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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Dear Nameless Censor, I know you possess enormous power but you have no right to delete what I write, and you have no right to intrude into my life. Most importantly, you have no right to deprive me of my freedom of speech, because freedom of speech is my inviolable constitutional right.

I know that in this country, at this time, you are far more powerful than me–I am merely an ordinary citizen, a writer who writes for a living, while you, a nameless censor, have the power to push me off a cliff with just one phone call.

Still, I am writing you this letter because I believe your awesome powers are only temporary. You can delete my words, you can delete my name but you cannot snatch the pen from my hand. In the years to come this pen of mine will fight a long war of resistance, and continue to write for as long as it takes for me to see the light of a new dawn. I believe you will not be able to hide in the shadows forever because the light of a new dawn will also expose the place where you are hiding. Dear Nameless Censor, when that time comes, the whole world will know who you are. [Source]

Read more by and about Murong Xuecun via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet censorship, Murong Xuecun, weibo
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Not long ago, scholar Zhang Xuezhong, Xiao Xuehui, Song Shinan and lawyer Si Weijiang all saw their Weibo accounts deleted. They each had large numbers of followers, who spread their words to an even wider audience. But all of a sudden their names have disappeared. Nobody knows why, or who ordered it, but we all know that a new round of a censorship campaign has commenced. As in 1957, 1966 and 1989, Chinese intellectuals are feeling more or less the same fear as one does before an approaching mountain storm: the scariest thing of all is not being silenced or being sent to prison; it is the sense of powerlessness and uncertainty about what comes next. There is no procedure, no standard, and not a single explanation. It’s as if you are walking into a minefield blindfolded. Not knowing where the mines are buried, you don’t know when you will be blasted to pieces.

Two days later, at 10pm on 11 May, my Weibo accounts with Sina, Tencent, NetEase, and Sohu were deleted simultaneously. When the web staff from these sites got in touch with me several minutes later, they told me more or less the same story: they were following an order from a “superior department”, whose identity they could not reveal because of a confidentiality agreement. In fact, such departments are as numerous as hairs on an ox: State Council Information Office, State Internet Information Office, Propaganda Department, Public Security Bureau, the secretary of a dignitary … Almost every department and dignitary can order internet companies to delete information and accounts while they themselves hide in the dark. Seeing speeches that trigger their ire, they can make them disappear for ever by simply picking up the telephone receiver.

I am mentally prepared for such things to happen, but when they do, I still feel dismayed and angry. I am a “big V” [verified user] on Weibo, possessing over 8.5m followers across the four web portals, and 3.96m in Sina alone. In a period of over three years, I had posted more than 1,900 Weibo messages totalling more than 200,000 words, each written with deliberation and care. In a split second, however, they were all brought to naught. [Source]

Read more by and about Murong Xuecun via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet censorship, Murong Xuecun, weibo
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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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“Peace” (@鸟人与鱼)

The death of 22-year-old Yuan Liya, who fell from the Jingwen shopping center on May 3, has been deemed a suicide by the Beijing police. In disbelief, hundreds protested last week calling for the surveillance footage of Yuan’s final moments to be released. But even that has not quieted doubts that Yuan took her own life. Prior to the release of the footage, a 28-year-old woman was arrested for spreading a rumor that Yuan was gang-raped by security guards, which spread on Weibo. The official site of Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau announced that it had been proved that the girl from Anhui had “committed suicide” and “the family offers no disagreement.”

In response to the official verdict, seasoned blogger @琢磨先生 started a “non-suicide vow” campaign on Weibo:

@琢磨先生: [Non-Suicide Vow] I am Mr. Zhuomo. I will never commit suicide. If I should die in any type of accident, it is homicide, and the police should investigate thoroughly. Please repost this and make your own vow, lest you are “suicided.”

【不会自杀承诺保证书】我是琢磨先生，我绝对不会自杀。将来如果我出任何意外，都是他杀，请警方务必彻查。转发本微博并做出你的承诺，以防“被自杀”。

[original post]

As of May 13 at 5:15 p.m. EST, this weibo has been reposted 33,103 times and received 11,653 comments. There is also a Non-Suicide Vow Weibo discussion page.

Through these vows, netizens are trying to prevent being “suicided”–having their murder written off as suicide by the authorities.

This is not the first time such pledges have appeared. Activist Li Wangyang was found hanging in his hospital room last year. 20 years in jail took a severe toll on Li’s health, but those close to him doubted the official ruling of his death as a suicide. After Li’s death, activists including the likes of Hu Jia and Wang Lihong declared that they would never commit suicide, no matter what situation they found themselves in.

