BEIJING — She was known as China’s clickbait queen, an irreverent blogger who prescribed shopping to combat sadness (“better than sex, orgasms, strawberry cake”) and makeovers to win back cheating husbands (“men are visual animals”).

北京——她被人称为中国的标题党女王，是个目空一切的博主，叫人们用购物来减轻悲伤（“好过性爱、高潮和草莓蛋糕”），用化妆把出轨的丈夫争取回来（“男人是视觉动物”）。

But late last month, Ma Ling, a blogger who commanded an audience of more than 16 million people, went conspicuously silent.

但上月底，曾经拥有1600多万读者的博主马凌却因沉默而引起了注意。

In the battle for control of the Chinese internet, the authorities had designated Ms. Ma a threat to social stability, pointing to an article she published about a young man with cancer whose talent and virtue were not enough to overcome problems like corruption and inequality.

在对中国互联网控制权的争夺战中，有关部门已把马凌定为威胁社会稳定的人。他们指出，她旗下公众号发表的一篇文章中说，一名患有癌症的年轻人身上的才华和优点，不足以克服腐败和不平等等问题。

The state-run news media accused Ms. Ma of circulating false information, and her social media accounts were wiped from the internet.

官方新闻媒体指责马凌散布虚假信息，她的社交媒体账号已全部从网上删除。

The silencing of Ms. Ma, better known in China by her pen name, Mimeng, reflects a broader campaign by President Xi Jinping to purge the public sphere of popular voices that the ruling Communist Party finds threatening, no matter how innocuous they may seem.

中国读者更熟悉马凌的笔名“咪蒙”，她被封反映出中国国家主席习近平发起的一场更广泛运动，该运动旨在清除公众领域里被共产党视为威胁的受欢迎的声音，不管这些声音听起来可能多么没有恶意。

“There is no longer any freedom of speech in China,” Jia Jia, a blogger who writes about history, said of the campaign. “In the end, no one will be spared.”

“中国根本没有言论自由，”历史博主贾葭在谈到这场运动时说。“最终，没有人能够幸免。”

Since coming to power in 2012, Mr. Xi has imposed the most extensive censorship in China in years, flooding the airwaves with communist propaganda and reining in investigative journalists and social media celebrities.

自2012年上台以来，习近平在中国实施了多年来最广泛的审查制度，让共产党的宣传充斥电波，严格控制做调查报道的记者和社交媒体名人。

Now Mr. Xi is pushing to tame one of the most vibrant corners of the Chinese internet: the more than one million self-help gurus, novelists, sportswriters and other independent writers who make up the so-called “self-media.”

现在，习近平正在努力压制中国互联网最活跃的一个角落：由100多万名写手构成的所谓“自媒体”，其中包括自助大师、小说家、体育作者和其他独立作者。

Since December, the authorities have closed more than 140,000 blogs and deleted more than 500,000 articles, according to the state-run news media, saying that they contained false information, distortions and obscenities.

据官方新闻媒体报道，截止去年12月，当局已关闭了自媒体账号11万个，删除了近50万篇文章，当局说这些文章中有虚假信息及淫秽内容，还歪曲事实。

The party seems concerned that independent commentators, who have become a primary news source for China’s more than 800 million internet users, are drowning out its propaganda messages. It also probably worries that independent media sources could help fuel social unrest in 2019, a year of politically sensitive anniversaries including 30 years since the crackdown in Tiananmen Square.

中共似乎担心，独立评论员们正在淹没党的宣传。这些人已成为中国逾8亿网民的主要新闻来源。中共可能还担心，独立的媒体可能会在今年助长社会动荡。2019年有好几个政治敏感的周年纪念日，比如今年是天安门广场镇压的30周年。

“Bloggers are seen as encouraging discontent in society and potentially causing social instability,” said Hu Xingdou, a political economist in Beijing.

“自媒体被视为会激发公众对社会的不满，并可能进一步导致社会不稳定的因素，”北京的政治经济学家胡星斗说。

But Mr. Hu said the risk of unrest might actually increase if individuals were not permitted to air grievances online. “Our society should allow multiple voices,” he said. “Only in this way can discontent be released.”

