Chinese efforts in spreading disinformation and fake news on Western social media platforms have typically been characterized by their shallowness. Videos of dancing minorities or praise for Xi Jinping in comment sections are often easily identifiable as agenda-driven. However, this doesn’t make these campaigns any less dangerous. Not every user is aware of the propaganda interests originating from Beijing.
Meta has now blocked thousands of accounts belonging to a disinformation network from China on its platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The accounts from this network typically praised China and specifically the Xinjiang province in their posts while also criticizing the USA, Western foreign policies and government critics, as Marcel Grzanna reports. Yet, Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg in this “Spamouflage”. Experts also warn that disinformation is becoming increasingly subtle.
The Chinese government has repeatedly aimed to fundamentally reform the hukou system, which is particularly despised by migrant workers. This strict household registration system, designed to prevent uncontrolled rural-to-urban migration, is now set to be relaxed to some extent: Rural residents will be allowed to officially settle in medium-sized cities, as explained by Frank Sieren. Beijing aims to boost the economy with this move.
However, migrant workers in cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou will still remain without urban rights.
During lunch break, national interests in China take a back seat for a short while. This might sound like satire, but US internet giant Meta has provided empirical evidence for it. The activities of a multitude of fake accounts on Meta’s social networks, like Facebook, regularly decrease significantly when the midday call is sounded in the People’s Republic. Activities then pick up again shortly after hunger has been satisfied. This pattern holds reliably from Monday to Friday.
The eating habits of the operators behind such fake accounts are part of a mosaic that Meta has pieced together since spring 2022 to expose Chinese disinformation campaigns – coined as “Spamouflage” – on its own platforms. According to the company’s latest Adversarial Threat Report published on Tuesday, “Spamouflage” has been the largest and most productive covert online campaign worldwide.
Meta has responded, blocking 8,000 Facebook accounts, 954 pages, 15 groups, and 15 Instagram accounts more than a year before the US presidential elections. The network was also exposed because many comments from different accounts were identical in wording: criticism of the US and other Western governments, downplaying human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, or rumors that the coronavirus had spread from the US to the world instead of originating in Wuhan.
Facebook as a multiplier is, however, just the tip of the iceberg. Meta identified over 50 platforms and forums where the campaigns were spread and often originated. TikTok, Twitter (now X), Reddit and YouTube were flooded, but also entirely apolitical platforms were used, such as Soundcloud, Pinterest, TripAdvisor or the art website Artstation.
The actual impact of such influence campaigns is difficult to gauge. Meta believes its effect is limited since the network largely revolves around itself. The report indicates that a large portion of the over half a million Facebook accounts subscribing to the now blocked pages were from Vietnam, Bangladesh and Brazil, “which we do not believe are the target of this operation”.
Underestimating the influence of such networks, however, would be reckless. “The main risk I see is the potential for authoritarian influence in democratic information spaces,” says Rebecca Arcesati, who researches China’s digital policy at the Berlin-based Merics Institute, to the industry publication Netzpolitik.org.
Since the enactment of the Data Security Law in 2021, the Chinese government not only possesses a powerful lever to access data collected by Chinese companies but, through the mandatory integration of party cells into executive boards, Beijing can also directly influence corporate policies. “Content control is something the Communist Party of China is very interested in. It is the idea of influencing public opinion not only within its own country but also outside,” says Arcesati.
Take TikTok, for example: The globally popular video platform is an important tool for spreading targeted information, as studies have shown, as part of Spamouflage. Through the transferability of TikTok content to Facebook, Instagram or X, these contents theoretically have the potential to spread rapidly around the globe.
The influence of algorithms on a user’s political stance can be individually underestimated. While unsuspecting youngsters, as well as adults, consume vast amounts of content approved by the authorities of the People’s Republic, they are not necessarily aware that they may be subtly but consistently manipulated.
“I am just using the apps for lifestyle inspiration … I certainly can’t be influenced [about politics],” explains a 16-year-old from Taiwan in an interview with The Guardian, which examined China’s influence on the youth of the island nation.