CDT Chinese has collected a number of vows:

@鸟人与鱼: I am Birdman-and-fish (鸟人与鱼). I will never commit suicide. If I should die in any type of accident, it is homicide, and the police should investigate thoroughly. Please repost this and make your own vow, lest you are “suicided.” @琢磨先生

【不会自杀承诺保证书】我是鸟人与鱼，我绝对不会自杀。将来如果我出任何意外，都是他杀，请警方务必彻查。转发本微博并做出你的承诺，以防“被自杀”。@琢磨先生

@天使向莉: I am Xiangli. I promise that I will never commit suicide. I am outgoing and positive. My regular activities, such as buying soy sauce, taking cold showers, and doing sit-ups, would not cause my death. I have signed a power of attorney (POA) with Attorney Liang Xiaojun (@梁小军律师) and Attorney Chen Jiangang (@律师陈建刚). From the date of signing the POA, no one, including myself, my family, and other relevant and non-relevant persons, has the right to terminate the agreement.

我是向莉，我在此承诺，我绝不会自杀。本人性格开朗，积极向上，打酱油凉水澡仰卧起坐等常规项目均不至于致命。本人已签写委托函至@梁小军律师 @律师陈建刚 处，自函签订之日起，本人及家人及相关、无关人等，均无权更换、解聘律师。

@折腾画笔: #nonsuicidevow Though I occasionally feel depressed, I promise I will never cut off my future by committing suicide. I have no tangled romances, and no tendency towards world-weariness. I am striving to learn traditional arts from all across China. Hang gliding, parachuting, riding a hot air balloon, deep-sea diving, and traversing Siberia are all on my list. I also want to circumnavigate the globe. I absolutely love life.

#不自杀承诺# 本人虽偶有抑郁，但承诺绝不自断前程。无情感纠葛，无厌世倾向，现正积极努力在祖国各地学习传统文化遗产技艺。滑翔翼、降落伞、热气球、深海潜水、穿越西伯利亚等，均被排上行程。有生之年还想环行世界，绝对爱惜生命。

@周泽律师: I just reposted the following two blogs. @无敌破壊王 promises he will never commit suicide and says, “If I should die in any type of ‘accident,’ it is homicide, and the police should investigate thoroughly;” @天使向莉 promises she would “never commit suicide,” and has signed a POA. What do they mean? We need to seriously discuss this topic: If they really did do that [commit suicide], would these vows and POAs have effect?

【不自杀承诺】刚转发两条的微博中，@无敌破壊王 承诺不会自杀，表示“将来如果我出任何意外，都是他杀，请警方务必彻查”；@天使向莉 也承诺“绝不会自杀”，还向律师出具了委托书。这到底怎么回事呢？严肃探讨：如果他们真那个了，这承诺及委托有效吗？

@徐子林不加V: I am Xu Zilin. I will never commit suicide. If I die in some unexpected way some day, it is homicide. The police should launch a thorough investigation. Please don’t say I have committed suicide. To those who are like me, please publish your own “non-suicide vows” preemptively and declare them to the world, lest you are suicided.

我是徐子林，我绝不会自杀的。如果我有一天被各种方式给弄死了，都一定是他杀。请警方彻底追查到底，请不要说我被自杀。那些和我一样绝不自杀的人，请提前为自己写下“不自杀保证书”，并昭告天下，以防被自杀。

@白眼狮子大老爷: [Non-Suicide Vow] I am Master White-Eyed Lion (白眼狮子大老爷). I solemnly swear that I will never commit suicide. If one day I disappear, swallow poison, jump off a building, drown in the ocean, or do anything else unexpected,  it is homicide, and the police should investigate thoroughly. A big case like this must be resolved! I believe in you, gentlemen of peace.

【不自杀承诺保证书】我是白眼狮子大老爷，我郑重承诺，我绝对不会自杀。将来如果我失踪，服毒，跳楼，跳海或者是出现其他方式的意外，都是他杀，请警方务必彻查。大案必破！我相信你 平安君

The official Beijing police Weibo account is called “Peaceful Beijing” (@平安北京).

@法西斯集中营-毅: [Non-Suicide Vow] Though I am not afraid of death, I do not want to die. Though I may not always succeed in the pressures of life, eking out my insignificant existence is still a small matter. No matter how hard life may be, I will never commit suicide. If I should die in any type of accident, it is homicide, and the police should investigate thoroughly. Life is short and time flies. I will be a good child who loves life.

