Blocked on Weibo

自由花 (“The Flower of Freedom” / “Zìyóuhuā”) is a Cantonese song written by Hong Kong lyricist Thomas Chow to commemorate the victims of June 4, 1989. He set the lyrics to the popular Taiwanese song “Sailor” by Zheng Zhihua.

Why it is blocked: It is sung every year by those who attend the June 4 vigil at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park (see page 50). From the chorus:

But there is a dream, it will not die, remember it!
No matter how hard the rain falls, freedom still will bloom.
There is a dream, it will not die, remember this!

It may also be sensitive because it is a homophone for liberalization (自由化 / zìyóuhuà), an economic and social policy contested within the Communist Party (read Yuezhi Zhao’s “Challenging Neoliberalism?” in Communication in China for more about the New Western Hills Meeting controversy).

快闪党 (flash mob / kuài shǎn dǎng) is a “public gathering of complete strangers, organized via the Internet or mobile phone, who perform a pointless act and then disperse again.” Though the concept has existed in the past, the modern version was popularized by former Harper’s editor Bill Wasik, who organized a series of gatherings throughout New York City in 2003. They were mostly social experiments or a sort of performance art, and soon spread across the globe. This is in contrast to a “smart mob,” which is more directed and typically has a goal, the dîner en blanc phenomenon for instance, where people dress in all white and gather at specified locations for a secret dinner.

Why it is blocked: Even though most flash mobs do nothing more harmful than show off a few Michael Jackson pelvic thrusts, Chinese authorities still fear the idea of large numbers of people organizing in public spaces, perhaps viewing it as training for future political gatherings (the distinction between a flash mob and a protest hinges on the intention, but execution-wise, they are quite similar: see for instance the 散步 / “take a walk” demonstrations). Flash mobs, though often harmless and playful, have caused disorder and even violence in other countries, a situation Chinese authorities no doubt are keen to avert. (Flash mob is currently blocked on Weibo.)

富女 (rich woman / fùnǚ) is a term for a woman with money. [Note: the term was blocked for most of 2012, but has been unblocked since Oct 2012.] It may refer to one who is independently wealthy due to her job, but more typically it is used derogatorily online to criticize the obscene wealth of the wives, mistresses, and daughters of rich businessmen and government officials.

Why it is blocked: The term was blocked because of a June 2011 incident involving a 富女. Twenty-year-old Guo Meimei (郭美美), who listed her job title as commercial general manager of the “China Red Cross Chamber of Commerce,” had been posting for months about her glamorous lifestyle on Weibo, which included photos of her horseback riding, flying in first class, and flaunting her prized possessions: Hermès handbags, an orange Lamborghini, and a white Maserati luxury car. When Internet users discovered her account, investigations and outrage spread throughout Weibo. Eventually, netizens identified Wang Jun, a board member at a company who organized charity drives for the official Red Cross Society of China, as perhaps being Guo’s boyfriend, and he subsequently resigned from his job. (Though some news reports claimed that the luxury cars were actually Wang’s, Guo claimed in a TV interview that Wang had gifted them to her. Further confusion was sown when Guo and her mother claimed that Wang Jun was merely a close family friend and Guo’s “godfather.”)

Chinese Red Cross officials denied any connection with Guo, though they admitted her supposed organization did exist. Netizens demanded a full accounting of where their donations had gone, and the Chinese Red Cross launched an investigation, which turned up improprieties. However, despite the thorough investigation, the Chinese Red Cross’s reputation was already seriously damaged, and donations fell by nearly 60 percent in 2011 compared to the previous year.

The Chinese Red Cross scandal was just one of a series that shook Chinese confidence in charities—which are supposed to be tightly regulated by the government. One of the most notorious occurred in the pre–social media age: in 2001, reporters uncovered vast corruption in the China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF) program Project Hope, which aimed to help impoverished children get an education. In August 2011, another rich female was ensnared in a charity scandal: twenty-four-year-old Lu Xingyu (卢 星宇), the daughter of billionaire Lu Junqin (卢俊卿), was accused of extracting exorbitant management fees of over $20 million from her charity China-Africa Project Hope, another CYDF-affiliated program. Her rambling defense of the charity was lambasted by netizens. And on an individual level, actress Zhang Ziyi was accused of charity fraud and of not fulfilling donations as promised in 2010. In an interview she tearfully admitted to an oversight on her part and donated the balance of what she had pledged.

