Three Detained in Guangzhou After Applying for Tiananmen Commemoration: Li Weiguo, Xu Xiangrong, and Li Wensheng were detained by the police in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, after they applied for city approval for a public Tiananmen Massacre demonstration. RFA reports [zh].

• Li Weiguo (李维国)
• Xu Xiangrong (徐向荣)
• Li Wensheng (李文生)
• 24th anniversary (24周年): This year marks the 24th anniversary of the massacre.
• youxing: Pinyin spelling of “march” (游行 yóuxíng)
• march (游行): retested（复测）

• Bao Pu (鲍朴): Founder of New Century Press in Hong Kong, which publishes books on subjects banned in mainland China. New Century will release Tiananmen democracy activist Chen Yizi’s memoir on June 4 [zh], the anniversary of the crackdown.

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.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, censorship, Censorship Vault, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Truth, propaganda
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Central Propaganda Department: Firmly reign in the degree of coverage of the Shenzhen Binhai power plant. Prevent malicious sensationalization. (May 23, 2013)

中宣部：对深圳滨海电厂的报道要把握好度，防止恶意炒作。

The plan to build the coal-burning Binhai plant was approved by Liu Tienan [zh], a senior official in the National Development and Reform Commission currently being investigated for disciplinary violations. The Shenzhen city government stated on May 21 that only research on the project has been approved, not any actual construction plans [zh]. The Guangdong Province Propaganda Department issued a directive about media coverage of Binhai on May 18.

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, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Guangdong, Liu Tienan, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, power plants, propaganda, Shenzhen
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It is the year 2049. China’s economic development has so disturbed the world’s other major powers that the United States, Japan, and Russia form an alliance and invade China. Fierce battles break out on the plains of northeast China, where Japanese troops and U.S. fighter jets besiege Chinese infantry. Caught by surprise, China’s army nonetheless stages a glorious counterattack by deploying levitating tanks, and employing a strategy based on lessons learned from the Anti-Japanese War and the Resist America War (better known in the West as WWII and the Korean War, respectively).

Such is the plot of The Last Counterattack, a serial novel published on Blood and Iron Reading, a Chinese military literature website. In one of the latest installments, published on May 2, U.S. government-sponsored hackers have infiltrated the Chinese military’s network and accidently launched a Chinese nuclear missile directed at the United States. The anonymous author’s online profile says he is a former colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and currently a staff officer in charge of operations and reconnaissance in the 12th Armored Division at China’s 21st Army Group. Going by the online pseudonym “the Old Staff Officer,” he told FP in an interview conducted over the Chinese messaging service QQ that he “enjoys the feeling of letting [his] imagination fly.” But Li, as I’ll call him, believes that what he’s writing may actually come to pass. In an April blog post, he explained his thinking for the book: “The world besieges China and attacks it from all sides. Is this possible? Yes!”

There are thousands of Chinese war fantasy novels on the Internet — too sensitive to be published in book form, they circulate on blogs, and websites like Blood and Iron Reading. Most languish, but the more popular ones get read millions of times. As a rising China struggles to define its military aspirations, and as the country’s vast propaganda apparatus encourages citizens to define their version of President Xi Jinping’s vague slogan “Chinese Dream,” these military fantasy novels provide insight into what Chinese people’s war dreams look like. [Source]

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogs, censorship, Japan, military, online novels, People's Liberation Army, QQ, United States
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A captive in Dongqiao, Fujian Province, May 11, 2013.

The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.

Guangdong Propaganda Department: Do not report, republish, or comment on Gu Chujun’s May 22 news conference or related activities. (May 22, 2013)

广东省委宣传部：对顾雏军22日举行新闻发布会及相关类似活动，不报不评不转。

Gu Chujun, former CEO of Kelon Electrical Holding Group, was convicted of overstating profits and embezzling funds. He is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence which began in 2009.

Central Propaganda Department: Do not report or comment on the May 11 villagers’ attack on government workers in Dongqiao Township, Hui’an County, Fuzhou, Fujian Province. (May 22, 2013)

中宣部：福建泉州惠安县东桥镇5月11日村民围攻政府工作人员，不报不评。

At the beginning of the month, Dongqiao officials clashed with locals about plans to requisition land for an oil refinery. On May 11, villagers captured one of the town’s vice mayors and a riot police officer. See more photos from Dongqiao at CDT Chinese.

