State Council Information Office: All websites are asked to remove information related to “Jike and Panguso merger” and “Jike and Panguso leaving the search engine market,” and to tell your respective communities [i.e. forums] to clean out [discussion of these topics]. (June 13, 2013)

国新办：请各网站查删“即刻搜索和盘古搜索合并”、“即刻、盘古退出搜索市场”等相关信息，并通知所属社区清理。

Panguso, a state-run search engine, was launched in February 2011, while Jike (pronounced “gee-kuh”) was launched by People’s Daily in June of the same year. Neither have faired well against Baidu and Sogou. Rumors of their merger reached the tech news website Huxiu on June 8; the article has since been removed from the site, but is available from Google’s cache [zh].

Central Propaganda Department: The trial of Chongqing’s Lei Zhengfu will be held June 19, followed by the trial of Zhao Hongxia  on the 20th. Related coverage must use Xinhua wire copy and authoritative information released by the court. Do not sensationalize or elaborate on the trials. (June 18, 2013)

中宣部：重庆雷政富案和赵红霞案分别于6月19日、20日开庭。相关报道采用新华社通稿和法院权威信息，不炒作、不渲染。

Zhao Hongxia secretly recorded a sex session with former Chongqing official Lei Zhengfu in order to blackmail him. Whistleblower Zhu Ruifeng released the video last November, along with other tapes of 11 extorted officials.

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Chongqing, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Internet censorhip, lei zhengfu, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, search engines, Zhao Hongxia, Zhu Ruifeng
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“This is a benchmark in the organisation’s ongoing efforts to engage Chinese-speaking human rights activists and supporters around the world,” Amnesty’s East Asia head Roseann Rife said.

“The importance of distributing more human rights information in the Chinese language reflects China’s growing influence throughout the world,” she said.

The new website will feature translations in simplified Chinese of Amnesty’s reports and annual documents, and a Chinese-language blog. [Source]

Read more on human rights in China via CDT, and click through to Amnesty’s new Chinese site and blog.

© cindyliuwenxin for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amnesty International, Chinese language, human rights activists, internet censorship. blogs
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Yes, what are these books about, generally?

There are three Internet-specific books on the list. Over the years, each of the authors has contributed to my understanding of how the Communist Party manages the Internet, and how effective or not it might be. In the case of Yang Guobin, while he’s clear-eyed about the Party’s abilities to manage the Internet, he still offers a somewhat hopeful interpretation of Chinese activism online. It may not be directly advancing democracy in the Western sense, but it is giving citizens online more democratic-like freedoms and giving them a space, a public forum, where they can develop some of the patterns and habits of democracy. This is something you’ll also find in Johan Lagerkvist’s After the Internet, Before Democracy. Lagerkvist also has a relatively hopeful view. The Internet may not be speeding China towards democratization in the short-term, but he believes that inevitably it will make that transformation easier. He’s extremely cognizant, though, of the technological determinism of the cyber-utopians, this idea that the Internet will just lead to democratization. He rejects that, and tries to offer a different understanding, which is quite helpful. What’s really interesting about Lagerkvist’s work is that he compiles different threads of thought about the Internet, and there are many. This list of books – even just the three that are specifically related to the Internet – are just a fraction of the amount of ink that’s been spilled over the Chinese Internet…

And ultimately it’s about whether the Internet in China will lead to democracy or whether it could be a more sinister force, leading to, say, some sort of nationalist autocracy? Is that the key question?

Yes, and it fits into the larger question of “Whither China?” and “Whither the Chinese Communist Party?” which is the big question that everybody asks themselves when they come here, especially to cover it as a story, as journalists do. That’s why I’ve got Anne-Marie Brady’s book on my list as well, Marketing Dictatorship. She focuses on the Party-state’s ability to adapt after Tiananmen in 1989, and focus its efforts in propaganda to reinforce certain concepts that it wants to spread and have be absorbed by the public. These include not only embracing the market economy, but also embracing one-party rule, the need for social stability, nationalism, and, selectively, anti-foreign sentiment. [Source]

Read more interviews about China from the Five Books series, via CDT.

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Post tags: Internet censorship, Internet development, propaganda, weibo
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Li Haidong, a researcher of American studies at China Foreign Affairs University, said the United States is now stuck in the awkward position of having to explain itself to its citizens and the world following the exposure of Washington’s vast Internet snooping program.