When Sichuan Province—decimated by a major earthquake in 2008—experienced more deadly tremors in April 2013, Guo Meimei’s name re-entered news stories, with her past corruption serving as a cautionary tale for anyone who sought to donate money to state charities. Chinese Red Cross was mostly shunned while private charities, including online ones run by Internet companies like Sina, flourished. More controversy erupted online when a video of Hong Kong politician Raymond Wong Yuk-man berating officials who sought to donate government money to relief efforts went viral. Wong and his strident criticism of corrupt charities and the mainland government became a trending topic on Weibo, even beating out Iron Man’s much publicized movie opening. It’s very possible that these events—all stemming from a lack of trust in state charities—would not likely have come to pass without Guo Meimei’s “efforts” as a 富女.

宪政民主 (constitutional democracy / xiànzhèng mínzhǔ), closely related to liberal democracy, is generally classified as a government that holds free elections, has a separation of powers between different branches of government, and maintains respect for minority and majority rights, among other principles.

Why it is blocked: Today, China is not a constitutional democracy, though it has attempted to initiate certain reforms in recent years to perhaps move it in that direction–if future party leaders so choose.*  Direct elections take place at certain local levels, and the country’s Supreme Court appeared to be moving towards becoming an autonomous body during the 2000s before its power was curtailed. However, on the whole, any discussion of political reform is strictly suppressed. For instance, when Premier Wen Jiabao made references in a number of 2010 speeches to China’s need to take up more democratic measures,  his own remarks were censored by state media. 

Unlike 宪法法院 (constitutional court / xiànfǎ fǎyuàn), 宪政民主 has not been blocked throughout all of 2012 and does not appear to have been unblocked at any point. It’s “sensitive” nature pre-dates the Southern Weekend controversy.

*Chrystia Freeland reminds us that countries like China and Russia have cleverly exploited their spoken desire for greater freedoms in order to justify their current more illiberal practices—essentially, declaring that they are on the right path but just need more time.

空凳 (empty stool / kōngdèng) is a reference to the empty chair between Thorbjørn Jagland and Kaci Kullmann Five during the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize…

Why it is blocked: …an award that the recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was unable to receive because he was in prison. One of the iconic images of the evening was head of the Nobel Committee Thorbjørn Jagland placing the Nobel medal onto the vacant chair. Hong Kong media and netizens used the phrase to recognize Liu’s situation and accomplishment. China’s most recent Nobel winner, novelist and short story writer Mo Yan for literature, made headlines when he called for the release of Liu.

Coincidentally, the Hong Kong musician, Danny Summer (夏韶聲), the “father of Hong Kong rock-and-roll” (not to be confused with Cui Jian, “the father of Chinese rock”) and writer of the classic Tiananmen Square tribute song “Mama, I Didn’t Do Anything Wrong,” had penned an unrelated ballad to his dead father also entitled 空凳 in 1985.

(空凳 was blocked at the end of 2011 and is now currently unblocked.)

组织者 (organizer / zǔzhīzhě) is a person who organizes. 

Why it is blocked: Like the English definition, 组织者 has a mostly neutral connotation. In Chinese, it can refer to the organizers of a meeting or a conference as well as the organizers of a union, community, or political party. It can even refer to an athlete like Steve Nash or Peyton Manning who organizes teammates around him during a play. Of course, it’s not for sports reasons that “organizer” is blocked: it’s the organizing of labor strikes, independence movements, protests, and democratic reform campaigns that worries authorities.

罢工 (labor strike / bàgōng) is a refusal to work by employees. It is a form of protest aimed at forcing an employer to resolve grievances or to accede to employee demands. 

Why it is blocked: Though striking itself is not technically illegal under Chinese law, the right to strike was removed from the Chinese constitution in 1982 (not that strikes were greatly tolerated before 1982). Therefore, unless a striker breaks other laws in conjunction with the work stoppage (which would probably be nearly unavoidable), he is technically free to do so without facing punishment.  Of course, since the laws do not protect strikes, work stoppages are obviously not encouraged, though there have been times where central authorities have sided with workers in efforts to pressure local officials and employers to resolve unrest.

