people in China, for example, are so brainwashed that they can't see that neutrality is just false." VPN exemptions for pro-Beijing edits/admins Despite being censored in mainland China, and as VPNs are normally not allowed to edit Wikipedia, Wikipedia administrators from China have permitted IP block exemption for a select number of mainland users. Such users are recruited to change the editorial content on Wikipedia in support of China's viewpoint and/or to support the election of pro-Chinese government administrators on Wikipedia, with the aim of gaining control of Wikipedia. Academics suggested that “China urgently needs to encourage and train Chinese netizens to become Wikipedia platform opinion leaders and administrators … [who] can adhere to socialist values and form some core editorial teams.” This is seen as part of the Chinese Communist Party's coordinated efforts to push their preferred narrative on platforms that have respected worldwide credibility, as Wikipedia's domestic equivalent in China, Baidu Baike, lacks credibility due to self-censorship and commercialization. 2021 WMF actions for Chinese Wikipedia users The pro-Beijing Wikipedia community, the Wikimedians of Mainland China (WMC), has clashed with Wikipedia editors from Taiwan, not only over Wikipedia's content, but also making death threats made against Taiwan's community of Wikipedians. One Taiwanese editor suggested that it was not just patriotic mainlanders, but a "larger structural coordinated strategy the government has to manipulate these platforms" beside Wikipedia, such as Twitter and Facebook. The WMC has threatened to report Wikipedia editors to Hong Kong’s national security police hotline over the disputed article "2019–2020 Hong Kong protests" characterized by edit warring. A Hong Kong-based editor, who remains anonymous because of fears of intimidation, noted that "Pro-Beijing people often remove content that is sympathetic to protests, such as tear gas being fired and images of barricades. They also add their own content". Acknowledging that "edit wars" happen on both sides, the anonymous editor stated that "Pro-democracy editors tend to add content to shift the balance or the tone of the article, but in my experience, the pro-Beijing editors are a lot more aggressive in churning out disinformation. It's now unfixable without external interference. Someone is trying to rewrite history." At 16:13 GMT, 13 September 2021 (00:13, 14 September 2021 Beijing Time), the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) globally banned seven Wikipedia users and removed administrator privileges from twelve users that were part of Wikimedians of Mainland China. Maggie Dennis, the foundation’s vice present of community