The Chinese Communist Party's newspaper has spun out an incredibly lucrative censorship business

People.cn is a publicly listed subsidiary of The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party; its fortunes are rising and rising with no end in sight as it markets itself as an outsource censorship provider who combine AI and a vast army of human censors to detect and block attempts to circumvent censorship through irony, memes, and metaphors.

Analysts praise People.cn for its 'precise grasp of policy trends,' and the company's customers agree, using People.cn's censorship service to block content in apps and on social media.

Full-year net income is expected to have risen as much as 140 percent, People.cn said in late January, the biggest annual increase since 2011. That would mean net profit of as high as 214.8 million yuan ($31.93 million).

Revenue from its censorship business is forecast to have jumped 166 percent last year, the company said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Encouraged by surging revenue, People.cn is raising a bigger army of censors. This month, it signed a strategic deal with the government of Jinan in eastern Shandong province to help the city become China’s censorship capital.

Censorship pays: the Chinese Communist Party's newspaper expands lucrative online scrubbing business