Showing posts tagged censorship

Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter (And Why)

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here on this blog yet, but I’m excited to announce that a book I wrote is coming out this summer. (Above is an advance reader’s copy that my publisher The New Press shared.) It’s basically a version of this blog, also aimed at giving general readers the context for why certain topics in China are sensitive. There are over 150 entries, about a 100 of which are brand new, and the others which come from this blog are updated. You can pre-order online now at your favorite online store or you can pick it up at your local bookstore in August. As we get closer to the publication date, I’ll start posting entries from the book more regularly. Thanks to everyone for their support of this project over the past year: couldn’t have done it without you Tumblr and everyone else who follows this blog!



Weibo censors delete post of masked Mao portrait criticizing Beijing air pollution

Apparently the censors at Weibo are still quite touchy about the recent “airpocalypse” in Beijing, when the U.S. embassy’s air quality monitor seemed to go off the deep end and reported record high levels of pollution in the city back in January. The above image was found in the latest roundup at FreeWeibo, which relies in part on data from Weiboscope, a University of Hong Kong tool that checks popular Weibo feeds to see what posts have gone missing (that is, deleted/censored). Weibo posts with these images have gone missing on a number of feeds (1, 2, 3). Apparently the combination of Mao + criticism of Beijing’s air quality are a no go.

Translations:

  1. Look at these two clever pictures! Haha. (看到两张神图！[哈哈])
  2. Just as the great leader said: The people, only the people, are the driving force in the creation of world history. Netizens are truly gifted! So creative. (【正如伟大领袖所言：人民，只有人民，才是创造世界历史的动力！网民太有才了！太有创意了！】)
  3.  [Pitiful emoticon] [可怜]

Update 3/11: An anonymous tipster writes in to remind that The Economist ran a cover during the 2003 SARS crisis with Mao wearing a surgical mask. He notes that “the China chief was called in to the responsible party official, and told that ‘the highest levels’ of government were very displeased. Turns out it wasn’t because of the surgical mask, but because The Economist was using Mao to represent China.”



Wen Jiabao (“温家宝”) unable to be posted on Weibo; error message returned

I’m not certain when this began, but as of right now, you can’t post any message on Weibo with Wen Jiabao’s name (“温家宝”). Doing so returns the following message (full size image):

抱歉，此内容违反了《新浪微博社区管理规定(试行)》或相关法规政策，无法进行指定操作。如需帮助，请联系客服。

Rough translation: Sorry, this content violates “Sina Weibo’s Community Administrative Rules” or other related regulatory policies, and we’re unable to execute the intended action. If you need assistance, please contact customer service.

FreeWeibo shows posts containing Wen Jiabao still being deleted today. Searches for Wen’s name have been blocked continuously for some time now (he was unblocked briefly during the Party Congress and for the ten days after), but being unable to post his name at all is another more extreme step. Attempting to post “彭博社” (Bloomberg) also returns the same error message. By comparison, I checked several hundred other sensitive politician’s names in the past week and no one else had this form of censorship. Can folks confirm that they are unable to post 温家宝 on their end as well?



<宪法法院 (constitutional court) blocked during Southern Weekend controversy>

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宪法法院 (constitutional court / xiànfǎ fǎyuàn) is the court charged with adjudicating cases that concern the constitution. In some countries, it is distinct from a supreme court, which is the highest court in a country and the court of last resort for non-constitutional cases. In the United States, the Supreme Court does both tasks. China’s Supreme People’s Court serves in the model of a supreme court and does not currently have the power of constitutional review. 