“For months, Washington has been accusing China of cyberespionage, but it turns out that the biggest threat to the pursuit of individual freedom and privacy in the US is the unbridled power of the government,”Li said. [Source]

While the NSA story had received coverage in the Chinese press until today, Foreign Policy’s Isaac Stone Fish notes that it had taken a backseat to other stories such as Tuesday’s launch of the Shenzhou X spacecraft. But Snowden’s latest revelations have sparked sharp reaction in China, both in state-run media and on social media platforms. The South China Morning Post reported that Snowden’s latest claims “triggered scathing criticism from Sina Weibo users on Thursday:”

On Weibo, Snowden’s exclusive interview with the Post was promptly translated into Chinese by Sina News, reposted by influential opinion leaders, and commented thousands of times.

“Isn’t this a slap-in-the-face for Obama?” a microblogger wrote. “What a hypocrite US turns out to be despite its endless talks of freedom and democracy.”

“This is exactly a case of a thief yelling ‘thief’,” commented another blogger, referring to recent allegations the US made about cyberattacks from China. [Source]

The Guardian’s Warren Murray reported that a U.S. State Department spokesperson challenged the notion that such allegations, if true, would represent a double standard amid recent U.S. criticism of Chinese cyber attacks. And as China reacted, The New York Times’ Didi Kirsten Tatlow questioned whether U.S. allegations of Chinese cyber espionage are similar to the NSA’s surveillance program:

A U.S. intelligence employee, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the two situations — China’s stealing of trade and military secrets and N.S.A. surveillance to track possible terrorist attacks — are not comparable, calling them “apples and oranges.”

“I can tell you with absolute certainty the U.S. government does not pass on technological secrets obtained through (strictly speaking, as a byproduct of) espionage to U.S. firms, both as a matter of principle and because there is no fair way to do it,” he wrote in answer to an emailed question.

“I recall some senior bureaucrat proposing this some two decades ago — and he got nowhere,” the person wrote, “none of the agencies wanted anything to do with it.”

“China, by contrast, deliberately targets foreign technology for military and commercial purposes,” he wrote, “so this is apples and oranges. But in the propaganda war, that fact won’t matter.” [Source]

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cyberattacks, cybersecurity, Edward Snowden, hacking, Hong Kong, Internet surveillance, U.S. relations
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This was a complex case, involving more than 477 dossiers of related documents. Yet the trial was executed with astonishing efficiency and concluded in less than half a day.

[…] Liu accepted all charges and pleaded for leniency in punishment with a tearful statement. He even made reference to the trending concept of the Chinese dream, a telling example of how deeply he understood the Chinese characteristics in rule of law – for him the only possible way to avoid death is pleasing the top leaders.

[…] The debate was red-hot outside the courtroom. Will Liu receive the death penalty? From the level of cooperation he demonstrated on trial, his life should be spared this time. But then how will large bribery cases be dealt with in the future? Secondly, in the eyes of the legal community, there is an ethics issue. Can a Chinese-style show trial bring justice? The stance prosecutors took by the end of the trial was suspicious, and it’s an open question as to whether judges had a clear grasp of the case. [Source]

The prosecutors’ “suspicious” stance was a request for leniency, which has infuriated netizens eager for harsh punishment. Ding also notes the discovery that the charges against Liu appear to reflect only a tiny portion of his illicit gains, which reportedly included over $140 million and almost 350 apartments. From Cary Huang at South China Morning Post:

On trial at Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court on Sunday, Liu was accused of using his position of influence to help business associates win promotions and project contracts, and of accepting 64.6 million yuan in unspecified bribes between 1986 and 2011, according to an indictment reported by the official Xinhua News Agency.

But the [Beijing] Times reported yesterday that in other cases related to Liu’s abuse of his official power, officials had also seized large amounts of cash in various currencies. These include 795.5 million yuan, HK$85 million, US$235,000 and 2.2 million euro (HK$22.5 million). Also recovered were other assets, such as shares, vehicles, flats and other valuables, according to the report.

The report did not explain why those assets were not included in the charges against Liu. [Source]

One Sina Weibo user quipped that these revelations made Liu “the first high-ranking official to publicly declare his assets”, referring to popular demands for transparency regulations like those recently introduced in Macau. But even as the government acknowledges the problem of official corruption and vows to bring its perpetrators to justice, a number of activists campaigning for asset disclosure have been detained in recent months, prompting protests from human rights organizations. From SCMP’s Cary Huang:

The China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, Front Line Defenders, Human Rights Watch and Independent Chinese PEN called on the central government to release the detainees and drop all charges against them. They said the detentions cast doubt on President Xi Jinping’s commitment to cracking down on government corruption.

Since May 7, 10 of the 15 activists detained had been formally arrested, indicating they were likely to be prosecuted and convicted, the right groups said. The charges against the 15 include illegal assembly, inciting subversion of state power, disturbing social order and extortion. The crime of inciting subversion carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, while the other crimes have maximum penalties of five years in prison.

