Pincong

Pincong is a Chinese-language internet forum and Q&A website primarily used to discuss politics and adjacent topics. Its users are mainly overseas Chinese people and Chinese netizens who have circumvented the Great Firewall.

The "old Pincong" was founded in 2017, but closed down on 30 October, 2018. A new team launched "new Pincong" shortly after.

Background
The literal translation of Pincong means "tasting of onion". Users of this forum are called "Pincongers" (品蔥人).

While the website does not explicitly market itself as a political forum, the site's users primarily hold discussions on political issues. Pincong's server is located in United States, and as a result, the site is currently blocked by the Great Firewall of Mainland China.

Features
The website's interface is written in Simplified Chinese.

Registration
To protect users' safety, the server does not record IP addresses nor does the site require an email address or phone number for registration.

Posting
Pincong allows its users to schedule send forum posts and replies in the event that users wish to delay the posting of their content to a later time and date.

Web access
The default search engine throughout the website is DuckDuckGo. Pincong users self-report safer experiences accessing the Pincong mobile site using Apple's iOS than the Android operating system found on most smartphones.

Other features of Pincong include open source website architecture, transparent background data, and anonymous private messaging.

Administration
Pincong users may be promoted to an administrator status through a voting process conducted by experienced users. As users contribute to discussions within the website, they may accumulate points of approval or disapproval in the form of a reputation system found on similar sites such as Reddit's Karma mechanic.

Upon the accumulation of enough points, users with enough reputation are granted "foreground" admin permissions such as banning users who violate sitewide rules, or expanding and hiding posts. Users with particularly high reputation may be granted extended administrator privileges such as proposals to change sitewide rules, but only fellow administrators may vote on these proposals' adoption.

Content
A majority of its users are from China, but communities of users from Hong Kong, Taiwan and other countries/regions exist. Pincong's Mainland China users must access the site with a Virtual Private Network (VPN) as the domain is blocked under the country's Great Firewall ban of numerous foreign websites. As a result, Mainland Chinese users openly share technical experiences regarding internet censorship circumvention.

According to Quartz, Pincong users mostly identify as politically liberal. Some of its users come from Douban.

Influence

 * August 7, 2019, during Hong Kong protests against China extradition, a Hong Kong protester posted an article in Pincong titled A letter for Mainland fellows from Hong Kong protesters.
 * November 13, 2019, many users from Mainland China uploaded their student photo IDs or diploma, partially covered by a piece of paper to anonymously support Hong Kong protests.  One wrote "Freedom will not perish, but the CCP will meet its demise.".
 * November 30, 2019, a Pincong user published "Geng Shuang Emulator" on GitHub, a webapp that emulates the clichéd speech of then-Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang. It randomly rearranges Geng Shuang's speeches, with keywords replaced to produce a new speech. That attracted some attention of political activists from Hong Kong and Taiwan.  The emulator was removed on December 30.
 * January 12, 2020, another Pincong user published "Hua Chunying Emulator".
 * April 16, 2020, Nature journal in its article China is tightening its grip on coronavirus research, cited a Q&A thread from Pincong, How should one consider the fact that China requires filing and approval of all domestic Covid-19 papers? (Chinese:《如何看待國內規定與新冠肺炎有關的學術論文需審核備案》).

Reviews

 * The Washington Post described Pincong as a popular forum among Chinese Geeks, and mentioned its style is similar to Reddit.
 * An article in Quartz Financial says majority of Pincong users are liberals in China.
 * Global Times, a media owned and controlled by Chinese government, referred to Pincong as an "Anti-China forum".