The Repression of Naomi Wu and Anti-Chinese Propaganda.

Illustration Artwork by Federico Berti. Created with Gimp/Qwen

by Federico Berti

I have been presented with the case of Chinese hacker Naomi Wu, also known as Sexy Cyborg, who was silenced (had her wings clipped) by Chinese authorities — a repression justified by the government on the grounds that she had reported security flaws in Tencent’s Sogou keyboard drivers to Western and transnational media.1 Her disclosure, but even more so the sharing of this vulnerability in international media, was perceived by government authorities as a threat to the state, and therefore very severe measures were taken against her; the activist complained about the silence in Western media, by which she claims to feel ‘abandoned’. The case has been presented in recent days by the international press as an example of repressive censorship and human rights violations by China, but as we shall see, the matter is more complex than it is being portrayed. The first step in examining the case is, as usual, to demolish the Baconian idols of prejudice — that is, to start from the assumption that, not knowing Naomi Wu’s story, a single version reported in a single article is not enough to reconstruct it. The second step will therefore be to attempt to isolate all the critical components within it, any internal contradictions, and then gather as much material as possible to compare the variants in the narrative.2

From a diachronic examination, the case of Naomi Wu proves more complex than the Western press would have us believe, since it doesn’t merely concern the problem of censorship but reveals at least four red threads that interweave with one another. The first point is the national security of China’s Great Firewall, an issue that extends into the danger of transnational computer intrusion and therefore involves intelligence services, exactly as in any other nation in the world: digital security is not only defended in China but also in Europe, America, and other Western democracies.3 The second point is an equally controversial theme — that of interference in Chinese politics by organizations such as the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which, under the apparent mission of promoting democracy in the world, implements invasive campaigns of cognitive violence aimed at regime change, whose results we have seen in Ukraine4 and elsewhere: the Chinese activist, by her own admission, was brought to the forefront of Western media as a symbol of anti-government resistance, so that her repression could then be propagandized. Initially promoted by Twitter’s system, Sexy Cyborg stated that she felt (her words) ‘abandoned’ by the West with the acquisition of the company by Elon Musk. A classic case of a media bubble constructed by the algorithm itself, which then burst at the most delicate moment.5

It would appear that we are facing a case of national security and, in a broader sense, ideological warfare, as Wu herself has defined it by her own admission, but that’s not all: two other themes are added to the Chinese hacker’s personal story — the fact that she is an LGBTQ+ activist in China,6 where the queer community is still encountering difficulties in institutional recognition, and perhaps more problematically, her partner’s belonging to the Uyghur community in the northwest of the country.7 Here the case unfortunately becomes complicated, going well beyond the simple disclosure of a flaw in digital security: the Uyghur question is anything but straightforward. What Western media unilaterally define as genocide is interpreted by Chinese authorities as a problem of subversion, separatism, and terrorism. According to Beijing, Uyghurs are not sent to labour camps because they belong to a cultural enclave, but for openly subversive activities and following due process,8 as would happen in any other Western state. The Uyghur community membership of Naomi Wu’s partner would therefore aggravate the critical nature of her situation.

If we therefore observe the activist’s personal story diachronically — that is, from all points of view — we realize that the matter touches precisely on the four points that most frequently recur in anti-Chinese propaganda by the Euro-Atlantic press: accusations of human rights violations, the alleged Uyghur genocide, the panopticon and digital surveillance, the slowness with which LGBTQ+ community rights are progressively being affirmed. Reading these things, a Westerner feels inclined, due to the polarizing nature of political debate in the West itself, to take the side of the Chinese activist, but it’s not that simple because this vision clashes with a radically different culture and governance model: the institutional response regarding the case of Naomi Wu is that the repression of the personal initiative undertaken by the activist is motivated and justified by a national security problem, consequent to the sharing of vulnerabilities in the system designed to protect the country from computer intrusions.9

To escape from yet another polarizing logic, we must therefore pose the inverse question: if these forms of repression in China are presented by European and American media as structural and inherent to the Chinese model, it would be appropriate to ask how liberal the accusing party is demonstrating itself to be on those very same themes. The answer unfortunately is not reassuring, and this demonstrates that the problems highlighted around the case of Naomi Wu are not exclusive to the Chinese model — they are not, that is, a consequence of the centralized democracy leading the country. One need only think of the violent repression of the queer community in Europe10 and the United States, the mass deportations of ethnic minorities,11 the failure to recognize citizenship rights, violations of privacy by our governments,12 their infiltrations into newsroom editorial offices, censorship of independent newspapers, the dissolution of opposition parties, the justification of Western genocides,13 to realize that these problems are not peculiar to the Chinese governance model but affect all nations in the world. This imposes, if nothing else, the need to seek their causes elsewhere: not in Chinese market socialism, not in Beijing’s censorship, but in a malaise that is found internationally, in all countries of the world. To resolve it, one should trace back to the real causes, not attribute it now to this, now to that contingent actor.

