Russia is stepping up its internet censorship ahead of elections this weekend that will almost certainly give President Vladimir V. Putin another six years in power, further shrinking one of the last remaining spaces for political activism, independent information and freedom of expression is reduced.

Russian authorities have intensified a crackdown on digital tools used to circumvent internet blocks, restricting access to WhatsApp and other communications apps in specific areas during protests, and expanding a program to shut down websites and online services, according to civil society groups, researchers and companies that have been affected.

Russia, they said, is turning to techniques that go beyond established practices of hacking and digital surveillance, taking a more systemic approach to change the way the domestic internet functions. In doing so, the country uses methods developed by China and Iran, providing an authoritarian model for regulating the internet that contrasts with the more open approach of the United States.

Russia “has reached a new level of lockdown in the past six months,” said Mikhail Klimarev, a Russian telecommunications expert and executive director of the Internet Protection Society, a civil society group.

Internet censorship has been increasing in Russia for more than a decade, but the scale and effectiveness of the latest blockages have surprised even tech experts. The techniques contribute to an infrastructure of repression built by Mr. Putin to control protesters and opponents and feed the country a diet of state propaganda.

The moves come at a critical time for Putin, who is dealing with memorials to Alexei A. Navalny, the Kremlin’s fiercest critic, after he died in a Russian prison last month and the fallout from an ongoing war in Ukraine. . On Friday, Russians will also go to the polls to vote in the presidential election that Putin will almost certainly win. The tightened internet controls show that the government does not intend to take any risks.

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s top internet regulator, did not respond to a request for comment.

In stepping up its internet crackdown, Russia has taken cues from China, where the internet is heavily restricted and social media is closely monitored.

In 2016, Fang Binxing, the father of China’s Great Firewall, the system used to censor the country’s internet, met with Russian counterparts. The relationship has developed since then, according to leaked documents from meeting notes reviewed by The New York Times. The documents show how internet officials from the two countries met in 2017 and 2019 to share information on fighting encryption, blocking foreign sites and curtailing protests.

The lessons from the discussions have now been put into practice in Russia.

In January, as protests rocked the industrial province of Bashkortostan, officials successfully restricted local access to the messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram. Similar shutdowns have recently taken place in the Dagestan and Yakutia regions, said Mr. Klimarev, who monitors online censorship in Russia and operates a company called VPN Generator.

After Mr Navalny died last month, other restrictions followed. During Mr. Navalny’s funeral in Moscow, mobile networks in nearby areas were reduced to slower speeds, making it harder to post videos and images to social media, Mr. Klimarev said.

In recent weeks, Russian tech companies and online activists have also reported new government efforts to identify internet traffic patterns coming from virtual private networks, or VPNs, software designed to bypass blocks.

Roskomnadzor identifies VPNs large and small and shuts down the connections, closing many of the last loopholes that allowed Russians to access global news sites or ban social media sites like Instagram. The approach, considered more advanced than previous tactics and requiring specialized technologies, mimics what China does around sensitive political moments.

Some VPNs remain available in Russia, but are becoming increasingly difficult to find. A law that came into effect on March 1 banned advertising for such services.

“If we look back to the beginning of 2022, finding a VPN was not that difficult,” said Stanislav Shakirov, the technical director of Roskomsvoboda, a civil society group that supports an open internet, adding that the change shows how quickly Russia’s capabilities have become. improved.

Russia is also changing the way it censors websites and internet services. After relying primarily on telecom operators to block sites on a published blacklist, authorities now appear to be relying more on centralized technology to more discreetly block and slow traffic from Moscow, researchers said.

Officials appear to be weighing a desire for internet control against technical limitations and a fear of angering the public by restricting popular online platforms, such as YouTube and Telegram, used for news, entertainment and communications. The government has also faced technical challenges, including when many major websites went offline for about 90 minutes earlier this year, which experts attributed to a failed test of a new blocking system.

Authorities were most likely preparing for events that could disrupt this weekend’s elections, experts say. Navalny’s supporters have called on people to go to the polls on Sunday afternoon to vote against Putin, hoping that images of long lines will show the world the extent of the discontent. The government could undermine the plan if it can prevent the images from spreading.