【不自杀承诺保证书】本人虽然不怕死，但绝对不想死，忍辱负重可能做不出来，但苟且偷生对小弟来说小事一桩。再苦再艰难都绝对不会自杀，在此之前，不管出现什么意外，均为他杀，请有关部门务必彻查。人生苦短，光阴飞逝，做个爱惜生命的好孩纸~

@Vegas-babe: #Anhuigirljumpsoffbuilding [Non-Suicide Vow] I, Xiao Yin, testify that I will never commit suicide! Not even if I am raped by 100 shameless men, have no car, no home, no lover, no money to feed myself, go through 100 break-ups, and develop gynecological complications from AIDS. If I should die suddenly, it’s homicide! The relevant departments must not blithely conclude my case. May 10, 2013 More: http://t.cn/zT8Uh4o

#安徽女孩坠楼#【不自杀声明】本人小茵在此声明，本人在有生之年绝不自杀！即使被100名抠脚大叔轮X没车没房没人爱没钱吃饭失恋100次得了艾滋妇科炎症，亦不会自杀或自主性堕楼等~倘若横死均为他杀！有关部门请勿随便定义~特此声明，2013年5月10日 详情:http://t.cn/zT8Uh4o

@杨佩昌: I suggest that all young and beautiful single women who love life should testify openly on Weibo: under no circumstance will I ever choose to take my own life.

建议热爱生活、年轻漂亮且未婚的女士在微博上发表公开声明：本人在任何情况下都不会选择自杀这条道路。-这年头防着点好，免得万一被自杀。

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Junebug.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hu Jia, li wangyang, Netizen Voices, suicide, Wang Lihong, weibo, Yuan Liya
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Migrant Worker’s Death: 22-year-old Yuan Liya, who came to Beijing from Anhui Province, fell to her death on May 3 from the Jingwen Apparel shopping mall. While the Beijing police concluded that she committed suicide, hundreds protested on May 8 calling for a full account of her death. Many suspect she was sexually assaulted and thrown from the building where she worked. See also Sensitive Words updates from May 8 and May 9.

• Zhong Tao (钟涛): Head of Jingwen Apparel.
• Jing+wen (京+wen): Alternate writing of Jingwen (京温).
• Yuan Liya (袁莉亚): Alternate writing of Yuan Liya (袁利亚).

Two Weibo Accounts Suspended for “Intentionally Spreading Rumors”: Prominent law professor and activist He Bing (@何兵) can no longer post on Weibo after he reposted a weibo from “Xiaoshanjunzi” (@萧山君子) about the alleged 2009 murder of a Guizhou Province cadre by a young university graduate whose website was shut down [zh]. Xiaoshanjunzi’s account is currently inaccessible.
• He Bing (何兵)
• six-point statement (六点声明): He Bing responded to the suspension of his right to post on Weibo with a six-point statement [zh].

• seven don’t mentions* (七不讲): According to a directive leaked on Weibo, universities are being instructed not to allow lecturers to discuss “universal value, freedom of the press, a civil society, civic rights, historical mistakes committed by the Communist Party, elite cronyism, and an independent judiciary.”

* This post was edited to change the translation of 七不讲 to “seven don’t mentions.”

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: Anhui, Beijing, censorship, Guizhou, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Yuan Liya
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The AmazeNews story below was first posted on May 8 as part of the ongoing series Scenes from the Golden Age (盛世一景). CDT Chinese carries all AmazeNews posts (here).

On April 28, under the guise of a conference, the township government of Beiye, Pingshan County, Hebei Province arrested the chief and secretary of Mimishui Village. On April 29, a group of women from the village kneeled on the ground to beg Zhang Dongli for the release of the arrested village officials.

In the images, a group of female villagers are shown kneeling in front of Zhang. Some of them tug at his legs while they beg for the release of the detained officials. But Zhang Dongli is unfazed. His face remains expressionless as he stands with his hands behind his back and his nose in the air.

[via CDT Chinese]

According to Radio Free Asia [zh], the local government sold the villagers’ land over ten years ago to someone surnamed Su to build a sightseeing attraction. Since then, many villagers’ homes have been forcibly demolished.