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 | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, environmental protests, Fujian, Gu Chujun, Guangdong, Ministry of Truth, propaganda
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Yuan Huizhong. (Weibo)

The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.

State Internet Information Office: Immediately delete contents which calls into question the appointment of the children of cadres to positions in local government, members of the so-called “governing second generation,” “governing third generation,” “red second generation, etc. (including news, blogs, forum posts, images, and video). Report on the progress of your work. (May 14, 2013)

网信办：立即清理质疑一些干部子女出任地方领导职务所谓“官二代”“官三代”“红二代”等信息（含新闻，博文，贴文，图片，视频等），并将简要工作情况上报。

This directive could be in response to a netizen backlash after the “rocket promotion” (火箭升迁) of Yuan Huizhong to the Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province chapter of the Communist Youth League. According to China Daily, Yuan only has three years of experience, but her father has a top appointment in the city. The directive seems preemptive of future controversies, however, as Yuan’s case is still visible on Weibo [zh]. Earlier this month, Deng Xiaoping’s grandson became a “sensitive” word on Weibo after becoming county head of Pingguo County, Guangxi Province.

The keywords “governing second generation” (官二代), “governing third generation” (官三代), and “red second generation” (红二代) are all searchable on Weibo.

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, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Internet censorship, Jiangsu, Ministry of Truth, official corruption, propaganda, second-generation officials, Yangzhou
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Efforts to strictly control communication in the digital age — what Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon has called “networked authoritarianism” — have been assumed to influence the way that Chinese netizens interact with the Internet (a theory easily given weight by the emergence of subversive web phenomena such as e-gao). However, a new study by two graduate students at Northwestern University argues that cultural factors have more impact on web usage than does censorship. Below is the abstract for “How Does the Great Firewall of China Affect Online User Behavior,” by PhD candidates Harsh Taneja and Angela Xiao Wu:

Internet access blockage is widely understood to isolate Chinese Internet users and “balkanize”
the Internet. Drawing from the literature on global cultural consumption, we question this
assumption and argue that online user behavior is structured by cultural factors. We develop a
framework that integrates access blockage with other structural factors to explain web users’
choices. Analyzing online audience traffic among the 1000 most visited websites globally, we
find that websites cluster according to language and geography. Chinese websites constitute one
cluster, which resembles other such geo-linguistic clusters in terms of both its composition and
degree of isolation. Our study demonstrates that cultural proximity has a greater role than access blockage in shaping people’s web usage. It also calls for sociological investigation of the impact of Internet blockage.

[Source]

MIT Technology Review summarizes the new study’s findings and its methodology, before drawing attention to its faults and siding with the counter-argument:

[...]And herein lies the biggest problem with the study by Taneja and Xiao Wu—it fails to take proper account of the behaviour of Chinese-speaking people who are outside of the Great Firewall of China but able to access content within it. It is easy to imagine that this relatively small group acts as the glue that links the Chinese cluster to the rest of the world.

If that’s the case, then the cultural fault lines created by the Great Firewall are hidden in this data.

It may well be that cultural factors are an important influence on people’s surfing habits, possibly the most important influence. But the argument that censorship is somehow less significant because of this is insidious and dangerous. On this matter, Hillary Clinton was correct.

[Source]

Also see prior CDT coverage of Internet censorship and the Great Firewall, and The Economist’s in-depth special report “China’s Internet: A Giant Cage“.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: academic resources, censorship, Great Firewall, Internet, Internet censorship, Internet culture
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Jack Chan.

中国人需要管的。 (Zhōngguórén xūyào guǎn de.): “Chinese people need to be controlled.”

Infamous statement by movie star Jackie Chan during a discussion of censorship, movies, and society at the 2009 Boao Forum for Asia:

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now. If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic… I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.

The comment set off a firestorm of discussion and criticism, especially in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Even mainland newspapers felt obliged to criticize Chan. The state-run People’s Daily accused Jackie Chan of wishing to deprive the Chinese of their extensive liberties [zh] and to subject them to an oppressive regime.

Chan’s statement may be translated more mildly as“Chinese people need to be managed.” But Chan has a history of making controversial political statements. He has previously claimed that Chinese culture may not be compatible with democracy, and called for restrictions on protests in Hong Kong. In early 2013, he claimed that America was the “most corrupt country in the world.”

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Boao Forum, censorship, Jackie Chan, word of the week
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An insider from the magazine, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the legal section had been suspended due to “some pressure” that required the magazine to focus more on economic reports rather than legal affairs.