According to statistical yearbooks, in 2009, there were 684,379 labor disputes, 320,000 of which were officially dealt with in the court system. Workers are also able to take their grievances to their local trade union—but it operates as a mediator and not necessarily on the worker’s behalf. Though there are no official figures for the number of strikes, it’s been estimated that there are roughly 30,000-40,000 each year. Strikes do take place and in recent years some have been well-publicized (for instance a series of strikes in late-2011) and even successful (for example, the strikes in factories which produced Japanese auto parts and at the electronics manufacturer Foxconn in summer 2010) and there have been experiments in southern China with legalizing strikes. However, work stoppages, particularly ones that attempt to involve more than one workplace are strongly and often violently suppressed with beatings by hired thugs, mass arrests, and prosecution of organizers. Domestic media are usually barred from reporting about strikes. (For a great at-a-glance look of strikes that have been reported in recent years, see the the excellent China Strikes crowdsourced map.)

維多利亞 (Victoria / Wéiduōlìyà) is Latin for “conquer” and in Roman mythology she was the goddess of victory, equivalent to the Greek goddess Nike.

Why it is blocked: Could it be the Latin meaning? Or maybe those too sexy Victoria’s Secret models? The shadow of Queen Victoria and colonial emasculation? Or… Posh Spice? No, but rather because of Victoria Park in Hong Kong (searching for 維園, the first character in Victoria along with the word for park, is also blocked). 

Every June 4, Victoria Park is the site of an annual candlelight vigil to observe the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Hundreds of thousands attend each year to hear speeches against one-party democracy, to sing protest songs, and to honor the victims and their families. The park is also used for other demonstrations, including the meeting point for the annual July 1 marches. Of note is the fact that only the traditional characters for Victoria are blocked. Searching for 维多利亚 is unblocked (you’ll see links relating to Victoria, Australia and Victoria’s Secret in the sidebar). As noted, 維園, an abbreviation for Victoria Park, is also blocked in traditional characters, but is unblocked when converted to simplified characters, a clear indication that the block is targeted at Hong Kongers and Victoria Park in Hong Kong.

抵制日货 (Boycott Japanese goods / dǐzhì Rìhuò) and 抵制家乐福 (Boycott Carrefour / dǐzhì Jiālèfú) were two separate grassroots movements in recent years aimed at demonstrating Chinese anger at Japan and the French retailer Carrefour, respectively. Though each took place in different years (For Japan: 2005, 2010, and 2012, among others; Carrefour: 2008) and for different reasons (Japan: continuing resentment over atrocities and occupation of parts of China during Sino-Japanese War, the cleansing of textbooks in 2005, former Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi’s annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, disputes over islands in the South China Sea, among others; Carrefour: in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the Olympic torch relay was interrupted several times across the world by human rights protesters, most egregiously in France when the Chinese Paralympic fencer Jin Jing was tackled in her wheelchair while carrying the torch, and Carrefour, whose supermarkets are common in Chinese cities and reportedly also donated to Free Tibet causes, served as a convenient scapegoat), both were inspired by patriotic verging on ultra-nationalist sentiment that played up China’s role as a country that had been victimized in the past but would no longer be bulled.

Why it is blocked: For each event, anger was expressed virtually as well as with demonstrations and a call to boycott goods. In each case, the central government appeared to support initial protests or made no strong efforts to tamp it down, but as demonstrations grew violent and out of control in each instance, the authorities reacted by reining in the outrage (most recently: ”Weibo calls for Japanese boycott to remain rational”; “China moves to quell anti-Japanese demonstrations”). The existence of a block of “Boycott Japanese goods” on Weibo seems to be a legacy of these previous demonstrations and is not new.

裤袜 (pantyhose, stockings, or tights / kùwà), literally “pants sock” in Chinese, is legwear made of nylon or spandex typically worn by women for fashion or comfort. It was popularized by skirt-wearing women in the U.S. and U.K. who were required by social conventions to not show their bare legs in public or in the office. More about female fashion in the workplace is discussed in this NPR radio piece, which discusses, among other things, the female trouser ban in the U.S. Senate.

Why it is blocked: Probably because although the image search results for 裤袜 in Chinese aren’t as lewd as those for pantyhose in English (beware, NSFW if you have safe search turned off), they still are too sexy for somebody’s taste (no nudity, but still probably NSFW).

维勒 (Friedrich Wöhler or Villar-Perosa machine gun / wéilēi) are two characters often found in phonetic transliterations of Western words and names. For instance, it makes up the last name of the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler (弗里德里希·维勒) as well as part of Colombian golfer Camilo Villegas’ last name (维勒加斯).