[…] “When President Xi Jinping calls for a tough response to corruption, it’s hailed as innovative policy, but when ordinary people say the same in public, his government regards it as subversion,” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said. [Source]

See more on these cases at Human Rights Watch, and on Liu Zhijun and corruption via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-corruption, bribery, Chinese Dream, corruption, death penalty, detention, human rights watch, Liu Zhijun, Ministry of Railways, trials, Xi Jinping
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Is America becoming more like China, a country that has long subjected its citizens to surveillance?

The revelations came in a week when President Barack Obama met with Xi Jinping in California — and cybersecurity was a major point of discussion, with the U.S. saying China has been stealing secrets.

“It is striking how the west and China are moving incrementally towards each other, especially in the practice of mass surveillance,” wrote Henry Porter, a journalist and novelist and the London editor of Vanity Fair magazine, in the commentary in The Observer.

“But unlike the Chinese, for the moment at least, we have the option to oppose what’s happening,” he concluded. [Source]

For artist and activist Ai Weiwei, the answer is more clearcut. He expresses his disappointment in the U.S. in an op-ed for the Guardian:

I lived in the United States for 12 years. This abuse of state power goes totally against my understanding of what it means to be a civilised society, and it will be shocking for me if American citizens allow this to continue. The US has a great tradition of individualism and privacy and has long been a centre for free thinking and creativity as a result.

In our experience in China, basically there is no privacy at all – that is why China is far behind the world in important respects: even though it has become so rich, it trails behind in terms of passion, imagination and creativity.

Of course, we live under different kinds of legal conditions – in the west and in developed nations there are other laws that can balance or restrain the use of information if the government has it. That is not the case in China, and individuals are completely naked as a result. Intrusions can completely ruin a person’s life, and I don’t think that could happen in western nations.

But still, if we talk about abusive interference in individuals’ rights, Prism does the same. It puts individuals in a very vulnerable position. Privacy is a basic human right, one of the very core values. There is no guarantee that China, the US or any other government will not use the information falsely or wrongly. I think especially that a nation like the US, which is technically advanced, should not take advantage of its power. It encourages other nations. [Source]

While activists throughout Asia have expressed concerns that their personal details will be shared with authorities through the National Security Agency’s Prism surveillance program, some dissidents in China, including Hu Jia, did not share those fears. Some activists, however, expressed worries that the U.S. had lost leverage in calling for Internet freedom from countries like China. From Reuters:

“I’ve never considered abandoning Twitter, YouTube, Google, Gmail or Gchat,” said Hu Jia, a prominent Chinese dissident. [...] “These are the only weapons we have to get our message out and the only safe way to do so. The U.S. would never monitor us. They are using it to fight terrorism. It’s totally different to what the Chinese government does to listen in on us,” he said by telephone.

[...] Nathan Freitas, a New York-based activist who helps Tibetans defend against Chinese cyber-surveillance, said the reports on Prism were nevertheless troubling.

“I’m concerned that from a Western perspective, or at least a U.S. perspective, we are losing some of that moral high ground from which we can pressure China,” he said.

“It’s just going to be harder to say what they are doing is fundamentally wrong, when maybe it’s just becoming statecraft.” [Source]

Other Chinese Internet users have said they are in fact now more hesitant to use U.S. Internet services such as those provided by Google. Tea Leaf Nation translated a range of netizen responses to the news:

Weibo user @SugarCHH expressed his disappointment in Google’s internet services:

I am no longer that fond of Google, especially after PRISM, if the FBI and NSA’s notice about ‘inspecting users other than Americans’ is true. Think about how much of our private information has been sold by Google. America only has around 300 million people, but even if Google’s China search service only amounts to a few percent points, that would be a lot of netizens. Furthermore, some people use all of the services Google provides. I have been betrayed. [Source]

Another Tea Leaf Nation post provides examples to show that, while the NSA leaks are still not a big story on Chinese social media sites, Chinese people who follow the story are developing a more nuanced and critical view of the U.S.:

This does not mean that the U.S. is always at the top of the Chinese collective mind. While there was certainly some revealing chatter about Snowden and PRISM on the Chinese Internet, even the most popular posts garnered only a few hundred retweets, and at no point did any related keyword or post trend.

If Chinese reaction to Snowden’s leak is significant, it is because it contributes in a small way to an increasingly nuanced view of America and its politics. Debates about the U.S. drone program, for example, take place among followers of international politics on China’s Weibo just as they do on Twitter. While some Chinese have lauded what they call Snowden’s “heroism” as an example of American citizens’ “civil awareness,“ others in Chinese cyberspace have begun to ask whether Meiguo [America] is still deserving of its erstwhile status as a benchmark. [Source]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cybersecurity, Edward Snowden, Great Firewall, Internet surveillance, views of U.S.
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An intelligence source with extensive knowledge of the National Security Agency’s systems told the Guardian the US complaints again China were hypocritical, because America had participated in offensive cyber operations and widespread hacking – breaking into foreign computer systems to mine information.