但他说，如果不允许个人在网上表达不满情绪的话，动乱的风险可能实际上会更大。“我们的社会应该允许多元的声音，”他说。“只有这样，不满情绪才能得到释放。”

Such blogs represent one of the last bastions of relatively free discourse in China and have proliferated in recent years as the state-run news media has become more heavily focused on praising Mr. Xi and his policies.

这些博客代表着中国能进行相对自由讨论的最后堡垒之一。近年来，随着官方新闻媒体越来越集中精力赞美习近平及其政策，这类博客的数量也在激增。

For many writers, blogs are a lucrative business, with readers paying small fees for content and advertisers paying for mentions of their products. To avoid China’s strict laws on news gathering, many bloggers occupy a gray area, framing their views on current events as commentary.

对许多作者来说，写博客是一项有利可图的生意，读者会为博客内容付点钱，广告商则会为在博客中提到其产品支付费用。为避免中国有关新闻采集的严格法律，许多博主活跃在一个灰色地带，以评论的方式表达他们对时事的看法。

The freewheeling competition for eyeballs has led to an alarming rise in fake news, a concern that the government often uses to justify its crackdown.

为吸引眼球进行的不受约束的竞争，已导致假新闻数量的惊人增长，政府经常以假新闻为由来证明打击的正确性。

But Mr. Xi is targeting much more than false information. The authorities have blacklisted writers who traded celebrity gossip, analysts who discussed rising property prices and advocates who wrote about problems in the countryside.

不过，习近平的打击对象远远超出虚假信息。当局已把那些传播名人八卦的作者、讨论房价不断上涨的分析师，以及撰文谈农村问题的维权人士列入了黑名单。

In interviews, bloggers described the silencing of Ms. Ma as a clear warning to independent media in China: The party is in charge, and writers must play by its rules.

在采访中，博主们将马凌被禁声描述为对中国独立媒体的明确警告：党是掌权者，作者必须遵守党的规则。

But while the range of banned topics in China was once clear — independence movements in Tibet and Taiwan, and the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989, for example — the party’s red line has become much more ambiguous.

虽然在中国被禁的话题范围过去曾很清楚——比如藏独、台独，以及1989年天安门广场血腥镇压——但中共的红线已变得更加模糊。

China’s trade war with the United States is now considered sensitive. So too, sometimes, are musings about the futility of work, a theme often derided by censors as promoting “slacker culture.”

中国与美国的贸易战现在被认为敏感话题。有时，认为工作是徒劳的讨论也如此，审查人员常常批评这个话题是宣扬“懒散文化”。

Li Yongfeng, who runs a popular book review channel, said he avoided publishing articles that mentioned social movements or past or present political leaders, even to offer praise.

管理一个颇受欢迎的书评网站的李永峰说，他避免发表提及社会运动和过去或现任领导人的文章，包括赞扬的文章。

“The Chinese government always sees itself as a serious father,” he said. “He always wants to control his people and to determine what they like and dislike.”

“中国政府总是把自己看作一个严格的父亲，”他说。“总是想控制它的人民，决定他们喜欢什么，不喜欢什么。”

Mr. Xi has demanded absolute loyalty from state-run news outlets, saying their names should include the word “party.” And he has urged officials to take command of new media by deploying tools like blogs and apps to promote communist ideology.

习近平要求国有新闻机构绝对忠诚，说它们必须姓“党”。他还敦促官员们通过用博客和手机应用程序等工具宣传共产主义意识形态，以控制新媒体。

Lotus Ruan, a researcher at the University of Toronto who studies the Chinese internet, said she expected censorship to grow as the rules became more arbitrary.

多伦多大学(University of Toronto)研究中国互联网的学者阮洋(Lotus Ruan)说，随着规则变得更加任意，审查也将变得更严。

“At the end of the day, it is up to authorities to decide what constitutes ‘positive energy’ and what does not,” she said.

“说到底，什么是‘正能量’，什么不是，是由当局决定的，”她说。

In December, the Cyberspace Administration of China listed offenses by bloggers that included distorting government policy and party history, “flaunting wealth” and “challenging public order.”

去年12月，中国国家互联网信息办公室给出的博主违法行为包括，曲解政策、歪曲党史、“炫富”和“挑战公序”。

But the party defines those terms widely.

