As detailed in "Blocked on Weibo" by Jason Q. Ng, one of the many phrases that gets censored in China is "50 cents." This term references a huge set of people hired by the government to post internet comments spinning the news in China's favor — people who are supposedly paid 50 cents of Renminbi for every post.

While the Chinese government has only implicitly acknowledged its existence, the brigade likely functions at various levels, with some commenters even employed by websites or internet providers themselves.

An estimated 250,000 to 300,000 belong to the "party," researchers from Harvard University wrote in the American Political Science Review in May 2013.