The techniques build on a Chinese-influenced playbook that is becoming more sophisticated every year. During high-level meetings between China and Russia in 2017, Russian officials sought advice on methods to block websites, limit access to the global internet and build a government-controlled internet similar to the Great Firewall, according to reports and notes of the meetings. made available online by DDoSecrets, a group that publishes leaked documents.

Discussions also focused on how to combat the increase in encrypted data flows, how to target larger mainstream messaging apps, and what to do about services like VPNs that can bypass blocks. During the exchanges, China highlighted the use of real name registration – a system that requires the use of a government ID card to register for mobile services and social media – as a way to control people.

China and Russia must “establish the necessary connections to jointly counter current threats in the cyber environment,” Alexander Zharov, head of Roskomnadzor, told visiting Chinese officials in 2017, according to a leaked copy of the speech.

In recent months, Russia’s blocking of VPNs has gone further than ever before.

“The level of blocking we see in Russia far exceeds what we see in China,” said Yegor Sak, founder of Windscribe, a Canadian provider of a VPN used in Russia to bypass internet blocks.

With WhatsApp and Telegram, Russia has taken a different approach than China. After largely leaving the services alone for years, authorities have recently taken steps to restrict access to the apps at key moments of political instability. In Bashkortostan, a manufacturing and mineral center with a large indigenous population, authorities temporarily cut off access to Telegram and WhatsApp in January in response to protests that began after the arrest of a local environmental activist.

Meta, which owns WhatsApp, declined to comment. Telegram did not respond to a request for comment.

The outages became such a problem that people left messages on the social media pages of local politicians asking for the services to be turned back on because they needed them for everyday life, according to posts on VK, the main social media site in Russia.

“I can’t reach the school and talk to the doctor and my relatives,” said one user. “Give us back WhatsApp and Telegram,” wrote another.

The blocks were “very important” because the messaging apps, used by millions of people, were considered much harder to disrupt, said Ksenia Ermoshina, an expert on Russian censorship and surveillance technology. Telecom companies were most likely cooperating on government orders, she said.

The experiment suggests growing capabilities that can be used in future moments of crisis, potentially limiting the rise of political movements.

“People protest when they see other people protesting,” Ms. Ermoshina said. But with the ability to lock down entire regions, the Russian government can “better control regionalist and separatist movements” and prevent demonstrations or other anger from spreading.

Openings for unregulated internet traffic are slowly being closed. At telecommunications points where transnational internet cables enter Russia, companies are being required by the government to install new surveillance equipment, analysts said.

“The Soviet Union is returning,” said Mazay Banzaev, the operator of a Russian VPN called Amnezia. “This brings back complete censorship.”

Anatoly Kurmanayev reporting contributed.

The Ukrainian army said Thursday that its forces were fighting “in the vicinity” of a village behind the town of Marinka on the eastern front line, a strong indication that Kiev’s forces have lost control of the city, more than a week after Moscow claimed to have captured the city.

Open source Cards of the battlefield also show that Russian troops have a foothold throughout Marinka. General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top commander, acknowledged last week that Ukrainian forces had all but retreated to the outskirts, saying Marinka “no longer exists” because Russian forces had reduced it to rubble with relentless shelling.

Several Ukrainian military analysts said Ukrainian forces had set up defensive lines just outside the city and were currently fending off further Russian advances.

“It appears that the Ukrainian forces have left Marinka, but they continue to fight in defensive positions just outside it,” said Oleksandr Musiienko, head of the Kiev-based Center for Military Legal Studies.

Although Marinka is in ruins, it is Russia’s most significant territorial advance since Bakhmut’s fall in May. While his control is unlikely to turn the tide of the war, the loss of the city would be further evidence that Moscow has decisively seized the initiative on the battlefield after Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive failed in most of its objectives .

And Moscow’s success in Marinka would be another blow to the morale of Ukraine’s military, which is now on the defensive and facing manpower and ammunition shortages amid concerns about a possible shortage of Western military aid.

“The Ukrainians are in for a difficult few months,” said Jack Watling, a research fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute who focuses on land warfare.

Russian forces could then turn their sights on the nearby cities of Kurakhove, Vuhledar and Pokrovsk, bringing them one step closer to their goal of conquering the entire Donbas region. Freshly dug trenches now surround towns and villages that months ago were considered beyond the reach of Russian forces.