Provided anonymity to speak critically about classified practices, the source said: “We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world.”

The US likes to haul China before the international court of public opinion for “doing what we do every day”, the source added. [Source]

(Though Snowden was not named in the original article, an identical quote appears in an interview with him published after his identity was revealed on Sunday.)

At Foreign Policy, intelligence historian Matthew M. Aid describes the group within the NSA responsible for much of this intrusion, following one official’s claim last week that China has gathered “mountains of data” on U.S. attacks:

It turns out that the Chinese government’s allegations are essentially correct. According to a number of confidential sources, a highly secretive unit of the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. government’s huge electronic eavesdropping organization, called the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecommunications systems for almost 15 years, generating some of the best and most reliable intelligence information about what is going on inside the People’s Republic of China.

[…] The problem is that TAO has become so large and produces so much valuable intelligence information that it has become virtually impossible to hide it anymore. The Chinese government is certainly aware of TAO’s activities. The “mountains of data” statement by China’s top Internet official, Huang Chengqing, is clearly an implied threat by Beijing to release this data. Thus it is unlikely that President Obama pressed President Xi too hard at the Sunnydale summit on the question of China’s cyber-espionage activities. As any high-stakes poker player knows, you can only press your luck so far when the guy on the other side of the table knows what cards you have in your hand. [Source]

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cyberattacks, cybersecurity, Edward Snowden, hacking, information leak, leaked documents, U.S. relations, United States
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The reaction to Snowden’s leaks and unmasking in China has been muted, however. From Adam Minter at Bloomberg View:

To start with, for Chinese social-media users, surveillance of communications, electronic and otherwise, is a given. What might sound like a horrifying transgression of basic civil rights to an American comes off as a comparatively benign state of affairs to a young Chinese Internet user. Prism hasn’t trended on Chinese social media or search engines.

This is not unknown to the Communist Party-owned media, and it’s probably a reason they’ve avoided Prism over the last several days. Why hype a story that serves to remind Chinese Internet users that the surveillance to which they’ve become accustomed is so much worse than what Americans experience? Indeed, Chinese media — and the Communist Party that controls it — is unusually sensitive to unfavorable comparisons with other people and places, and none so much as Hong Kong

[…] For Chinese newspaper editors, the choice is thus whether to downplay a good spy story happening just across the border or risk highlighting how Hong Kong citizens enjoy a freer political environment. Then again, the Snowden story has been widely available on China’s Internet since early Monday morning, and Internet users — with some exceptions — still don’t seem to care very much. This is really a story about a martyr for rights enjoyed by Americans, not Chinese. [Source]

China Real Time’s Josh Chin found that some netizens did praise Snowden and his actions.

While Mr. Snowden is being celebrated in China, however, his revelations have provoked debate about the integrity of the U.S. government, with many expressing disappointment that it would engage in activities more typically associated with the Communist regime in Beijing.

[…] Not all Chinese Internet users were ready to equate the NSA programs and aggressive pursuit of leakers with China’s own spying and information-control efforts. As bad as the scandal might seem, some argued, the fact that Mr. Snowden managed to push the information out through the media and was able to talk about it days later was evidence that the freedoms enjoyed by U.S. citizens were still something to envy.

“What I want to know is what would have happened if this guy had tried to do this in the Celestial Kingdom,” wrote one microblogger, using a slang term for China. “I’m guessing he would have been killed in a car accident, or died of carbon monoxide poisoning, or something along those lines.”

“Every country [spies on its citizens],” wrote another. “It’s just that we’re already numb to it.” [Source]

As for the Chinese and American governments, Gillian Wong reported that while recent revelations might strengthen China’s hand, both sides share an interest in limiting the fallout. From the Associated Press:

The leaks about Washington’s own domestic surveillance program could end up hurting U.S. efforts to pressure China on cybersecurity, said Zhu Feng, an expert on China-U.S. relations at Peking University in Beijing.

“This case will hurt the U.S. bargaining power and dishonor its own credibility in charging China for cyberattacks. This is truth-telling,” Zhu said. “China will likely tell the U.S., ‘don’t be too high profile, and don’t take the moral high ground.’”

[… Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's David] Zweig said both sides were likely to try to play down the affair, saying they would not want to waste the effort made over the weekend in California.