In conclusion, far from wanting to take positions for or against the case of Naomi Wu, I think that rather the enormity of the implications obliges a more careful examination of her personal story, which has reached us not through ‘horizontal’ means — that is, through spontaneous transmission of information — but through algorithmic means, vitiated by an amplification and reinterpretation of facts in an openly propagandistic and anti-Chinese function. That is, the repression of the activist is attributed to the governance model, not to the exercise of power as such, when the data demonstrate that the problem is not a consequence of a specifically Chinese policy, but manifests in various forms in all nation-states of the world and therefore should not be reduced to one-dimensional propaganda but should rather provoke broad-ranging reflection.

Rather, the case of Naomi Wu suggests the opportunity to reflect in a non-polarizing, objective, and documented way on the individual themes that the case touches upon — namely, the problem of internal security, the progressive integration of the queer community, tensions with the Uyghur community. These are the themes put on the table by the case of Naomi Wu. I think the best way to do justice to the intelligence of the activist herself, in respect of Chinese popular sovereignty, our task should be to address each of these themes individually, escaping the pernicious vision of uncritical alignment. It is not a matter of taking the side of one or the other, but rather of reflecting on the reasons of one and the other.

Notes

1. Jackie Singh, Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks, in: ‘Hacking but Legal’, August 16, 2023, mentions the vulnerability in the keyboard software reported by Wu.
2. For this method, see Federico Berti, Le vie delle fiabe. L’informazione è narrazione, Bologna, Streetlib, 2021, where it is proposed to apply to media information the same methods developed by folklore studies in investigating popular narratives, collecting multiple versions of the same story to isolate recurring elements and divergent variables.
3. According to the annual Freedom House bulletin, Freedom in the World. Digital Booklet, Washington, 2024, advanced spyware and digital surveillance technologies are being used worldwide, posing a concrete risk to civil rights and press freedom. This is therefore not a problem specifically caused by the Chinese governance model, as presented in Western media coverage on Naomi Wu, but rather a transnational issue independent of specific contexts.
4. For NED’s interference in the Eastern European chessboard, see Federico Berti, Guerra cognitiva e conflitto ucraino, in: Lo spettro di Mariupol, Bologna, Streetlib, 2024.
5. Sarah Emerson, ‘Vice’, May 25, 2018, Shenzhen’s Homegrown Cyborg. The article explains her presence on Western social media and the ideological war in whose name she claims to have been instrumentalized.
6. Julia Hollingsworth, How Naomi Wu Wants to Change the Tech Scene’s Sexist Wiring, in: ‘Six Tones’, December 15, 2017, on Wu’s activism within the Chinese queer community.
7. Jackie Singh, Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks, ibid., mentions the relevance of the Uyghur issue in the case of the Chinese activist, who could not leave the country because her partner would have been denied the right to emigrate.
8. Chris Zambelis, Uighur Dissent and Militancy in China’s Xinjiang Province, in: ‘Combacting Terrorism Center at West Point’, January 10, 2010, Vol. III/1. Considering the Chinese government’s perspective does not mean endorsing it, but acknowledging the controversial nature of the Uyghur issue, which should be clarified through bipartisan investigations and judicial inquiries. Information cannot be presented as definitively acquired and unilaterally framed; its critical aspects must be highlighted. Lack of caution in this regard indicates a tendency toward propaganda rather than information.
9. Acknowledging the government’s position on the matter is once again useful for a deeper understanding of the topic, not necessarily to justify the repressive act itself. Jackie Singh, Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks, ibid., attributes the judicial measure against the activist to the rigidity of the Chinese model, once again adopting a polarizing propaganda perspective rather than an informative one.
10. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, LGBTIQ equality at a cross-roads: progress and challenges, Sex, sexual orientation and gender. Equality, non-discrimination and racism, May 14, 2024.
11. American Immigration Council Special Report, Mass Deportation: Analyzing the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Immigrants, Democracy, and America, July 23, 2025.
12. ‘Human Rights Watch’ Bulletin, July 28, 2014, How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy. Once again, the problem does not seem to be specifically tied to the Chinese governance model.
13. For Western support of the Palestinian genocide by those who accuse China of the (still alleged) Uyghur genocide, see the well-known report by Francesca Albanese, which assesses the complicity of 63 states in the planned extermination in Gaza, including military and economic supplies from Western countries.