These mergers and injection of “red” capital have deeper implications as the CCP, being the Leninist organisation it is, transforms everything within its reach into vessels for their United Front. Under Chinese corporate law, the state posses prerogative rights as an investor and firms are legally obliged to prioritise so-called state development goals. This serves to advance Xi’s “common prosperity” agenda and Guo zin min tui (more control of the state and less of the private sector) philosophy, as he bought tech tycoons to his heels with a series of crackdowns, even taking over certain enterprises entirely. The reality of the current state of China’s state capitalism is that as long as businesses reach a certain size and scale, they have no choice but to become part of the state apparatus.

Tencent and Bilibili are of course no exception. They have no choice but to obey party lines and enact censorship on the party’s behalf. Propaganda from state mouthpieces is now virtually inescapable on Bilibili, as they are laid as the top videos always recommended by the platform’s algorithm, and content creators must adhere to CCP ideologies regardless of the video they create. Similarly, Tencent has been utilising its power as a stakeholder of foreign gaming companies like Activision to remove mentions of the Tiananmen Square Massacre from a trailer for its new game. With its massive holding of Japanese game developers including but not limited to studios Aiming, Platinum, and Marvelous, it is only natural for some to be worried about its consequences. 

At the moment, the advancement of Chinese investment is still insufficient to constitute a systematic threat to Japan’s freedom of speech. Whilst this might become a possibility, there is not much to gain for the CCP to constantly request firms to ban foreign media. The act of censorship has the ultimate purpose of maintaining regime stability and legitimacy through the creation and sustaining of a friendly discourse environment domestically. Discourse happening outside China does not matter to the CCP as long as they are filtered out when entering the country. Having an excessively demanding ban list will actually bring publicity to the issue, thus defeating the purpose. It will also tarnish the brand image of the few Chinese corporations that made it to the international market, damaging their potential to censor important issues. This is especially true in the entertainment industry, as the market has a natural tendency to avoid politics, which often brings controversy. It would hence be much more beneficial for the CCP to remain dormant and let the firms take root in Japan before the need to censor content arises. 

Ironically, the threat of censorship has manifested in the aforementioned Chinese ACGN fans. The 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre made the CCP realise they are slowly losing control of the people due to economic integration with the West and has prompted them to commence the very successful “Patriotic Education Campaign” that is still fully running currently. Of which, hatred towards Japan for their wrongdoings during WWII is a convenient but major vocal point. As a result, the youth of China are indoctrinated with confused and extreme nationalism that boosts their loyalty towards the CCP, to the point it would not be affected by their consumption of Japanese ACGN media. For instance, they berated voice actress Ai Kayano on social media after she revealed she paid a casual visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. While the shrine is notorious amongst the Chinese due to it honouring Japanese war criminals, the shrine is dedicated to those who died in service of the country in general, and the actress visited the shrine out of whim and not as a political statement. Still, the furious netizens made further demands for the withdrawal of works Ms Kayano is involved in or her presence from the work, which became the case for the Japanese gacha-inspired Chinese mobile games Azur Lane and Arknights. This demonstrates how the average Japanese person can face serious consequences whether knowingly or not for not adhering to Chinese censorship, and the damaging impact it will have on Japan’s creational freedom in the long run, even without direct orders from the CCP.

With how viral ACGN is and going across the world, the damage of China meddling with these media that follows will also scale accordingly. It is therefore advisable for the Japanese watchdogs to start paying attention to the growing footprints of Chinese tech companies. Even if it is impossible and disproportionate to forbid joint virtues and takeovers entirely, they should start setting thresholds of how much China can invest in the entertainment industry before it becomes too late.