[…] “The ‘shirt sleeves’ summit looked nice and they looked like they really were trying to kick back, put up their feet and talk about where they saw the countries going,” Zweig said. “I can’t imagine that after all this effort, they’re going to let this one thing make a mess of it.” [Source]

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2013 california summit, Barack Obama, cyberattacks, cybersecurity, Edward Snowden, news media, state media, surveillance, U.S. relations, United States, Xi Jinping
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“Reach victory in the People’s war against Apple and Steve Jobs.”

First Lady’s iPhone: Peng Liyuan, the wife of President Xi Jinping, was spotted in Mexico last week taking a photo of Mayan ruins with her iPhone. A photo of Peng and her phone went viral on Weibo earlier this week. This March, a CCTV program criticized Apple for charging certain maintenance fees in China that it did not elsewhere. Despite a Weibo gaff that exposed pro-government forces behind the Apple-bashing, and ensuing netizen disgruntlement with CCTV, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a formal apology to its Chinese users and promised a change in policy.

• Peng+cell phone (彭+手机)
• Peng+take a photo (彭+拍照)
• Peng+apple (彭+苹果)
• Peng+iPhone (彭+iphone)
• first lady+cell phone (第一夫人+手机)
• first lady+apple (第一夫人+苹果)
• first lady+iPhone (第一夫人+iphone)
• first lady+ cell phone (国母+手机)
• first lady+apple (国母+苹果)
• first lady+iPhone (国母+iphone)
• Mrs. Xi+cell phone (习夫人+手机)
• Mrs. Xi+take a photo (习夫人+拍照)
• Mrs. Xi+apple (习夫人+苹果)
• Mrs. Xi+iPhone (习夫人+iphone)
• peng+liyuan

Other: Current situation of the ideological sphere (当前意识形态领域情况): News and discussion of an internal Party document titled “Circular on the Current Situation of the Ideological Sphere” (关于当前意识形态领域情况的通报) has been heavily censored since early May. Fei Chang Dao has tracked online censorship of the document, while China Copyright and Media has gleaned information on its contents.

All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

Browse all of CDT’s collected sensitive words in this bilingual Google spreadsheet.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

Have a sensitive word tip? Submit it to CDT through this form:

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, censorship, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, Peng Liyuan, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Xi Jinping
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Against a backdrop of sometimes strong harassment from local officials, China’s environmental reporters, civil society and citizen journalists continue to document public outrage about pollution, and the influence of Chinese social media is becoming increasingly significant.

Wu Zhu, an environmental volunteer from coastal Zhejiang province, picked up the award for best citizen journalist after helping to create and promote a call for environmental protection officials to swim in local waterways.

The campaign quickly escalated into a nationwide media story with one entrepreneur offering more than £20,000 to his city’s environmental protection chief to take a 20-minute dip in his polluted local river. The local official declined.

[...] Two runners-up awards were given out to Pan Qi, an entertainment reporter who rose to national fame after probing officials over a controversial tree-planting programme in her home city of Qingdao, coastal China, and Chen Yuqian, a farmer from a small village near Hangzhou city, which suffers severe pollution from paper and electroplating factories. Chen’s daughter set up a weibo account (a microblogging platform in China similar to Twitter) in his name, speaking about his life and work. They both continued reporting about environmental problems despite harassment from local officials. [Source]

The award for best investigation of the year was given to Gao Shengke and Wang Kai of Caijing for a piece on contaminated land in Chinese cities being used for residential developments. Their piece is running as a three-part series in The Guardian. From Part 1:

This plot of land was previously the site of a factory owned by the Ministry of Railways that made anti-corrosive railway sleepers. The plant was in operation for more than 30 years; many kinds of organic pollutants continuously seeped into the topsoil, deeper soil layers, and into the groundwater. Some seven or eight years ago, the factory was relocated and this plot of ground was left unused. In January 2011, the city administration decided to convert the land into a development for affordable housing and it was taken over by the Residential Construction Service Centre for Civil Servants to build low-cost housing for civil servants from all ministries.

After the Civil Servants Residential Centre took over the plot, a number of specialists carried out an initial land survey. In May 2011, the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences released a public environmental impact assessment report which made no mention of any soil pollution problem. There was also no mention of the historical use of the site or the original environment.

However, Caijing magazine got hold of another similar survey report by the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, which showed that pollutants in the soil seriously exceeded approved levels, especially semi-volatile organic pollutants such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons. There were many kinds of hydrocarbons, most of them relatively strong carcinogens and mutagens.

[...] Exactly how widespread the problem is in China is unclear, but a senior industry specialist pointed out that there must be tens of thousands of plots of polluted land nationwide; of these pesticide plants occupy quite a high proportion but only a miniscule number of these have been treated or are undergoing treatment. [Source]

The awards are jointly issued by chinadialogue, The Guardian and Sina. Read more about them via chinadialogue.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental activism, industrial pollution, journalists, media conditions, water pollution
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Sina Weibo, gagged.