[...] The names of six reporters for the missing section were still printed in the latest issue, but two law-related reports – one about issues related to competition in the internet industry, and a small piece about a legal dispute between software company Qihoo 360 and internet giant Tencent – appeared in the economy section. A report about a lawsuit over chromium waste, brought by two environmental protection NGOs against a chemical firm in Yunnan , was put in the environment and technology section.

Liu Jing , a public relations officer for Caixin Media Group, told the South China Morning Post that the section had not been “cut” but that the magazine was simply making “normal adjustments” to the pages.

But some mainland journalists questioned whether the section’s absence may have been the result of a report on the deputy party secretary of Jilin province, Zhu Yanfeng. [Source]

See also Caixin’s English-language website and  past coverage of Caixin on CDT.

© cindyliuwenxin for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, media censorship, press freedom, South China Morning Post, Zhu Yanfeng
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Wu Changlong embraces his father. He was found innocent and released from prison after serving 12 years. (Wu Huaying)

As of May 19, the following search terms are blocked on Sina Weibo (not including the “search for user” function).

Intertwined Injustices in Fujian: On June 24, 2001, a bomb exploded at the Fuqing City Discipline Inspection Commission in Fujian Province, killing one person. Wu Changlong and Chen Keyun were charged with the bombing, although they have always claimed innocence. The Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court found them and several others guilty in 2004. The case was appealed and went to the provincial courts. In December 2005, the Fuzhou Supreme People’s Court again found Chen and Wu guilty and gave them both suspended death sentences. Wu’s sister, Wu Yinghua, continued to advocate for her brother.

This month Mr. Wu was found not guilty and released from prison. VOA reports that a censorship directive has been issued to the press barring them from reporting on his case [zh].

In 2009, Ms. Wu began assisting Lin Xiuying to seek justice after Lin’s daughter, Yan Xiaoling, died the year before after being gang raped. The police claimed that Yan had instead died from an ectopic pregnancy; Lin suspected the local police were involved. Ms. Wu helped Lin, who is illiterate, to blog and post video testimony about her daughter’s case. Ms. Wu and two others were detained in July 2009 and prosecuted. Ms. Wu was released from prison a year later.

Human Rights in China and Deutsche Welle [zh] have more information on both cases.

• Fuqing Discipline Inspection Commission Bombing Incident (福清纪委爆炸案)
• Wu Changlong (吴昌龙)
• Wu Yinghua (吴英华)
• Lin Xiuying (林秀英)
• Chen Keyun (陈科云)

Other:

• Pantu (潘涂)

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.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Chen Keyun, Fujian, Fuqing, Internet censorship, Lin Xiuying, Ministry of Truth, Pantu, rights defense, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Wu Changlong, Wu Yinghua
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Guangdong Propaganda Department: On the morning of May 17, a Huanan Agricultural University PhD student hanged himself and passed away. The media must not investigate, report, or comment on the incident. If necessary, cover the story in strict accordance with police wire copy. (May 18, 2013)

广东省委宣传部：5月17日早上华南农业大学一博士生上吊自杀身亡，各媒体不采访报道评论，必要时严格按警方通稿刊播。

Guangdong Propaganda Department: Regarding the planned Binhai power plant in Shenzhen and related issues; and the demolition and relocation of a public cemetery for victims of the Anti-Japanese War in Guangzhou, and related issues; the media must not report or comment. (May 18, 2013)

广东省委宣传部：对深圳滨海电厂规划及相关问题、广州拆迁抗日公墓相关话题，各媒体不报道不评论。

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, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, forced demolitions, Guangdong, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, suicide, World War II
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Click here to view the embedded video.

The Guardian’s first look at the film gives a synopsis:

[...T]he film is [...] an angry, painful, satirical lunge into what the director clearly sees as the dark heart of modern China, and a real attempt to represent this to audiences elsewhere in the world. He sees China as a globalised economic power player suffering a new and violent Cultural Revolution of money-worship in which a cronyist elite has become super-rich in the liquidation of state assets, creating poisonous envy in the dispossessed who hear all about others’ wealth from the internet, and are supposed to gossip aspirationally about it on their mobile phones. A key scene in the film shows someone brooding over Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