Yet, political influence from the Chinese government does not always come in the form of clear statements but through subtle messages conveyed within a larger context. “In my opinion, we should be concerned about algorithmic manipulations and about how TikTok might prioritize content sponsored by the Chinese government,” said Merics analyst Arcesati to Netzpolitik.org.
However, as the Meta report shows, TikTok is just one cog in the machinery. “The pattern of spreading the same article across many different platforms and accounts gave Spamouflage a significant level of resilience, as it requires actions from many different platforms to permanently delete their articles.”
As early as the 14th Five-Year Plan in 2021, China announced relaxations of the hukou system. The household registration system has divided people along urban-rural lines for decades, determining their access to social benefits, education and services. Changes to these restrictions are now expected primarily in small and medium-sized cities. Beijing hopes this will also give a boost to economic growth.
In cities with a population between three and five million residents, the rules would be “completely relaxed,” announced Yuan Xiguo, a spokesperson for the Ministry of State Security. For cities with fewer than three million residents, which are naturally many more, the rules will be “comprehensively eased” for the first time. Additionally, the points system for obtaining hukou in mega-cities will be improved, and migration quotas will be increased.
He Wenlin, the ministry’s deputy head of research, said the changes were designed to promote the “free movement” of people, vehicles, information and data. How these new regulations will impact internal migration remains to be seen. The government hopes that these relaxations will help revive China’s struggling economic growth. Therefore, it is likely that Beijing will instruct provinces to quickly implement the regulations.
The relaxations mainly involve making it easier to obtain residential permits within the permanent residence control system in small cities. Social benefits, including the entitlement of children to attend school for free, are tied to this hukou.
For a long time, parents could work in a big city if they found a job, but their children had to stay with grandparents at home because they couldn’t get a hukou school place in the metropolis when migrant quotas in the cities were exhausted. Similarly, for medical treatments, migrant workers had to return to their village or small town, which was particularly harsh as healthcare provision there is generally much poorer.
The influx into cities has been unbroken in recent years. In 2020, the People’s Republic counted around 376 million internal migrants, almost 27 percent of the country’s population of over 1.4 billion.
This number had more than doubled compared to 2010 (around 154 million). “Hardly anyone expected such a strong increase,” says Bettina Gransow, a professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Free University of Berlin. Most migrants want to go to mega-cities in the affluent coastal regions. The government still wants to prevent this. It fears that the cities will be overwhelmed by the influx.
In cities, household incomes are 2.5 times higher. On average, one earns 250 percent more and often still has money left despite higher living costs. This is enticing. However, the government aims to prevent more people from streaming into the cities without regulation. “The extent of migration within China is greater than that of global cross-border migration movements,” Gransow points out.
Zhejiang, one of the affluent coastal provinces south of Shanghai with nearly 60 million inhabitants, has already taken the lead in early August. It lifted restrictions across the province, except for the city of Hangzhou, which is home to over ten million people. Alibaba’s headquarters, the Chinese Amazon, with a turnover of 126 billion dollars last year, is located there.
Geely, one of China’s leading car manufacturers, also has its headquarters there. Geely owns Volvo and is involved with Daimler. In Hangzhou and other cities in Zhejiang, the points system will now be improved to make it easier for top talents to obtain a hukou there.
Rules are also being relaxed in the Greater Bay Area around Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau to facilitate more efficient growth for one of the world’s most important boom regions. “That’s a good thing,” says Michael Pettis, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace based in Beijing. Some had feared that given China’s economic weakness, the government would tighten hukou rules. In this light, the relaxation is a “reason to be optimistic”.
China’s aggregate demand has weakened significantly over the past three years. In addition to the enduring effects of China’s anti-COVID policy, the country has also been weighed down by the decrease in global demand. Exports fell by 14.5 percent year on year in July, a stark contrast from the robust 17.2 percent export growth recorded in July 2022. Given these downturn pressures, the government’s reluctance to announce a massive stimulus package, as many had anticipated, has left foreign and Chinese observers deeply perplexed.
While China’s leaders are certainly aware of the ongoing economic slowdown, they may be estimating that the risk of a bailout is worse than the risk of inaction. Or perhaps they have more confidence in the domestic economy’s resilience against a global recession and believe that the economy will recover quickly on its own.