Update: The form for readers to submit tips on blocked keywords will be available at the bottom of all future English Sensitive Words posts. The form itself is in Chinese.

In April 2011, CDT Chinese began tracking keywords blocked from Sina Weibo search results, collecting them on a public Google spreadsheet. Among the obscenities and names of foreign media are terms which outline the arc of events, from “Wukan” on December 6, 2011 to “Wen Jiabao + leave office” on March 6, 2013 and beyond. Now all 2057 terms (and counting) are available in English.

The Grass-Mud Horse list includes the English translation of each blocked keyword, as well as link to the relevant Sensitive Words post and information on retests where available. The list will continue to expand so long as Weibo blocks search results.

You can view the list below or by clicking this link.

CDT encourages reader tips, which you may submit via the form provided below the list on this post and at the bottom of every CDT Chinese Sensitive Words (敏感词库) post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Internet censorship, Sensitive Words Series, weibo
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“According to United Nations data, about 70% of electronic waste globally generated ended up in China,” said Ma Tianjie, a spokesman for the Beijing office of Greenpeace.

“Much of [the e-waste] comes through illegal channels because under United Nations conventions, there is a specific ban on electronic waste being transferred from developed countries like the United States to countries like China and Vietnam.”

For the past decade, the southeastern town of Guiyu, nestled in China’s main manufacturing zone, has been a major hub for the disposal of e-waste. Hundreds of thousands of people here have become experts at dismantling the world’s electronic junk.

On seemingly every street, laborers sit on the pavement outside workshops ripping out the guts of household appliances with hammers and drills. The roads in Guiyu are lined with bundles of plastic, wires, cables and other garbage. Different components are separated based on their value and potential for re-sale. On one street sits a pile of green and gold circuit boards. On another, the metal cases of desktop computers. [Source]

The primitive ways in which old electronics are recycled in Guiyu and similar sites have generated environmental and public health concerns. When handled improperly, harmful substances from electronic waste often end up in local waterways and food chains, adding to China’s growing food scandals.

Increasingly, Watson notes, waste processed in places like Guiyu comes from Chinese, not Western, consumers. At Bloomberg View, meanwhile, citing a recent survey of U.S. e-waste disposal, Adam Minter argues that America’s role as an e-waste exporter to developing countries has been exaggerated:

Published in February, the study by the U.S. International Trade Commission surveyed 5,200 businesses involved in the e-waste industry (companies that received the survey were required by law to complete it, and to do so accurately), and found that almost 83 percent of what was put into American recycling bins in 2011 was repaired, dismantled or recycled domestically.

According to the same survey, only 0.13 percent of the 4.4 million tons of e-waste that Americans generated in 2011 was sent overseas for “final disposal” — a term that explicitly excludes recycling and reuse — with an additional 3 percent sent abroad for “unknown” purposes.

Reality is a far cry from the long-standing claim, first made by the Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based nongovernmental organization in 2002, that as much as 80 percent of U.S. e-waste is exported to the developing world. Amazingly, even with the wide currency the claimhas enjoyed over the years among environmental organizations and the media, it was never based on a systematic study. [Source]

Read more on electronic waste processing in China via CDT.

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Post tags: Electronic waste, electronics, greenpeace, Guiyu
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The dilemma is often more complicated for those who remain in China, where public mention of Tiananmen can result in government retribution. To this day, officials maintain that the decision was necessary for stability, and the anniversary is marked with thousands of police officers patrolling the square and chasing off journalists.

Those who have found successful careers in business, law and academia often talk of it only in private, fearful of consequences for themselves and their offspring.

Even some of those who have soldiered on as activists deliberately say little of Tiananmen to their children, who grow up not fully understanding why police barge into their homes each year as the anniversary approaches to interrogate and spirit away their parents for weeks without explanation. Some children experience restrictions and warnings at school.

For most parents, it comes down to a choice between protecting their children from the past or passing on dangerous and bitter truths about the authoritarian society they continue to live under. [Source]

Online, censors are trying to eradicate all references to 1989 and have blocked related search terms on Weibo. [Nevertheless, "6 4" still appeared in the list of top search terms.] For Internet users in China, June 4th has become known obliquely as “Internet maintenance day.” Even the candle emoticon has suddenly disappeared from Weibo (again). For examples of specific Weibo posts that were deleted today, see here and here [zh].

Activists and dissidents were closely monitored and detained in the days leading up the June 4th, and foreign journalists reported problems with Internet connections and other interferences with reporting this week. Officials have also preemptively banned any activities commemorating June 4 on Shenzhen University. According to the San Francisco-based Duihua Foundation, the last person jailed for “counterrevolutionary” crimes linked to the 1989 protests has been released from prison, at the age of 73, but “a handful” of people remain in prison for other crimes linked to the protests.