“Our forces have the opportunity to create a larger operational area,” President Vladimir V. Putin said said in a video of a conversation with Sergei K. Shoigu, Russia’s Defense Minister, on December 25, referring to Marinka’s capture.

The Russian raid on Marinka, a suburb of the city of Donetsk, followed months of grueling fighting as Moscow’s troops crawled through a bomb-ravaged city, a reminder of the fierce battle for Bakhmut, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the northeast.

Ukrainian officials typically do not recognize when a town or city has fallen, instead referring to troops operating in the area. The Ukrainian military has declined to comment on Marinka beyond the daily battlefield updates it issues.

The Russian success in Marinka is a symbolic blow to the Ukrainian army, which has failed to recapture a major population center in the past year. Moscow will likely try to bring this to the attention of the Russian public before the presidential elections in March, to signal that the country is winning the war, despite the large number of deaths and injuries. Putin is almost certain to win an election orchestrated in his favor, but he values ​​the vote as a measure of perceived domestic support.

Mr Watling said control of Marinka was not “particularly important” strategically because the city is now flat and not a crucial logistics hub for Ukraine. “But the Russians are very eager to claim success,” he said, “so when they happen, they make a big deal out of it.”

Since the Ukrainian counter-offensive stalled last fall, Russian forces have ruthlessly attacked a series of cities along the eastern front. Russian forces are also advancing on the nearby town of Avdiivka – a hub of Ukrainian defense in the region.

The battle for Marinka illustrated defining features of the Russian invasion that analysts say gave Moscow’s forces a major advantage: bombarding a place into ruins and then sending wave after wave of troops in bloody attacks, even if it means there must be enormous numbers of victims.

Russian forces began using these tactics – storming cities from afar with artillery and bombs before sending in troops and armored vehicles for close combat – after withdrawing from Kiev in the early days of the war and setting their sights on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

They captured the cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk in the summer of 2022, but after that their offensive largely came to a halt. The capture of Bakhmut in May was the first major territorial gain by Russian forces in months – and the nearly year-long battle for the city was the deadliest and most protracted urban battle in Europe since World War II.

With Bakhmut, Russia came one step closer to achieving its goals in the Donbas region. Then Marinka came.

As Russian forces slowly penetrated Ukrainian positions in Marinka, both sides destroyed apartment buildings and houses, reducing the city to a wasteland. Before the war the city had 9,000 inhabitants. according to a recent census. Today it is largely empty of civilians.

“The situation is exactly the same as in Bakhmut,” General Zaluzhny said at a press conference last week. “Ukrainian forces held Marinka for almost two years while the Russians destroyed it street by street and then house by house.”

Open source maps of the battlefield show that Russian troops already controlled more than half of Marinka in June. They made a final attempt to capture the western edge of the city in mid-December and claimed full control of the area by December 25. Maps of the battlefield from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, now show that Russia has reached Marinka’s western borders.

But Marinka is now largely a shambles, without much that could serve as a basis for further incursions into Ukrainian territory. And Ukraine has had time to build up fallback positions in an attempt to thwart further Russian advances.

“The main significance lies not in the territory of the city itself, but in the defense lines west of Marinka,” said Serhii Kuzan, the chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a research group, “and our armed forces continue to hold them. positions.”

The Institute for the Study of War said last week that “it is highly unlikely that the Russian armed forces will make rapid operational progress from Marinka,” citing a deterioration in their capabilities.

Yet Russia regained the battlefield offensive in 2023. Its brutal operations, including in Bakhmut and Marinka, allowed the country to seize more land than it lost during the year. recent analysis by the Estonian Ministry of Defense noted.

The seizure of Marinka was a way for Moscow to say to the West: “We may not be making rapid progress, but we are making progress, and despite your support, the war is going our way,” said Mr. Watling, the analyst.

“That’s the narrative the Russians are going to push,” he said.

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting from Pokrovsk, Ukraine.

Shares of Chinese video game companies rallied on Wednesday after investors seized on signals that the government was wavering on proposed gaming regulations.

Since the weekend, regulators have been trying to calm the market after shares of the two largest video game companies, Tencent and NetEase, plunged on Friday.

When trading resumed after the four-day holiday weekend in Hong Kong, Tencent was trading about 5 percent higher, and NetEase rose 10 percent, recovering from some of their losses.