Regardless, China seems to have chosen not to take further action. In fact, China currently faces significant roadblocks to any additional economic intervention. After all, the accumulation of massive debts, particularly among local governments, has left China with limited room for maneuver. Moreover, the external environment has become increasingly unfavorable to China since at least 2018, presenting challenges unlike any it has faced over the past 40 years.
Consequently, China has adopted an increasingly cautious approach to macroeconomic management. Monetary policy is an interesting case in point. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, for example, the US Federal Reserve immediately cut interest rates to near zero. By contrast, the People’s Bank of China lowered interest rates by only 0.2 percentage points. Similarly, while the Fed has raised interest rates rapidly in response to surging inflation, hiking rates by five percentage points since March 2022, the PBOC has pursued a series of modest rate cuts to accommodate GDP growth and reduced demand.
This approach is also the main reason why China has avoided runaway inflation over the past two years. This was made clear in an April speech by former PBOC Governor Yi Gang during his visit to the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. During his speech, Yi highlighted the PBOC’s adherence to the so-called “attenuation principle,” which suggests that central bankers should refrain from taking drastic actions under uncertain circumstances. While this well-known concept was first introduced by Yale economist William Brainard in 1967, Yi’s speech offered valuable insights into the shift in China’s economic-policy thinking in recent years.
In theory, a more conservative monetary policy could better align short-term measures and long-term goals. To this end, central banks should set real interest rates as close as possible to the potential growth rate of output. Nobel laureate economist Edmund S. Phelps‘s pioneering work on the golden rule savings rate illustrates the benefits of this approach.
To the extent that Yi’s speech reflects current ways of thinking and changed policy style among China’s top policymakers, it helps explain why China’s economy has become less volatile in recent years. With the scaling back of countercyclical policies, China has managed to sustain growth even without a demand surge. This may align with the government’s development plan, which aims to minimize the huge costs associated with achieving unbalanced growth, such as the rapid pile-up of short-term financial risks.
Indeed, China’s move away from aggressive macroeconomic policy could be attributed to the leadership’s recognition of the threat posed by the country having reached a critical threshold of systemic financial risk a few years ago. Given the nature of the Chinese political system, such risks would be deemed to pose an unacceptable threat to social and political stability.
As a result, China launched a comprehensive “de-risking” effort in 2016. Policymakers adopted de-risking as a guiding principle, shifting from aggressive macroeconomic policies to a more prudent approach. To mitigate risk and address the excessive financialization of the real economy, China initiated a wave of deleveraging and targeted financial interventions, cracking down on the asset-management industry and triggering a correction in the heavily leveraged financial and real-estate sectors.
Risks and uncertainties increasingly stem from external pressures as well. Two decades ago, when the Chinese economy was relatively small and had a fixed exchange rate, its domestic policy was largely insulated from external influences. But the Chinese economy has become too large and its relations with the world’s economies have changed dramatically, prompting China to adopt a more cautious approach in response to uncertainty. The PBOC, for example, must now closely monitor shifts in the US-China interest-rate differential and assess the potential impact on China’s capital markets and the renminbi exchange rate.
Having said that, China’s move away from aggressive macroeconomic policy should not come as a surprise. De-risking policies might have proved effective in preventing a financial or debt crisis, but the pandemic and subsequent COVID-19 policies have hampered the economy’s capacity to rebalance and rebound, resulting in further demand reduction.
Bringing aggregate demand back to pre-pandemic levels is crucial for accelerating China’s economic recovery. To this end, China’s fiscal and monetary policies can be more proactive, given that de-risking policies have remained in place for so long. While policymakers face a delicate balancing act, the growing risk of a protracted downturn underscores the need to find more effective solutions to the pressing challenges facing the Chinese economy.
But China could still do more to rebalance its economy. By committing to carrying out structural reforms, removing barriers to entry, and opening up sectors that are currently closed to foreign competition – such as education, training, consulting, and health care – China could create numerous market opportunities for the private sector and move closer to achieving long-term economic stability.
China and other East Asian countries observed the Hungry Ghost Festival on Wednesday. The Zhongyuan Festival (中元节) is a festival of forgiveness commemorating ancestors and their wandering spirits. It falls on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, which coincides with the day of the full moon.
