The traditional media [in China] is still heavily controlled by the government; social media offers an opening to let the steam out a little bit. But because you don’t have many other openings, the heat coming out of this opening is sometimes very strong, active and even violent.

Yang Lan contrasts China’s tightly regulated “traditional” media with the comparatively more porous space of social media. Her “steam” metaphor frames online platforms as a pressure valve: limited avenues for public expression mean grievances and emotions accumulate, and when a partial outlet exists, releases can be sudden and intense. The remark also implies a structural critique: volatility online is not merely a product of users’ temperament but of constrained civic channels—weak institutional mechanisms for complaint, debate, and accountability. In this reading, online “violence” is a symptom of bottlenecked expression, and greater openness across media and public life would diffuse pressure more evenly.