China's well-known car media, Diaoche Di, recently released a test video of the electric car Zunjie V800, which showed that the brake pedal bracket of many test vehicles broke during emergency braking. The incident quickly attracted public attention, but the relevant videos were subsequently removed from multiple platforms, and most mainstream media remained silent until the official tone was set.
After the video was released on October 8, it quickly became a trending topic on Weibo. The next day, the review videos were unable to be viewed normally on multiple platforms, and many mainstream media did not continue to follow up on the relevant controversy. It was not until the official "People's Daily" of the Communist Party of China published an article on the 11th that it once again led many Chinese official media to focus on following up.
Lu Qiu Luwei, an associate professor at the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University, told BBC Chinese that unlike previous censorships, which were mainly focused on politics and directly carried out by the government, in this Huawei Zunjie V800 incident, the core is commercial interests, the implementation is the platform, and the driving force behind it is the influence of the company.
"To be precise, this is not a continuation of traditional censorship, but rather a censorship-like effect achieved by commercial power with the help of political sensitivity."
The car in question belongs to the "Hongmeng Smart" territory of the technology giant Huawei. It is jointly developed by Huawei and Jianghuai Automobile (JAC) and positioned as a million-level ultra-luxury smart electric vehicle. Previously, Huawei also cooperated with Seres to launch the Wanjie series of cars.
After the incident, on October 8 and 9, JAC's stock price fell by the limit for two consecutive days, and its market value evaporated by more than 10 billion yuan.
The brakes were stepped on: whose problem is it?
Zunjie has currently launched three models, namely the Zunjie S800, which starts at 708,000 yuan (US$105,800; NT$3,399,300), the Zunjie V800, which starts at 766,000 yuan, and the Zunjie V680, which starts at 648,000 yuan.
Among them, the V800 model was officially launched on August 5, and the first batch of vehicle owner deliveries was completed from the end of August to the beginning of September.
On October 8, Chedi released a review video on multiple platforms, saying that it purchased three new Zunjie V800s and conducted an emergency braking test from 100 km/h to zero. During the test, the brake pedal brackets of all three vehicles broke, and the fracture locations were at the same height.
KnowCarDi, like the video social platform Douyin and Douyin International (TikTok), is a brand owned by ByteDance and provides car information, price reference and even second-hand car trading services. It officially announced that its average daily active users exceed 10 million.
The most basic car safety issues such as braking have quickly aroused discussions in China, and many people are deeply concerned.
On Weibo, some people asked: "If it's broken, it's broken. Doesn't it mean it doesn't exist if it can't be photographed? If it can be broken by just one person's force, even if it breaks only once, it means there is not enough safety redundancy, but the quality is not up to par, and there is nothing to wash. Don't say that the standard is not standard, it means there is a problem with the standard."
Some people also discussed the division of power and responsibilities between Huawei and JAC Motors: whether the brake problem is a problem with Huawei or JAC Motors.
Wang Gaofei, CEO of Sina Weibo, commented through his personal Weibo account: "This is Jianghuai. How can Huawei make a brake pedal if Huawei empowers it?"
Zunjie Auto issued a response on the same day, saying that Zunjie Auto's braking system has completed the entire process development and verification in accordance with requirements that are higher than national standards and higher than industry standards, and "since the delivery of the first batch of vehicles, there has been no brake pedal bracket base breakage failure in actual user usage scenarios."
The statement also pointed out, "Even in non-standard extreme test conditions, we still hope to provide users with higher safety redundancy: we will further optimize the design of this component and provide free upgrade options to users who have delivered it."
On the morning of October 13, Zunjie Auto responded again, saying that the third-party testing agency’s inspection results of the V800 brake pedal were qualified. “After rigorous inspection to a longitudinal force of 3000N (Newton; 306 kg), no cracks or damage occurred.”
Public opinion is "covered": Who is controlling it?