The events of the past few days underscore the push-and-pull forces in Chinese policymaking. The country’s top leaders have acknowledged the need to stabilize the economy, which is slowly recovering from near-lockdown during the Covid pandemic. But the government’s strict control over the way companies do business continues to inject uncertainty into markets.

China’s National Press and Publication Administration, which licenses game publishers and oversees the industry, unveiled a proposal on Friday aimed at effectively reducing how much people spend playing games. The plan took the industry by surprise and investors dumped tens of billions of dollars in company stock.

The regulator issued a statement on Saturday emphasizing that the draft rules aim to “promote prosperity and healthy development of the industry,” and said it is “fully listening to more opinions and improving regulations and facilities.”

The agency then announced on Monday that it had licensed around 100 new games, after licensing 40 more games on Friday. And a semi-official association affiliated with the agency said the additional game approvals were “positive signals” that the agency is supporting the industry.

The new regulations would put a cap on how much money users can spend in games on things like upgrading characters they play against or purchasing virtual goods. It would also ban rewards that companies use to entice players to return. The proposal did not specify a spending ceiling.

“The draft rules would inevitably lead to changes in current practices and potential short-term revenue losses,” said Xiao Lei, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong business school.

But, he added, its impact could be smaller than feared as authorities could adjust or drop some provisions. Consumer demand for games and the social interactions they enable would remain unaffected, he added.

Analysts at Nomura, a Japanese bank, said in a report on Tuesday that the rules could “significantly affect” the ability of Chinese video game companies to make money.

The “firefighting measures” the government has introduced since Friday, Nomura added, will allay investor concerns but will not remove the shadow it has cast over China’s video game sector.

The industry is still reeling from previous restrictions first imposed in 2019 that targeted what the government saw as online gaming addiction among minors, as well as a broader crackdown on tech companies. Regulators also hampered publishers by not issuing new game licenses for an eight-month period ending in April 2022.

For their part, Tencent and NetEase have downplayed the impact of the proposed regulations.

The draft rules “did not fundamentally change the business model, gameplay rhythm or other key elements of the game,” Vigo Zhang, vice president of Tencent Games, said in a statement on Friday. NetEase said this weekend that the proposal would not have a substantial impact on its operations, adding that it would share its views with authorities.

The regulator said it would accept comments on the proposal until January 22.

In his decade as China’s top leader, Xi Jinping has asserted greater control over the country’s economy for himself and the Communist Party. Now Mr. Xi has moved to extend that power more powerfully than ever over China’s financial system.

The Communist Party has one detailed ideological statement On Friday, Qiushi, the party’s main official theoretical journal, made clear that it expected banks, pension funds, insurers and other financial organizations in China to follow Marxist principles and be obedient to Mr Xi.

The Qiushi paper, which has been closely studied by bankers and economists in China, could thwart Beijing’s efforts to demonstrate that the economy is open to investment even as it puts a heavier hand on business.

Barry Naughton, an economist at the University of California San Diego who has long studied China’s transition to a market economy, said the document was a signal that the financial sector would be subject to increasing scrutiny and forced to to serve government policy more actively.

“The financial sector is not expected to push for market-oriented reforms or even necessarily maximize profits,” he said. “As a program for the financial sector it is ambitious, disappointing and somewhat ominous.”

Western banks such as HSBC, BNP Paribas and JPMorgan Chase have significant operations in mainland China that fall under the purview of Beijing regulators. But some financial institutions have cut back. Citibank announced on October 9 that it sold its consumer wealth management business in mainland China to HSBC. Vanguard has ended its limited operations on the mainland.

China has long demanded that financial companies follow Beijing’s policies and the party’s principles. Yet for nearly four decades after Mao’s death in 1976, the party seemed to gradually lose its control over society, the economy and the banking system. Financial institutions were encouraged to innovate and pursue profits.

Mr Xi has largely reversed this liberalization. He and other leaders had called for tighter regulatory scrutiny at a financial policy conference in late October. The Qiushi essay underscored that this shift is now a reality as part of the party’s ideology.

That has made market-oriented economists increasingly nervous.

“Politics will certainly further dictate China’s finances, effectively bringing China even closer to pre-reform levels in 1978,” said Chen Zhiwu, a finance professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Some of the policy objectives outlined in the essay would not be unusual as regulatory objectives in the West. For example, it calls on banks to emphasize financial services for the “real economy,” which the party has long interpreted as ample financing for the country’s industrial base.