Despite the government’s efforts to silence any discussion of the past, many who were present in June 1989 are working to keep the history alive. Prominent journalist and commentator Chang Ping writes in a piece translated by the South China Morning Post about the dangers of repressing memories:

Yet for those with experience of June 4, that part of history has ever since been a blank. After sending in the tanks and troops to suppress the pro-democracy movement, the Chinese Communist Party made June 4 the most taboo of sensitive subjects. In 1990, writer Liao Yiwu was sentenced to jail for four years for writing a poem titled Massacre. Openly writing about June 4 became a dangerous act.

But it didn’t stop people writing about it privately or obliquely. Those who took part in the protest and are now exiled overseas have posted their accounts online. On the mainland, people remember June 4 or protest against the censorship through poetry and metaphors.

On the 18th anniversary of the crackdown, in 2007, the Chengdu Evening Post ran an advertisement “saluting the tough mothers of the June 4 victims”. That was the work of human rights activist Chen Yunfei, who, realising classified ads were not as tightly monitored, slipped the message past the censors. Some say the young woman responsible for vetting the ads even called a friend to ask what had happened on June 4 that had resulted in people getting hurt. “Probably another mining disaster,” was the answer she got. This is one result of trying to banish June 4 from our collective memory. [Source]

The families of those killed write to the country’s leaders every year to demand justice and a full accounting of the events leading up to the massacre, but they have yet to receive a reply. NPR interviewed one such couple, Ding Zilin and Jiang Weikun:

The group’s 36th open letter — none has received any official reply — speaks of the “general sense of despair” permeating Chinese society, amid dashed hopes that new President Xi Jinping would bring political changes.

“What we see, precisely, are giant steps backwards towards Maoist orthodoxy,” the letter reads, casting Xi as just the latest Chinese leader who has failed to undertake political reforms. “They come one after another, as if through a revolving door; and as they move forward, they become ever more distant and outrageous, causing a universal feeling of despair to descend.”

In the days since her interview with NPR, Ding and her husband, Jiang Peikun, have not been allowed to leave their apartment. They had wanted to mourn their son at the spot where he died, but they have not been permitted to do so. [Source]

Bao Tong, the most senior official to be jailed after June 4th, has called on all members of Chinese society to speak up and repudiate Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. From the South China Morning Post:

“[Some say] our China model is the best in the universe and our truth is the truth of the universe,” Bao said. But “without repudiating Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, it’s impossible for China to progress”.

[...] The silencing of dissident voices had disastrous consequences, he said. “If you cover the mouths of a hundred people, there could still be hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of mouths still speaking.

“But if they silence 1.3 billion people, that’s frightening.” [Source]

But not all 1.3 billion are staying silent. Some of Weibo’s most prominent participants have posted messages with their own memories of 1989. Tea Leaf Nation translates some of these messages, many of which use the widely-understood euphemism of “that year”:

A Ding (writer):

I’m going to sleep. Good night, Liubukou. Good night, Muxidi. Good night, Changanjie. [References to Beijing areas affected by June 4 incident]

[...] He Gang (journalist):

I remember that year. Passion on fire. History has rolled on for two cycles [in the Chinese calendar]. That year, it happened right before my college entrance exam, and it put a lot of stress on me. One of the popular majors in Peking University ceased enrollment in the aftermath.

[...] Shen Dafei (journalist):

That year, I was preparing for TOEFL after taking the college entrance exam. I only wanted to have fun. But that night, my father and I did not sleep, and stayed in front of the television to watch the live broadcast. At some point, I found that my dad became really quiet behind me, and when I turn around, I saw tears streaming down his face. That was the first time I saw my father like that. Before that, I had never felt such a connection with my father, and never thought I would have such deep emotions about my country.

[...] Jia Zhangke (film director):

Don’t worry about forgetfulness. At least the Sina censors remember. [Source]

Others posted images alluding to the “Tank Man,” who stood in front of a line of tanks alongside Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989:

Chinese netizens 1, Chinese censors 0. #June4 #May35 twitter.com/RichardBuangan…

— Richard Buangan (@RichardBuangan) June 3, 2013

Subversive Legos on weibo twitter.com/niubi/status/3…

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) June 3, 2013

Reminder, folks: it’s now June 4 in China. A totally ordinary day in every respect. Please enjoy this amusing cat. twitter.com/McAndrew/statu…

— Andrew McLaughlin (@McAndrew) June 4, 2013

An animated essay circulating widely on social media is simply titled, “Sound of Silence”:

In Hong Kong, organizers expected a large turnout for the annual vigil in Victoria Park.