It is a fractured and divided story, like shards of a shattered mirror. Different strands and characters and stories emerge, tangentially concerned with each other. Jia has taken his plotlines from newspapers, violent stories of criminal despair, and by meshing them together, these tales, often involving guns, build up a picture of China as a desolate Wild West of lawless violence and cynicism. A worker erupts with anger at how the mine-chief has somehow been able to afford a sports car and to lease a private plane. Three brothers coming back to their hometown for their mother’s birthday reveal themselves to be deeply unhappy in various ways, and the unhappiness somehow always manifests itself in violence. Two have handguns: one casually slays three guys who have attempted to rob him on the road. Another, who has been telling his wife he has been travelling the country looking for work, reveals himself to be an ice-cool armed robber who doesn’t scruple to murder women in cold blood for their expensive designer bags. Another is having an affair with a sauna receptionist (played by Jia’s longtime leading actor Zhao Tao) and this too ends in a bloody confrontation.

[Source]

The Hollywood Reporter looks at one Chinese web-user’s reaction to the trailer of a film that, “based on true events,” uses the drama of national news to inspire a scathing cinematic inquiry into modern Chinese society:

One Weibo user described the film as seeming “very audacious,” adding: “Judging from the trailer, it contains a lot of critical scenes based in reality that were created with no fear of the censorship system.”

Little was previously known about Jia’s film, but the trailer hints at several storylines based on widely discussed — but never filmed — Chinese social ills and political scandals, such as a notorious case from Hubei province in 2009, when a pedicurist named Deng Yujiao stabbed and killed a local bureaucrat after he reportedly slapped her in the face with a wad of cash and tried to force himself on her (based on the trailer, Jia’s wife and muse, Zhao Tao plays a woman placed in a similar predicament). Another scene features snippets of news footage from the 2011 high-speed train accident in China that killed 40 people and led to a major scandal over mismanagement of the country’s railway ministry – and yet another mentions Chinese laborers killing themselves in sweatshops, a likely reference to the wave of suicides that took place at the factories of Foxcon, the company known as the assembler of the Apple iPhone.

[Source]

The putative use of sensitive headlines to inspire a film that is, by many accounts, filled with the pulp violence of a Tarantino flick, begs a question — what will Beijing’s censors make of this film? The Globe and Mail reports on Jia Zhangke’s confidence that his film, co-produced by a state-funded company, will hit screens in the mainland:

Of course, a Cannes premiere is no guarantee the film won’t get banned: It happened to Lou Ye’s 2006 Cannes competition film, Summer Palace. But Jia’s film has a couple of things in his favour. A Touch of Sin (the title alludes to a 1971 martial arts film, A Touch of Zen) is co-produced by Jia’s production company and the state-backed studio, Shanghai Film Group, which virtually assures its release.

At yesterday’s press conference, Jia seemed confident his film will be seen by its home audience: “The film has been approved by the censor board and we hope it will be released in autumn.”

In China, where Django Unchained, Skyfall and Cloud Atlas were all recently shown with minor cuts, perhaps officials are finally ready for their homegrown brand of vigilante payback.

[Source]

More quotes from Jia’s press conference on censorship, sensitivity, and his intended audience were reported by The Record:

Jia — whose film 24 City played at Cannes in 2008 — said he became preoccupied by the increasingly frequent stories of violence he saw in the media, and wanted to dramatize the stories for Chinese moviegoers.

“In society people often hear about these violent events, but they quickly forget,” he said. “It’s not by turning your back on violence or hiding violence that you make progress.”

Jia said he didn’t think the topics he depicted “are particularly touchy or secretive in any way, because they were already covered in the Chinese press and on the internet.”

But the director also was careful to stress — and the censors no doubt happy to hear — that the stories were timeless, not the product of modern politics, economics or technology.

[Source]

The only Chinese-language film to have won the high prize at Cannes was Chen Kaige’s 1993 masterpiece Farewell My Concubine, and so far Chen is the only Chinese national to have taken the prize.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cannes, censorship, films, Jia Zhangke, movie reviews, soft power
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Protesters in Kunming. View more photos from today’s events at CDT Chinese. (@明明悠阳)

Central Propaganda Department: Without exception, do not republish, report, or comment on the assembly of the masses in Kunming to protest the construction of a PetroChina oil refinery.

