'five dimes'), are Internet commentators who are paid by the authorities of the People's Republic of China to spread the propaganda of the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
[5][6][7] Some of these commentators have labeled themselves ziganwu (Chinese: 自干五, short for 自带干粮的五毛, zì dài gānliáng de wǔmáo, lit.
As a new system was prepared to be launched, school officials hired students as part-time web commentators, paid from the university's work-study funds, to search the forum for undesirable information and actively counter it with Party-friendly viewpoints.
[17] Large Chinese websites and local governments have been requested to publish the sayings of Hu, and select "comrades with good political quality" to form "teams of Internet commentators" by the CCP Central Committee (中共中央办公厅) and General Office of the State Council (国务院办公厅).
The Bureau responded with 120 staff calling for the truth to be revealed in line with the public opinion, which gradually shifted and eventually supported the police position, denouncing the original poster.
"[24] The Ministry of Culture now holds regular training sessions, where participants are required to pass an exam after which they are issued a job certification.
[12] The Cyberspace Administration of China (shortened as Chinese: 网信办) directly recruit and provide continuous training for internet commentators (Chinese: 网评员) to respond to online emergencies under new forms of public opinion dissemination channels on various social media platforms,[27][28][29] and state-owned entities regularly hold commemoration ceremonies for outstanding staff on the provincial and county-levels.
[36] According to high-profile independent Chinese blogger Li Ming, the pro-Chinese government web commentators must number "at least in the tens of thousands".
[43] The 50 Cent Party's activities were described by CCP general secretary and Chinese president Hu Jintao as "a new pattern of public-opinion guidance";[44][45] they represent a shift from simply erasing dissenting opinions to guiding dialogue.
[46] David Wertime, writing in Foreign Policy, argued that the narrative where a large army of paid Internet commentators are behind China's poor public dialogue with its critics is "Orwellian, yet strangely comforting".