Chinese efforts in spreading disinformation and fake news on Western social media platforms have typically been characterized by their shallowness. Videos of dancing minorities or praise for Xi Jinping in comment sections are often easily identifiable as agenda-driven. However, this doesn’t make these campaigns any less dangerous. Not every user is aware of the propaganda interests originating from Beijing.
Meta has now blocked thousands of accounts belonging to a disinformation network from China on its platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The accounts from this network typically praised China and specifically the Xinjiang province in their posts while also criticizing the USA, Western foreign policies and government critics, as Marcel Grzanna reports. Yet, Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg in this “Spamouflage”. Experts also warn that disinformation is becoming increasingly subtle.
The Chinese government has repeatedly aimed to fundamentally reform the hukou system, which is particularly despised by migrant workers. This strict household registration system, designed to prevent uncontrolled rural-to-urban migration, is now set to be relaxed to some extent: Rural residents will be allowed to officially settle in medium-sized cities, as explained by Frank Sieren. Beijing aims to boost the economy with this move.
However, migrant workers in cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou will still remain without urban rights.
During lunch break, national interests in China take a back seat for a short while. This might sound like satire, but US internet giant Meta has provided empirical evidence for it. The activities of a multitude of fake accounts on Meta’s social networks, like Facebook, regularly decrease significantly when the midday call is sounded in the People’s Republic. Activities then pick up again shortly after hunger has been satisfied. This pattern holds reliably from Monday to Friday.
The eating habits of the operators behind such fake accounts are part of a mosaic that Meta has pieced together since spring 2022 to expose Chinese disinformation campaigns – coined as “Spamouflage” – on its own platforms. According to the company’s latest Adversarial Threat Report published on Tuesday, “Spamouflage” has been the largest and most productive covert online campaign worldwide.
Meta has responded, blocking 8,000 Facebook accounts, 954 pages, 15 groups, and 15 Instagram accounts more than a year before the US presidential elections. The network was also exposed because many comments from different accounts were identical in wording: criticism of the US and other Western governments, downplaying human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, or rumors that the coronavirus had spread from the US to the world instead of originating in Wuhan.
Facebook as a multiplier is, however, just the tip of the iceberg. Meta identified over 50 platforms and forums where the campaigns were spread and often originated. TikTok, Twitter (now X), Reddit and YouTube were flooded, but also entirely apolitical platforms were used, such as Soundcloud, Pinterest, TripAdvisor or the art website Artstation.
The actual impact of such influence campaigns is difficult to gauge. Meta believes its effect is limited since the network largely revolves around itself. The report indicates that a large portion of the over half a million Facebook accounts subscribing to the now blocked pages were from Vietnam, Bangladesh and Brazil, “which we do not believe are the target of this operation”.
Underestimating the influence of such networks, however, would be reckless. “The main risk I see is the potential for authoritarian influence in democratic information spaces,” says Rebecca Arcesati, who researches China’s digital policy at the Berlin-based Merics Institute, to the industry publication Netzpolitik.org.
Since the enactment of the Data Security Law in 2021, the Chinese government not only possesses a powerful lever to access data collected by Chinese companies but, through the mandatory integration of party cells into executive boards, Beijing can also directly influence corporate policies. “Content control is something the Communist Party of China is very interested in. It is the idea of influencing public opinion not only within its own country but also outside,” says Arcesati.
Take TikTok, for example: The globally popular video platform is an important tool for spreading targeted information, as studies have shown, as part of Spamouflage. Through the transferability of TikTok content to Facebook, Instagram or X, these contents theoretically have the potential to spread rapidly around the globe.
The influence of algorithms on a user’s political stance can be individually underestimated. While unsuspecting youngsters, as well as adults, consume vast amounts of content approved by the authorities of the People’s Republic, they are not necessarily aware that they may be subtly but consistently manipulated.
“I am just using the apps for lifestyle inspiration … I certainly can’t be influenced [about politics],” explains a 16-year-old from Taiwan in an interview with The Guardian, which examined China’s influence on the youth of the island nation.