The incident so far is still a discussion about vehicle safety itself and whether the Zunjie V800 is worthy of trust. However, what is more worthy of attention is that from this point on, the review video of the Zunjie V800 by Understanding Chedi began to disappear from multiple platforms: the Chinese streaming platform Bilibili showed "Manuscript invalid", the WeChat video account also showed "after user complaints and reviewed by the platform, involving illegal content". Related videos on Weibo cannot be viewed, leaving only videos saved and re-uploaded by users on Douyin for viewing. China’s official Xinhua News Agency also deleted its report on the Huawei Zunjie V800 incident.
Until October 11, the CCP's "People's Daily" client published an article with the title "Four departments join forces to say "no" to express vehicles!" ”, the WeChat account of “Beijing Daily”, the official newspaper of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, “Chang’an Street Governor” also published an article on the same day commenting on the Zunjie evaluation incident, focusing public opinion on the issue of vehicle safety.
Within a few hours from here, a large number of official media at all levels in China followed up: Observer.com, Jiupai News, Beijing News, China Youth Daily, China News Service, etc. once again began to publish discussions related to Zunjie V800 brakes, focusing the discussion on the safety issues that the public is most concerned about, without mentioning the brand, deleted articles and removed videos.
On the morning of October 12, the official WeChat account of the Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China issued an article "The Zunjie V800 controversy needs a truth", questioning whether there is a problem with the car, or whether the car-savvy emperor who bought three cars for evaluation deliberately created the problem and sensationalized it. This report was forwarded by Hu Xijin, who pointed out on Weibo that Zunjie and Hongmeng Zhixing need to face criticism and doubts.
On the morning of October 13, the official WeChat account of the Zhejiang Propaganda Department once again posted an article "The unhealthy trend of brand fandomization should be put on the brake", insinuating that Zunjie V800 "does not allow" criticism, saying that "originally ordinary product reviews, experience complaints, and industry discussions can easily deviate from the track of objective and rational discussions and evolve into incompatible camp confrontations." The few days of silence in related discussions were summarized as "fandomization" operations.
Public opinion scholar: "Close to censorship"
Dr. Lu Qiu Luwei from the Journalism Department of the School of Communication of Hong Kong Baptist University pointed out that the key to the platform’s first restriction and the failure of state media to intervene in time is the public relations and bargaining power of the company. The platform mainly considers it from a business perspective. The stronger the company being evaluated, the more scruples the platform will have.
Lu Qiu Luwei pointed out to BBC Chinese that taking Huawei as an example, it has always been very strong and is very good at binding itself to "national brands" and "national reputation." Therefore, even if there are no direct commercial interests, the platform will worry about political risks - so it will directly limit the flow and remove the products from the shelves first, seeking a safe solution.
This "platform processing first, official tone later" model that was temporarily formed under the power relationship between platforms, companies, and governments has affected the balance of information that the public can receive. It has also caused the media to directly self-censor in order to avoid powerful companies, and the supervisory function has gradually shrunk.
Luqiu Luwei also pointed out that it is also worth noting that the official media’s stance on some events does not mean that they have directly received instructions from the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Central Propaganda Department) to intervene, especially such commercial events. These commercial events may be just one of the sources of increased revenue for the media, but for the platform, these actions will automatically be regarded as official signals.
"So it depends on whether there is a ban from the Cyberspace Administration of China (China's State Internet Information Office). We can't tell this from the outside. The only method we can use is to see whether it is completely silenced or only part of it." Luqiu Luwei said.
Huawei’s handling of public opinion
In the past few years, Huawei's status in China's public opinion field has changed significantly. As the technological competition between China and the United States intensifies and multiple rounds of U.S. sanctions are imposed, Huawei has gradually been shaped by some officials and nationalist public opinion into a representative enterprise of independent technological innovation in China.
On social media, discussions surrounding Huawei often not only involve the product itself, but are also often given greater political significance such as industrial competition, national strength, and technological independence.
At the same time, some negative controversies involving Huawei's products, technologies or business strategies have repeatedly triggered outside discussions on China's online public opinion environment in recent years. "Made by Huawei" has also become a new term used to ridicule on Chinese social media, where users use it to ridicule the indescribable product quality.