Why it is blocked: The power of the courts is a controversial issue in China. The modern Chinese court system is often a less–than-independent entity and there is no separation of powers between the courts and the state to prevent the state from abusing its authority. In recent years under Xiao Yang, the president of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) from 1998-2008, a number of reforms held promise. In 2001, the Supreme People’s Court agreed to rule on a case and decided that a student, Qi Yuling, should be awarded damages after another student stole her identity and test scores to attend college. But what made the case more interesting was not just the decision, but the argument: the Court premised their ruling on the Chinese Constitution, arguing that according to the document, Qi had the right to an education, the first time the Court had asserted its ability to oversee the Constitution. As the case was decidedly non-political, legal scholars saw this as a gradual introduction of constitutional review into the Chinese legal system. However, those hopes were temporarily dashed after the Communist Party re-asserted its power over the courts and issued a doctrine known as the Three Supremes: “In their work, the grand judges and grand procurators shall always regard as supreme the party’s cause, the people’s interest and the constitution and laws.” It held that judges must consider political ramifications and social stability in addition to the law. In 2008, Wang Shengjun, who does not have a law background, was appointed as the new President of the Supreme People’s Court, and in 2009, the landmark Qi Yuling ruling was withdrawn, an indication that the SPC was stepping away from making constitutional judgments.   

The question of what role the courts should play and the importance of upholding China’s constitution exploded at the beginning of January 2013 when the highly-respected Southern Weekend (also known in English as Southern Weekly) magazine’s editors objected to the severe editing (cough, censorship) of their annual New Year’s editorial. The editorial, which concerned the need for improved constitutional rule, was replaced by a paean to the Communist Party. Southern Weekend editors and staffers went on strike and the drama—which involved public demonstrations by citizens, coded messages of support from media outlets and companies fed up with censorship, a teary-eyed refusal to print an editorial attacking Southern Weekend by its sister magazine, and even calls of solidarity from glamorous celebrities—served as an inauspicious start to the Xi Jinping era. Eventually a truce was struck: Southern Weekend staffers returned to their offices while several officials either lost or will lose their jobs (reportedly including the despised Guangdong propaganda chief who started the tempest, Tuo Zhen).

My records show the term has been blocked for over a year, and thus has been sensitive for some time. However, according to GreatFire.org, it was unblocked in November 2012, before becoming re-blocked some time in late-December—around the start of the Southern Weekend controversy.

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Perhaps the block is coincidental, but depending on when exactly the block of 宪法法院 took place, one could make a credible case that it is related to the event.

See also 宪政民主 (constitutional democracy / xiànzhèng mínzhǔ).



<Who in Wen Jiabao’s family is blocked on Weibo>

Note: 0 is the new blocked (results below are from Sina Weibo, Nov 4, 2012)

温家宝 (Wen Jiabao): 0 results
张蓓莉 (Zhang Beili, wife): 0 results
杨志云 (Yang Zhiyun, mother): 0 results
温家宏 (Wen Jiahong, younger brother): 0 results
温云松 (Wen Yunsong, son): 0 results
杨小萌 (Yang Xiaomeng, daughter-in-law): unblocked
温如春 (Yun Ruchun, granddaughter): unblocked
劉春航 (Liu Chunhang, granddaughter’s husband): unblocked
张建明 (Zhang Jianming, brother-in-law): unblocked
张剑鹍 (Zhang Jiankun, brother-in-law): 0 results
于剑鸣 (Yu Jianming, Wen Yunsong’s classmate and business partner): 0 results
段伟红 (Duan Weihong, investor): 0 results
郑裕彤 (Chen Yu-tong, investor): unblocked
李嘉诚 (Li Ka-shing, investor): unblocked

image source: NY Times, The Wen Family Empire



<All sensitive terms on Sina Weibo now show 0 results>

As of the beginning of this month, Sina Weibo has made a number of changes to the way they handle their censorship of search results. I’ve previously tweeted about a rising number of searches that are “partially blocked” rather than blocked wholesale with the typical “According to relevant laws, search results are not displayed” message.

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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.



卫星电视 (satellite television / wèixīng diànshì) is TV programming broadcasted by a communications satellite orbiting the earth and received by households via an outdoor antenna, generally known as a satellite dish.