Why it is blocked: However, it’s unlikely that the characters are blocked because of either person’s contributions to science or sport (though Villegas was involved in a rather racy—by Chinese standards at least—photo shoot for ESPN Magazine’s ”Body Issue”). More plausibly, it may be because 维勒 represents 维勒·帕洛沙—the Villar-Perosa submachine gun. However, though this would be in keeping with China’s censorship of weapons on Weibo, the Villar-Perosa is almost always referred to by its full name even in Chinese, making it strange to block just 维勒 if the intention was to control references to the weapon (which are few: just two at last count, with one blocked—see the message at the bottom). The gun was never widely used in China or outside of WWI—though innovative, apparently it was a terribly ineffective gun. So the reason for why 维勒 is blocked is obscure.

For fun: The original service manual for how to maintain a Villar-Perosa submachine gun as well as an English promotional brochure for the weapon.

黄雀行动 (Operation Yellowbird / huángquè xíngdòng) was a Hong Kong-based effort initiated after the June 4 crackdown to assist Chinese political dissidents in leaving the mainland. From 1989 to 1997, a group of activists, diplomats, businessmen, and celebrities worked with crime bosses and smugglers to guide over 400 dissidents out of China. The program has been called a Chinese “underground railroad.”

Why it is blocked: Not only does the operation deal with politically sensitive people—Wu’er Kaixi, Chai Ling, and other June 4 student leaders left the country with Yellowbird’s assistance—but it also touches on sovereignty issues as well as the obvious rifts in the Hong Kong-China relationship. Foreign nations and diplomats actively bent laws to allow dissidents to sneak into Hong Kong and then find safe passage out to countries like the U.S. or France. Though China fiercely objected to such interference, The Standard also conjectured that China might have had cause for letting dissidents slip through its fingers: “Apart from the connivance of sympathetic Chinese officials, Yellow Bird’s high rate of success appears to owe something to inertia in the government, which can find it more convenient to let dissidents leave the country than have them remain to cause trouble.” Whether it was a convenient solution or not, Operation Yellowbird highlighted just how differently Hong Kong and China viewed 6-4 and democracy, issues China will have to contend with in the coming years as it continues to try and integrate HK.

翻墙 (over the Great Firewall / fānqiáng) literally means crossing the wall, but is commonly translated as climbing over the Great Firewell—that is evading China’s network of structural, social, and legal controls by which it regulates Internet content.

Why it is blocked: China doesn’t deny that the Internet is tightly controlled in the country—with specific websites like Facebook and Twitter blocked, “immoral” content like pornography restricted, search results filtered, and individual blog posts containing politically sensitive material deleted. In fact, China openly admits and defends its Internet regulations, which are often implemented by private companies as a form of self-censorship at the government’s behest. However, criticizing this system is not acceptable.* A number of tools allow netizens to circumvent the blocks, giving them unfettered access to the Internet. (If you want to climb inside the Great Firewall and experience life as a Chinese Internet user, you can install China Channel, a Firefox add-on.) The U.S. government has been involved with funding some of these tools, including the controversial Falun Gong-designed Ultrasurf.

According to a 2010 survey, most climbers are university students who simply want to use Google search. Other findings show that only a small share of Chinese Internet users bother to use anti-censorship tools and are mostly satisfied with the domestic offerings available to them. However, even these users are often passively involved in anti-censorship measures when they engage in practices like using coded language on social media sites to evade censors.

*Fun fact: Though references to the Great Firewall are blocked on Weibo, Fang Binxing, the vilified architect and grand designer of it, is not. He was forced to close his Weibo account after irate Internet users showered him with abuse. The vitriol for him even extended into real life, with a student throwing a shoe at him and becoming a folk hero for it.

亡国 (conquered nation / wángguó) can be translated as “vanished country” or “a state heading for destruction/downfall.” It’s generally used to describe when an outside power has defeated a nation in war, either wiping it out or causing it to lose its independence. Examples include the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S., the conquering of the First Persian Empire by Alexander the Great, and the subjugation of the Korean Empire by Imperial Japan in 1910. It is also the Chinese title of the somewhat controversial 2005 Japanese action thriller Aegis (Bôkoku no îjisu).

Why it is blocked: Perhaps the term is used by Tibetans or citizens in Xinjiang to describe Chinese control of their provinces? Or maybe netizens use it to insult the future state of China or to describe instances of China appearing to bow to outside/American influences? The term popped up in several news reports related to China’s recent dispute with the Philippines in the South China Seas. However, it is also widely used in an apolitical manner, often to describe something that is extinct or a situation wherein someone is suppressing another.