Yet, political influence from the Chinese government does not always come in the form of clear statements but through subtle messages conveyed within a larger context. “In my opinion, we should be concerned about algorithmic manipulations and about how TikTok might prioritize content sponsored by the Chinese government,” said Merics analyst Arcesati to Netzpolitik.org.
However, as the Meta report shows, TikTok is just one cog in the machinery. “The pattern of spreading the same article across many different platforms and accounts gave Spamouflage a significant level of resilience, as it requires actions from many different platforms to permanently delete their articles.”
As early as the 14th Five-Year Plan in 2021, China announced relaxations of the hukou system. The household registration system has divided people along urban-rural lines for decades, determining their access to social benefits, education and services. Changes to these restrictions are now expected primarily in small and medium-sized cities. Beijing hopes this will also give a boost to economic growth.
In cities with a population between three and five million residents, the rules would be “completely relaxed,” announced Yuan Xiguo, a spokesperson for the Ministry of State Security. For cities with fewer than three million residents, which are naturally many more, the rules will be “comprehensively eased” for the first time. Additionally, the points system for obtaining hukou in mega-cities will be improved, and migration quotas will be increased.
He Wenlin, the ministry’s deputy head of research, said the changes were designed to promote the “free movement” of people, vehicles, information and data. How these new regulations will impact internal migration remains to be seen. The government hopes that these relaxations will help revive China’s struggling economic growth. Therefore, it is likely that Beijing will instruct provinces to quickly implement the regulations.
The relaxations mainly involve making it easier to obtain residential permits within the permanent residence control system in small cities. Social benefits, including the entitlement of children to attend school for free, are tied to this hukou.
For a long time, parents could work in a big city if they found a job, but their children had to stay with grandparents at home because they couldn’t get a hukou school place in the metropolis when migrant quotas in the cities were exhausted. Similarly, for medical treatments, migrant workers had to return to their village or small town, which was particularly harsh as healthcare provision there is generally much poorer.
The influx into cities has been unbroken in recent years. In 2020, the People’s Republic counted around 376 million internal migrants, almost 27 percent of the country’s population of over 1.4 billion.
This number had more than doubled compared to 2010 (around 154 million). “Hardly anyone expected such a strong increase,” says Bettina Gransow, a professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Free University of Berlin. Most migrants want to go to mega-cities in the affluent coastal regions. The government still wants to prevent this. It fears that the cities will be overwhelmed by the influx.
In cities, household incomes are 2.5 times higher. On average, one earns 250 percent more and often still has money left despite higher living costs. This is enticing. However, the government aims to prevent more people from streaming into the cities without regulation. “The extent of migration within China is greater than that of global cross-border migration movements,” Gransow points out.
Zhejiang, one of the affluent coastal provinces south of Shanghai with nearly 60 million inhabitants, has already taken the lead in early August. It lifted restrictions across the province, except for the city of Hangzhou, which is home to over ten million people. Alibaba’s headquarters, the Chinese Amazon, with a turnover of 126 billion dollars last year, is located there.
Geely, one of China’s leading car manufacturers, also has its headquarters there. Geely owns Volvo and is involved with Daimler. In Hangzhou and other cities in Zhejiang, the points system will now be improved to make it easier for top talents to obtain a hukou there.
Rules are also being relaxed in the Greater Bay Area around Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau to facilitate more efficient growth for one of the world’s most important boom regions. “That’s a good thing,” says Michael Pettis, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace based in Beijing. Some had feared that given China’s economic weakness, the government would tighten hukou rules. In this light, the relaxation is a “reason to be optimistic”.
China’s aggregate demand has weakened significantly over the past three years. In addition to the enduring effects of China’s anti-COVID policy, the country has also been weighed down by the decrease in global demand. Exports fell by 14.5 percent year on year in July, a stark contrast from the robust 17.2 percent export growth recorded in July 2022. Given these downturn pressures, the government’s reluctance to announce a massive stimulus package, as many had anticipated, has left foreign and Chinese observers deeply perplexed.
While China’s leaders are certainly aware of the ongoing economic slowdown, they may be estimating that the risk of a bailout is worse than the risk of inaction. Or perhaps they have more confidence in the domestic economy’s resilience against a global recession and believe that the economy will recover quickly on its own.
