy.” One parent in Guangdong province said her teenage son was reported to school officials for telling classmates that “Russia invaded Ukraine.”

Even silence can be political. A small bookstore owner in Chengdu replaced his shopfront display with a single book: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. No slogans. No flags. Just a quiet act of resistance. Within a week, local officials arrived to conduct a “routine fire inspection.” The book was gone the next day.

VII. Conclusion: The Right to Feel

In a country where speech is tightly controlled, emotions become subversive.

To grieve Ukrainian children killed in airstrikes, to admire the resilience of civilians defending their cities, to feel rage at the sight of bombed maternity wards—these are basic human responses. But in China, they have become suspect. The state does not only want obedience. It wants control over what you are allowed to feel.

This is the quiet tragedy of authoritarianism in wartime: that it turns even empathy into a liability. That it teaches people to mistrust their own conscience. That it makes the act of caring—for strangers, for truth, for justice—into a kind of defiance.

And yet, people continue to care.

They do so in private, in encrypted chats, in anonymous donations, in whispered conversations after class. They do so by keeping a book on the shelf a little longer, by archiving a video before it’s deleted, by telling a child what really happened when they’re old enough to ask.

In the end, that may be what censorship fears most—not the shout of protest, but the quiet persistence of memory. Not the grand gesture, but the simple decision to refuse forgetting.

Because even in the dark, people still know right from wrong.

Even under pressure, they still choose to feel.

For the safety and privacy of those mentioned, some names and identifying details have been altered.