But it also calls for a strong role in the financial world for Mr Xi personally and for Marxist ideology in general. That follows a pattern that emerged for other sectors at the Chinese Communist Party’s national congress a year ago, but has so far been less apparent in the financial world.

The essay describes a speech Mr. Xi gave privately in late October at China’s Central Financial Work Conference, which meets once every five years to guide financial regulation.

But like the conference, the party declaration in Qiushi did not offer specific solutions to the country’s many financial problems. These include rising debts, widening budget deficits in local governments, the collapse of a major trust bank and the insolvency of real estate developers who were among the country’s largest borrowers.

Credit rating agency Moody’s announced on Tuesday that it lowered its credit outlook for the Chinese government to negative. It had previously given a stable outlook for the country’s credit rating, which remains at A1, near the top of the rating scale.

The official silence on what to do about China’s troubled finances and weak economic recovery coincides with a mysterious delay in a long-awaited meeting of a powerful party committee.

The financial working conference has been followed in recent years in the same year by the third plenum of the party’s Central Committee – where top officials set out the country’s economic policies for the next five years. But the plenum has yet to be scheduled and could be postponed until next year. The impending break with tradition has led to speculation about disorder in economic policymaking.

The Communist Party unit that issued the statement in Qiushi – the Central Financial Working Committee – is led by Vice Prime Minister He Lifeng. Mr. He has been a close associate of Mr. Xi since 1985, when the two men began working together in southeastern China’s Fujian province. Mr. He now has a leading role in setting economic and financial policy in China.

Qiushi is the main magazine that makes statements about China’s current ideology, known as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Friday’s statement said Mr. Xi’s speech at the financial conference “is a valuable ideological crystallization shaped by our party’s relentless exploration of the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics.”

Zhu Tian, ​​an economics professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, said the document should be interpreted primarily as a political statement, rather than a policy prescription. “Politics affects all major areas, and economic and financial issues are themselves political issues,” he said.

Indeed, the Communist Party’s control over finances is mentioned repeatedly in the Qiushi Statement. “We must firmly adhere to the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee in financial work, and uphold and strengthen the Party’s overall leadership in financial work,” the report said.

China’s top regulators have already started issuing statements endorsing the ideological position. That included a lengthy speech on Monday by Yi Huiman, secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, which oversees the country’s stock and futures markets.

Victor Shih, another specialist in Chinese economic policy at the University of California San Diego, said calls for financing to benefit society are also often heard in the West.

But as Chinese authorities take more responsibility for its finances, banks can continue to lend and companies can continue to lend on the assumption that the state will bail them out even if they make mistakes. Mr Shih warned that this “could continue to give rise to careless financial behavior for actors who see comfort in the centre’s absolute guarantee of stability.”

Olivia Wang contributed research from Hong Kong.

The cancellations rippled across the country: a Japanese choir band toured China, stand-up comedy shows in several cities, jazz shows in Beijing. In the span of a few days, the performances were among more than a dozen that were abruptly called off – some just minutes before they were due to start – with virtually no explanation.

Just before the performances were canceled, authorities in Beijing had fined a Chinese comedy studio about $2 million after one of the stand-up artists was accused of insulting the Chinese military in a prank; police in northern China also detained a woman who had defended the comedian online.

Those fines, and the sudden wave of cancellations that followed, point to the growing scrutiny of China’s already heavily censored creative landscape. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has made art and culture a central arena for ideological repression, demanding artists align their creative aspirations with the aims of the Chinese Communist Party and propagate a nationalist vision of Chinese identity. Artists must submit scripts or set lists for vetting, and publications are closely monitored.

On Tuesday, Mr. Xi sent a letter to the National Art Museum of China for its 60th birthday, reminding staff to “adhere to proper political orientation.”

Xi’s emphasis on the arts is also part of a broader concern for national security and eliminating supposedly malign foreign influence. Authorities have raided the corporate offices of several Western consulting or consulting firms in China in recent weeks, broadening the range of conduct covered by counterintelligence laws.

Many of the canceled events would feature foreign performers or speakers.

It was only to be expected that Beijing would also look to the cultural realm, as deteriorating relations with the West have left the country more fixated on maintaining its grip on power domestically, said Zhang Ping, a former journalist and political commentator in China who now lives in Germany.