但是党对这些术语的定义很广范。

An account that focused on women was suspended last year after the authorities said its posts on sexual health were “distasteful.”

去年，当局暂停了一个讨论女性话题的账号，原因是当局认为账号中关于性健康的帖子“令人反感”。

Similarly, an account run by a nonprofit named NGOCN was shut down in December after it published articles on a chemical spill in eastern China, said Wu Lilan, the group’s executive director.

类似地，一个名为NGOCN的公益组织运营的账户去年12月被关闭，原因是该组织发表了关于中国东部一起化学品泄漏事件的文章，该组织的执行会长吴丽岚说。

Increasingly, the party is seeking to limit content that depicts life in China as a constant struggle. That seems to have driven the attacks on Ms. Ma, the clickbait queen.

对于把中国生活描绘成一场无休止斗争的内容， 中共正在试图进行越来越多的限制。这似乎是打击标题党女王马凌的动因。

Ms. Ma, 42, already had detractors who accused her of making money by manipulating people’s emotions with articles like “I Love Money, It’s True” and “Men Don’t Cheat for Sex.” She charged $113,000 to advertisers for a mention on her blog and bragged about paying her interns nearly $90,000 a year.

马凌现年42岁，已经有些批评者指责她为了赚钱，用标题为《我爱钱，这是真的》、《男人不是为了性才出轨的》这类文章来操纵人们的情绪。广告商让她在博客里提其产品需要支付高达80万元的广告费。她还吹嘘给自己的实习生月薪5万。

In January, Ms. Ma, a former journalist who started her blog in 2015, came under attack after publishing “The Death of a Top Scorer From a Poor Family,” a post about a hardworking 24-year-old man who died of cancer. The article suggested that even though the man was bright and virtuous, he was still powerless in the face of the high cost of health care.

马凌当过记者，2015年开始写博客。今年1月，在《一个出身寒门的状元之死》一文发表后她受到抨击。那篇文章讲的是一名努力工作的男子，24岁时死于癌症的故事。文章暗示，尽管他聪明善良，但在高昂的医疗费用面前，他仍无能为力。

The article was widely circulated online and prompted debate about China’s wealth gap, surging medical costs and the value of education — common complaints of China’s middle class. Soon, however, internet users pointed to factual errors and said the piece had been invented.

该文在网上广为流传，引发了有关贫富差距、医疗费用飙升，以及教育价值的辩论——这些都是中国中产阶级常见的抱怨。不过，网上很快就有人指出，文章中有事实错误，并说文章是编造的。

Ms. Ma had to apologize and promise to “communicate values with more positive energy.”

马凌不得不出来道歉，并承诺将“传递更正能量的价值观”。

But the government did not relent. People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party, accused Ms. Ma of manipulating public opinion. Her social accounts were deleted on Feb. 21.

但政府没有就此为止。中共机关报《人民日报》指责马凌操纵舆论。她的社交媒体账号于2月21日被删除。

Ms. Ma did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Cyberspace Administration of China.

马凌没有回复记者的置评请求，国家互联网信息办公室也没有回复。

Wang Yongzhi, an outspoken commentator in the eastern city of Hangzhou, said the broader problem was that China’s leaders paid little attention to social issues, leaving a void that bloggers helped fill.

王永智是一名直言不讳的评论员，住在中国东部城市杭州，他说，更广泛的问题是，中国领导人基本上不关心社会问题，所以给博客作者留下了一个需要填补的空白。

Mr. Wang said he had begun blogging because it provided a “seed of journalistic freedom” in a tightly restricted society. But on Jan. 1, he said, he closed his WeChat blog because he had grown tired of the constant battle with censors.

王永智说，他开始写博客是因为它给一个受严格限制的社会提供了“新闻自由的种子”。但他说，他已在今年1月1日关闭了自己的微信号，因为已经厌倦了与审查机构的无休止斗争。

“It is becoming unbearable,” Mr. Wang said. “The party simply can’t tolerate anyone who has a big influence on society.”

“（中国的舆论环境）已经变得无法忍受了，”王永智说。“党不能接受任何人在社会上有影响力。”