Read more about the events of 1989, including a day-by-day recounting through archived original media coverage. An audio recording from June 3, 1989 from Radio Beijing describing the events has been posted online by Under the Jacaranda Tree and others. The script writer of the program was reportedly put under house arrest after the broadcast:

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, accountability, June 4th, PRC history, tiananmen mothers
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[...T]reating today’s Beijing like Brezhnev’s Moscow distorts the nature of the threat and how Washington should respond to it.

In confronting today’s cyberbattles, the United States should think less about Soviets and more about pirates. Indeed, today’s cybercompetition is less like the cold war than the battle for the New World.

In the era after the discovery of the Americas, European states fought for mastery over the Atlantic. Much like the Internet today, the ocean then was a primary avenue for trade and communication that no country could cordon off.

At that time, the Spanish empire boasted a fearsome navy, but it could not dominate the seas. Poorer and weaker England tested Spain’s might by encouraging and equipping would-be pirates to act on its behalf without official sanction. These semi-state-sponsored privateers robbed Spain of gold and pride as they raided ships off the coasts of the New World and Spain itself, enriching the English crown while augmenting its naval power. Spain’s inability to attribute the attacks directly to England allowed Queen Elizabeth I to level the playing field in an arena lacking laws or customs.

Today’s cyberbattles aren’t so different.

[...T]he cold war model of a struggle with calibrated boundaries, clear rules, and the threat of mutual assured destruction simply doesn’t fit cyberspace. [Source]

Click through to learn more about this compelling new martial metaphor. Also see prior CDT coverage of cybersecurity.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cold War, cyberespionage, cybersecurity, cyberspace, cyberwar, hacking, military technology, U.S military, U.S. relations
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It seems like there is no longer any search censorship on Sina Weibo. I’m getting results for things like 自焚,艾未未,24周年

— William Farris (@wafarris) May 30, 2013

But it was quickly discovered that these results just represented a temporary change in censorship methods, not an eradication of blocked search terms. From the Wall Street Journal:

In a serious shift of censorship tactics just days ahead of the anniversary of the government’s bloody June 4, 1989 crackdown on protestors in Tiananmen, Sina appears to have begun to allow searches for terms associated with the highly sensitive event. But instead of turning up content related to the incident, searches yield results that have nothing to do with the protests or the government’s heavy-handed response.

The move represents a significant jump in the sophistication of censorship capabilities of the company, according to Greatfire.org, an organization that monitors Chinese censorship and first reported on the change in tactics on Friday.

[...] In the past, searches for most sensitive results returned an error message or a notice informing users that results could not be displayed due to government regulations. For those sensitive terms that could be searched, a filtered list of results from roughly a week in the past would be displayed.

Now Sina seems to have the capability to return a cleaned up list of search results of posts put up within an hour, a significant technological jump according to Greatfire.org. The effect is that users searching for sensitive terms are more likely to believe posters are actively discussing the subject, but not saying anything controversial. [Source]

@siweiluozi @wafarris Looks like they have a new “smart” way to delete/block. 24周年 results are about wedding anniversaries &c.

— Anne Henochowicz 何安妮 (@murasakint) May 31, 2013

GreatFire.org reports on the search results:

The results we received when we searched for “六四事件” (June 4th incident) showed that the first page of results displayed not all results but carefully selected results. While the first results page seems to indicate that there are more than 50 pages of results, no results are shown when you click through to the next page or any page beyond the first.

[...] We have also previously reported that Sina has delayed search results for sensitive keywords.

When testing the delayed censorship tactic, we conducted two simultaneous searches of similar keywords, one sensitive and one non-sensitive. In the case of searching for results for “六四” (June 4), we used “五七” (May 7) as a control group, to be sure that search results were indeed intentionally delayed. As suspected, results for “五七” (May 7) displayed posts that were ten minutes old while the most recent June 4 posts were several hours old.

Sina’s original methods of filtering sensitive search methods was back in place later the same day, indicating they may have been testing out a new system. For more on sensitive search terms on Sina Weibo, see CDT’s ongoing series of translations of filtered words and phrases. See also a slideshow from Foreign Affairs of terms filtered by Sina Weibo search, with two disclaimers by Jason Ng, who put the slideshow together:

Tho in case confusion, I should emph these are search blocks on Weibo, not banned on all Chinese Net foreignaffairs.com/features/colle… @foreignaffairs

— Jason Q. Ng (@jasonqng) May 31, 2013

And should also note that the words were found to be blocked in early-2012. Most of the ones @foreignaffairs chose have been unblocked since

— Jason Q. Ng (@jasonqng) May 31, 2013

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Post tags: filtered keywords, Internet censorship, sina weibo
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