Regardless, China seems to have chosen not to take further action. In fact, China currently faces significant roadblocks to any additional economic intervention. After all, the accumulation of massive debts, particularly among local governments, has left China with limited room for maneuver. Moreover, the external environment has become increasingly unfavorable to China since at least 2018, presenting challenges unlike any it has faced over the past 40 years.
Consequently, China has adopted an increasingly cautious approach to macroeconomic management. Monetary policy is an interesting case in point. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, for example, the US Federal Reserve immediately cut interest rates to near zero. By contrast, the People’s Bank of China lowered interest rates by only 0.2 percentage points. Similarly, while the Fed has raised interest rates rapidly in response to surging inflation, hiking rates by five percentage points since March 2022, the PBOC has pursued a series of modest rate cuts to accommodate GDP growth and reduced demand.
This approach is also the main reason why China has avoided runaway inflation over the past two years. This was made clear in an April speech by former PBOC Governor Yi Gang during his visit to the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. During his speech, Yi highlighted the PBOC’s adherence to the so-called “attenuation principle,” which suggests that central bankers should refrain from taking drastic actions under uncertain circumstances. While this well-known concept was first introduced by Yale economist William Brainard in 1967, Yi’s speech offered valuable insights into the shift in China’s economic-policy thinking in recent years.
In theory, a more conservative monetary policy could better align short-term measures and long-term goals. To this end, central banks should set real interest rates as close as possible to the potential growth rate of output. Nobel laureate economist Edmund S. Phelps‘s pioneering work on the golden rule savings rate illustrates the benefits of this approach.
To the extent that Yi’s speech reflects current ways of thinking and changed policy style among China’s top policymakers, it helps explain why China’s economy has become less volatile in recent years. With the scaling back of countercyclical policies, China has managed to sustain growth even without a demand surge. This may align with the government’s development plan, which aims to minimize the huge costs associated with achieving unbalanced growth, such as the rapid pile-up of short-term financial risks.
Indeed, China’s move away from aggressive macroeconomic policy could be attributed to the leadership’s recognition of the threat posed by the country having reached a critical threshold of systemic financial risk a few years ago. Given the nature of the Chinese political system, such risks would be deemed to pose an unacceptable threat to social and political stability.
As a result, China launched a comprehensive “de-risking” effort in 2016. Policymakers adopted de-risking as a guiding principle, shifting from aggressive macroeconomic policies to a more prudent approach. To mitigate risk and address the excessive financialization of the real economy, China initiated a wave of deleveraging and targeted financial interventions, cracking down on the asset-management industry and triggering a correction in the heavily leveraged financial and real-estate sectors.
Risks and uncertainties increasingly stem from external pressures as well. Two decades ago, when the Chinese economy was relatively small and had a fixed exchange rate, its domestic policy was largely insulated from external influences. But the Chinese economy has become too large and its relations with the world’s economies have changed dramatically, prompting China to adopt a more cautious approach in response to uncertainty. The PBOC, for example, must now closely monitor shifts in the US-China interest-rate differential and assess the potential impact on China’s capital markets and the renminbi exchange rate.
Having said that, China’s move away from aggressive macroeconomic policy should not come as a surprise. De-risking policies might have proved effective in preventing a financial or debt crisis, but the pandemic and subsequent COVID-19 policies have hampered the economy’s capacity to rebalance and rebound, resulting in further demand reduction.
Bringing aggregate demand back to pre-pandemic levels is crucial for accelerating China’s economic recovery. To this end, China’s fiscal and monetary policies can be more proactive, given that de-risking policies have remained in place for so long. While policymakers face a delicate balancing act, the growing risk of a protracted downturn underscores the need to find more effective solutions to the pressing challenges facing the Chinese economy.
But China could still do more to rebalance its economy. By committing to carrying out structural reforms, removing barriers to entry, and opening up sectors that are currently closed to foreign competition – such as education, training, consulting, and health care – China could create numerous market opportunities for the private sector and move closer to achieving long-term economic stability.
China and other East Asian countries observed the Hungry Ghost Festival on Wednesday. The Zhongyuan Festival (中元节) is a festival of forgiveness commemorating ancestors and their wandering spirits. It falls on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, which coincides with the day of the full moon.