中宣部：对昆明群众反对中石油云南炼油项目聚集一事，一律不转不报不评。

State Internet Information Office: All websites are asked to remove text, images, and video related to the protest of over 1,000 people in Kunming city center against the Anning PX construction plan. Interactive platforms must strictly monitor activity. (May 16, 2013)

网信办：请各网站删除关于昆明上千市民聚集市中心抗议安宁PX项目的文字、图片、视频等相关信息。互动环节要严格把关。

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, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, environmental protests, Internet censorship, Kunming, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, protests, Yunnan
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Central Propaganda Department: Without exception, do not report or comment on [information] about “Occupy Central” in Hong Kong that has not yet been unified and planned. Do not quote related information from overseas media or websites. Please strictly comply. (May 14, 2013)

中宣部：对香港“占领中环”行动一事未统一安排一律不报道、不评论，不转引境外媒体及网上相关消息。请严格遵照执行。

Protesters plan to “occupy” Central, the busy downtown of Hong Kong, in July 2014 if Hong Kong citizens do not have universal suffrage by that point. The International Herald Tribune covered Occupy Central in April, while the South China Morning Post has a page dedicated to the topic.

Guangdong Propaganda Department: On the evening of May 9, employee Wu Taihui jumped from the administrative offices of the Zhongyi Industrial Park in Dongguan. Except for [information] issued by authoritive departments, the media are to stop reporting and commenting on this incident. (May 15, 2013)

广东省委宣传部：5月9日晚东莞中意工业园行政办公楼发生的员工吴太辉坠楼事件，除权威部门发布外，各媒体不再报道，评论。

Wu, who had just been fired, was at the factory to settle his wages, according to his widow [zh].

Central Propaganda Department: The media are not to sensationalize, exaggerate, or comment on the incident in Wanning, Hainan Province in which an elementary school put female students in a hotel room overnight. You may report in an orderly manner according to information issued by authoritative departments. (May 15, 2013)

中宣部：关于海南万宁小学带女学生开房过夜一事，各媒体不炒作渲染、不评论。可依据权威部门发布的信息有序报道。

Four girls were brought to a hotel room in Wanning and sexually assaulted by their school headmaster. A government official brought another two girls to a hotel in nearby Haikou. Doctors who examined the girls reported they are still virgins, but they were bruised and appear “groggy” in surveillance footage.

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, children's rights, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, dongguan, Guangdong, Hainan, hong kong elections, Ministry of Truth, Occupy Central, occupy movement, propaganda, sexual violence, suicide
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Lawyers “Surround and Watch” Black Jails: On May 13, 11 rights defense lawyers were detained and beaten for attempting to visit a black jail in Ziyang, Sichuan Province. Since then, the weibo accounts of several public intellectuals have been shuttered, including writer Murong Xuecun‘s.

• Ziyang black jail (资阳黑监狱)
• surround and watch+black jails (围观+黑监狱)
• rights defense lawyers (维权律师)

Other:
• Wang Bu (王补): The former Beijing Public Security Bureau Chief of Scientific Research, who passed away in 1997. On the “Wuxi Economy” TV program, Zhu Ling’s father recently disclosed that Mr. Wang gave his notes on Zhu Ling’s case to Zhu’s parents before his death.
• red bandits (赤匪)
• red bandits (红匪)
• gong bandits (Gong匪): Alternate writing of 共匪 gōng fēi, i.e. communist bandits (共产党匪).
• gongfei

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.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black jails, censorship, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, rights defense, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Zhu Ling
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Central Propaganda Department: Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake. Please ensure that you strictly comply with the related reporting requests distributed earlier. Maintain positive coverage. Do not produce negative or sensational material. Do not produce reflections on so-called aftereffects. Increase checking of commentary. The leadership of media organizations are asked to personally examine all work. (May 11, 2013)

中宣部：明天是汶川地震五周年，请各媒体严格按此前下发的有关报道要求把好关，要坚持正面报道，不作负面炒作，不作对所谓后遗症的反思，加强对评论的把关，请各媒体主要领导亲自把关工作。

The “aftereffects” of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which claimed about 70,000 lives, likely refers to concerns that dams and reservoirs have caused seismic activity. Zhang Hongtao, chief engineer of the Ministry of Land and Resources, called the 2010 mudslide in Gansu Province an “aftereffect” of geological changes wrought by the Wenchuan earthquake [zh]. The Zipingpu Reservoir may have contributed to the 2008 quake, as well as the 6.6 magnitude quake that hit Sichuan last month.

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: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, 2013 Sichuan earthquake, censorship, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, Wenchuan
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