Why it is blocked: This is another fairly obscure word to be blocked (searching for 卫星电 returns 87 results, 5 of which are for 卫星电视), but at least there’s a reason. Installation of satellite TV dishes is regulated in China, with private ownership of them illegal in a number of cities (compelling some citizens to creatively conceal and hide theirs), though workplaces which need to monitor foreign news and establishments that cater to foreigners are allowed them. Satellite dishes were banned in China by Li Peng in 1993, supposedly in response to Rupert Murdoch’s declaration that satellite television would be “an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.” (His company, STAR TV, would spend more than a decade trying to make up for that speech.) However, those restrictions are openly flouted by residents and marketers. Besides China’s desire to control overseas content entering the country, it’s reported that satellite programming is hampering the government’s efforts to transition cities to digital television (satellite TV service is earmarked for hard to reach rural villages).

Note: Satellite dishes themselves are more colloquially referred to as woks/pots (锅 / guō) or plates/dishes (碟 / dié). The more standard word for satellite dish is 卫星天线 (天线 / tiānxiàn literally means “sky wire/line,” aka antenna). 卫星天线 and 卫星碟 are not blocked on Weibo, but 卫星锅 is. [Status]



无界网络 (Ultrasurf / Wujie wangluo) is a free Internet censorship circumvention tool. Ultrasurf was originally designed to enable internet users in China to safely bypass China’s Golden shield, but now has as many as eleven million users worldwide.

Why it is blocked: Besides the fact that the software punches a hole through China’s noted Great Firewall, it is also a product designed by the Falun Gong and funded by the U.S. government.

Note 1: Searching for the phrase “无界网络” is not only blocked on Weibo, but it will also cause your connection to the site to break, the only such phrase discovered thus far to cause such an action (searching for blogspot.com on Baidu does something similar). A user is locked out of Weibo for several minutes before they are allowed to reconnect.

Note 2: There have been allegations that Ultrasurf is possibly malware, or at the very least exhibits behavior that appears suspicious, a claim that is difficult to dispel because the source code has not been released (in order to prevent Chinese analysis), though others vigorously defend the software. As mentioned, recently it has been funded in part by the U.S. government and the Berkman Center at Harvard lauded its performance in 2007 (2010 report).



蒋彦永 (Jiang Yanyong) is a Chinese physician from Beijing who publicized a coverup of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in China in 2003. Jiang was the chief physician of the 301* Military Hospital in Beijing.

Why it is blocked: The CCP had imposed a media blackout on SARS reporting since the first reported cases in late 2002. Jiang’s decision in April 2003 to email revelations about the severity of the crisis to the media and the subsequent leaking of the memo to Time caused him to be detained by the state. He re-entered the spotlight in 2009 when he submitted a letter to Hu Jintao demanding an apology as well as a re-examination of the 1989 Tian’anmen crackdown.

*301 in Chinese characters (三〇一) is also blocked. However, “301” and “三零一” (with the alternative Chinese method for writing the digit “0”) are unblocked.



<Admonishment to search more “mainstream” topics disappears from Weibo>

Not sure when it happened, but the familiar warning that one received for searching a blocked word has been amended. Now instead of getting both the line about relevant rules and regulations preventing your results from being shown (根据相关法律法规和政策，“BLOCKED WORD”搜索结果未予显示) and the line about suggesting you search more “mainstream” words, only the first part is displayed, which is a shame because the second half always made me chuckle a bit.

And in case you’re wondering who wrote up these stilted lines, it seems to be a rather conventional response. Baidu uses similar wording in its apology message (“some search results were not shown” [根据相关法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示] as opposed to the more emphatic “XXX is not shown” on Weibo). One could assume that somebody from on high suggested or mandated the wording and it has stuck ever since as the proper way to respond to any blocked searches. Or perhaps there is an actual law/reguation on the books regarding this? Do let me know if you’re familiar with it.