“One way to respond to fear of power is to increase control,” says Mr. Zhang, who writes under the pseudonym Chang Ping. “Dictatorships have always tried to control people’s entertainment, speech, laughter and tears.”

While the party has long regulated the arts — one of the goals of the Cultural Revolution was creative work deemed insufficiently “revolutionary” — its intensity has increased sharply under Mr Xi. In 2021, a state-sponsored performing arts association published a list of guidelines for morality for artists, including regulations for patriotism. In the same year, the government banned “sissy men” from appearing on television, accusing them of weakening the nation.

Officials have also taken note of stand-up comedy, which has gained popularity in recent years and provided a rare medium for limited barbs about life in contemporary China. The government has fined a comedian for making jokes about last year’s corona lockdown in Shanghai. People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, published a commentary in November that said jokes should be “moderate” and noted that stand-up as an art form was a foreign import; the Chinese name for stand-up, ‘tuo kou xiu’, is itself a transliteration of ‘talk show’.

The recent crackdown began after an anonymous social media user complained about a set performed by a popular stand-up comedian, Li Haoshi, on May 13 in Beijing. Mr. Li, who goes by the stage name House, had said watching his two adopted stray dogs chase a squirrel reminded him of a Chinese military slogan: “Maintain exemplary conduct, fight to win.” The user suggested that Mr. Li had slanderously compared soldiers to wild dogs.

Outrage grew among nationalist social media users, and authorities soon mounted up. In addition to fining Xiaoguo Culture Media, the company Mr Li controls, authorities – saying the prank had a “despicable societal impact” – indefinitely suspended the company’s performances in Beijing and Shanghai. Xiaoguo fired Mr. Li and the Beijing police said they were investigating him.

Within hours of the fine being announced on Wednesday, stand-up show organizers in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and eastern Shandong province canceled their performances. A few days later, Chinese social media platforms suspended the accounts of Uncle Roger, a British-based Malaysian comic whose real name is Nigel Ng; Mr. Ng had posted a video poking fun at the Chinese government on Twitter (which is banned in mainland China).

But the apparent consequences weren’t limited to comedy. Scheduled musical performances also began to disappear, including a stop in South China by one Shanghai rock band that includes foreign members, a folk music festival in Beijing and several jazz performances, and a Canadian rapper show in the southern city of Changsha.

The frontman of a Buddhist-influenced Japanese choral group, Kissaquo, said on Wednesday that his concert in the southern city of Guangzhou had been canceled that night. Hours later, the frontman, Kanho Yakushiji, said a gig in Hangzhou, in eastern China, had also been cancelled. And the next day he announced that the shows in Beijing and Shanghai had also been cancelled.

“I was writing a setlist but stopped halfway through,” said Mr Yakushiji, whose management company did not respond to a request for comment. wrote on his Facebook page. “I still don’t understand the meaning of all this. I have nothing but regrets.”

Organizers’ announcements for nearly all of the canceled events mentioned “force majeure,” a term that means force majeure — and often used in China as shorthand for government pressure.

Stand-up show organizers have not returned requests for comment. Several organizers of canceled musical performances denied that they had been instructed not to perform foreigners. An employee at a music venue in Nanjing that canceled a tribute to Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto said not enough tickets had been sold.

Some of the foreign musicians whose performances have been canceled can now perform in other cities or on other stages.

But a foreign musician in Beijing, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said his band would play in a bar on Sunday and the venue had been told a few days before that the performance had been canceled because foreigners’ performances would cause problems. cause.

Lynette Ong, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto, said it was unlikely that the central government had issued direct instructions to fuel the recent cultural repression. Local governments or site owners, aware of how the political environment had changed, were likely to be particularly cautious, she said.

“In Xi’s China, people are so scared and anxious that they become extremely risk averse,” she said. “In general, it’s a very paranoid party.”

In the past, when nationalism had gone to extremes, or local officials were overzealous in enforcing the rules, the central government would eventually step in to cool down the rhetoric, in part to preserve economic or diplomatic relations. But Professor Ong said Beijing’s current emphasis on security above all would not be a reason to intervene here.

“If people aren’t watching comedy, there’s no loss to the party,” she said.

Joy Dong And Li you contributed research.