ART OF WAR
John Zongmin Chow & Kuek Ser Kuang Keng
The rebels. The jokers. The underprivileged. And the Big Brother. A close inspection on the Weibo sensitive words not only provides valuable insights into China’s Internet censorship apparatus, it tells the story of an enduring war between the Chinese government and the country’s vibrant Internet community.
Highly proactive and responsive censorship
The analysis shows almost half of the 494 entries are related to Chinese politicians or political events, followed by those related to scandal/corruption and freedom of speech. A detailed examination of each entry found that the censorship in China is highly responsive to political and social issues, as well as public discourse. Related words, phrases or politician names became temporarily unsearchable on Weibo shortly after a scandal broke out, a political event happened, and/or when something or someone was actively discussed by Internet users that may have potential impacts on the regime. The censorship was used as a tool to 'blackout' information, muzzle public opinion, and contain the impacts of issues potentially harmful to the regime.
For instance, the names of Public Security Vice Minister Li Dongsheng, former Central Political and Legislative Committee Secretary Zhou Yongkang, and former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai were blocked respectively when they were investigated for corruption. Not only their names, alternative phrases referring to them were also censored such as English word ‘kang’ or even ‘Kang Shifu’ (康师傅) (Master Kong in English, a popular instant noodle brand in China).
During the power transition between China President Xi Jinping and his predecessor Hu Jintao in March, the phrase containing both surnames ‘Xi Hu’ (习胡) was among the blocked phrases.
Tool to protect the powerful
A glance through the entries related to politicians, which make up 28% of the total entries, proves that the censorship attempted to protect the powerful, especially those from the highest echelon, from public criticism, satire and even gossip about their personal life. We found that out of the 136 entries related to a total of 30 politicians, China President Xi Jinping, who rose to the pinnacle of power in March 2013, tops the list with 92 entries or 42%.
One would be surprised by the extent of the censorship. During the celebration of the 100th birth anniversary of Xi Jinping’s late father Xi Zhongxun in October, names of the family members of the elder Xi, as well as the phrase of ‘Xi Zhongxun + son’ (习仲勋＋儿子) became unsearchable.
When China’s first lady Peng Liyuan was photographed in June snapping a picture using an iPhone, phrases such as ‘Peng + cell phone’ (彭＋手机), ‘Peng + Apple’ (彭＋苹果), ‘First Lady + Apple’ (第一夫人＋苹果), ‘First Lady + iPhone’ (第一夫人＋iPhone), ‘Mrs. Xi + cell phone’ (习夫人＋手机) and her name in English ‘Peng + Liyuan’ were on the censor list. It was probably because the photograph triggered a heated discussion among Chinese netizens after China’s state media CCTV and the People’s Daily criticized Apple for its poor customer service.
Most sensitive words are neutral
Another analysis on the tone of the censored phrases indicates that 75% of them are actually neutral words. The same trend is evident in entries related to scandal/corruption and politician which could have invited more nasty words. This reveals a better-safe-than-sorry censorship approach that does not take any risk.
For example, English words ‘tank’ and ‘anniversary’, and Chinese words ‘candle’ (蜡烛), ‘today’ (今天), ‘tomorrow’ (明天), ‘that year’ (那年) and ‘that day’ (那天) were blocked during the 24th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest. ‘Helicopter’ (直升机) became unsearchable in early May simply because the police deployed a helicopter to monitor a protest rally demanding transparent investigation on the mysterious death of Anhui migrant Yuan Liya.
‘Yi Fan Feng Shun’ (一帆风顺, literally means ‘may the wind fill your sails’ in English), a popular Chinese greeting phrase was blocked in April after a news story claimed that Xi Jinping gave a note written with the phrase to a cab driver after he took the cab like an ordinary citizen.
‘Smart’ surveillance
In order to circumvent the censorship, users tried to use suggestive alternative words such as rhymes, similar characters, symbolic characters and nicknames to refer to certain issues or individuals when posting their Weibo tweets, but our examination on the censored words proves that such attempts were futile. We believe the authority does not only use computer algorithms, but has put in enormous manpower to monitor tweets in Weibo around the clock, and actively update the censor list once they identify those alternative words.
The effectiveness and extensiveness of the surveillance is evident during the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protest. The protest was popularly known as ‘six four incident’ in Chinese as it happened on June 4th, 1989. Users tried to avoid censorship with many creative words including ‘35’ (May 35th), ‘63+1’, ‘65-1’, ‘89’ (year 1989), ‘viiv’ (64 in Roman numeral) and ‘square of eight’ (八的平方), but all had failed. Even the English word ‘June’ was blocked.
Censorship the mother of creativity
A silver lining behind the seemingly overwhelming censorship on Weibo, is that it actually ignites the use of creativity and subterfuge in mocking current events and politicians involved. A significant number of the examined sensitive words are satire, nicknames and rhymes, offering an interesting view of how netizens discuss hot topics with their sense of humor as well as some hope to dodge the censorship.
During the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protest in June, netizens created a meme combining Associated Press’ 1989 photograph of the ‘Tank Man’ and the photograph of ‘giant rubber duck’, an art installation in Hong Kong's Victoria harbour. Shortly after it emerged on Weibo, the term ‘yellow duck’ (黄鸭) became unsearchable.
Another phrase coined by the netizens is ‘Xi the Dream Ripper’ (习梦撕), which is a homophone in the Chinese language of ‘Simmons mattresses’ (席梦思), following China President Xi Jinping’s speeches promoting his new governing slogan of ‘Chinese Dream’.
Among the many censored nicknames created for politicians, ‘movie star’ (影帝) is used to refer to the retired China Premier Wen Jiaobao due to his phony reactions to previous incidents including the Wenzhou train collision and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
Methodology
Unsearchable words: This screenshot from Weibo search engine returned a message that read "According to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results of 'political inside story' cannot be displayed." when user searched for the phrase “political inside story”.
Our data come from a crowdsourcing project by China Digital Times (CDT), a news website founded by Xiao Qiang, Adjunct Professor at University of California at Berkeley. Focusing on Internet censorship in China, CDT asks netizens to submit 'sensitive words' censored by Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent with 503 million users. ‘Sensitive words’ are words of which the search results are banned on the micro-blogging website. CDT then verifies them before posting to its online open database which is updated weekly.
It should be noted that this data is not exhaustive as the words are merely those found and submitted by the netizens at different periods of time. We believe there are many more other words censored by the authority.
We analyzed CDT's data collected from January to December 2013. There is a total of 494 entries submitted by netizens and verified by CDT. Metadata is then added to each entry:
1. Category: We studied each entry to figure out the reason behind the censorship and classified them into different categories - scandal and corruption, freedom of speech, politician, political event, dissident, protest, public issue, incident, and unknown.
2. Cities where the issues related to the words took place.
3. Politicians mentioned or suggested by the entries.
4. Tone of each entry whether it is negative/criticizing, neutral or obscene.