Images of stoney-faced Zhang began to circulate on Weibo around May 6. Netizens have dubbed him “Brother Emperor” (皇帝哥). While a Weibo search for “Brother Emperor” only returns 750 results as of 4:15 p.m. EST, weibo from @拍客视线 and @获鹿县令 have together been reposted over 6500 times.

Translation by Wen Xin Liu.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: AmazeNews, forced demolitions, hebei, land rights, weibo
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Artillery in Beijing, May 9. (Weibo)

• Anhui girl (安徽女子): Yuan Liya, a poor young woman from central Anhui Province, died on May 3 after falling from the fourth floor of the wholesale apparel mall in Beijing where she worked. While the police have called it a suicide, Yuan’s family and fellow Anhui migrants suspect mall security guards raped her, and that she either jumped to escape them or was thrown off the building by her assailants. Hundreds protested in Beijing yesterday to demand a thorough investigation of Yuan’s case, drawing riot police onto the streets and rarely-seen helicopters into the air.

Deng Xiaoping’s Only Grandson Becomes County Head: Deng Zhuodi has become head of Pingguo County in the southwestern province of Guangxi. Some netizens suspect the younger Deng is a U.S. citizen. A graduate of the Duke University School of Law, Deng was accused of sexually harassing a female colleague in 2011. South China Morning Post, however, says Deng resurfaced in Chinese public life in 2010. Challenges to his citizenship are equally unsubstantiated.

• Deng Zhuodi+U.S. (邓卓棣+美国)
• Deng Zhuodi+sexual harassment (邓卓棣+性骚扰)
• Deng Zhuodi+red third generation (邓卓棣+红三代)

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: Anhui, Beijing, censorship, Deng Xiaoping, Deng Zhuodi, Guangxi, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Yuan Liya
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Yuan Liya (center) “jumped” to her death on May 3. (Weibo)

Around 4 a.m. on May 3, young Anhui migrant Yuan Liya fell to her death from the fourth floor of the Jingwen Wholesale Market in Beijing, where she worked. The Beijing authorities insist that she committed suicide and have refused requests by Yuan’s boyfriend and family to make public the Jingwen closed-circuit video of her fall.

This morning, migrants from Yuan’s home town protested in central Beijing, triggering a massive police presence. Photos of riot police on the streets and police helicopters circling the protesters have circulated on Weibo. Footage of the demonstration is available, for now, on Tencent [zh]. Read more about Yuan’s case and the protest from CDT Chinese [zh].

• Jing+Wen (京+温): For Jingwen Wholesale Market.
• Yuan Liya (袁利亚)
• Dahongmen (大红门): Yuan’s family have brought their case to the Dahongmen Market police station.
• South Third Ring [Road] (南三环): Location of Jingwen.
• Muxiyuan (木樨园): Street blocked by police.
• helicopter (直升机)

Update: More images from the protest and screenshots of propaganda directives have been added to the photo gallery below.

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: Anhui, Beijing, censorship, Internet censorship, migrant workers, Ministry of Truth, protests, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Yuan Liya
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The details of the almost two-decade-old case are sordid and murky. In 1995, Zhu Ling was a promising undergraduate at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University when she came down with a mysterious illness that was thought to be poisoning via thallium, a toxic element once used asrat poison. This finding soon led to a suspect: Sun Wei, a roommate of Zhu’s who happened to be one of the few undergraduates at Tsinghua to have access to thallium in a laboratory.

Most important for the politically minded Chinese netizen, Sun Wei was the granddaughter of a high-ranking official who was thought to be close to then-President Jiang Zemin. In 1997, Sun was detained by police for questioning for eight hours but not arrested. Soon after, the case was closed, and Sun reportedly fled to the U.S., where it’s rumored she’s married with kids (enterprising microbloggers have tried to keep tabs).

[...] Among the earliest actions was a highly unusual censorship decision directed at People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. On April 26, the paper’s official Sina Weibo microblogging account tweeted, as translated by the blog Offbeat China: “Zhu Ling is 40 years old now, completely paralyzed, almost blind and with the intelligence of a 6-year- old. What exactly happened 19 years ago? Who was behind the poisoning?”

[...] Then the tweet was deleted by Sina’s censors, along with tweets that quoted it, posted screen grabs or reposted it outright. About the same time, People’s Daily deleted its special online page devoted to Zhu Ling coverage. So, either People’s Daily or somebody above it decided that the paper didn’t need to devote any additional coverage to an issue that was becoming increasingly critical of the party.

Some netizens even set up an online petition on the White House’s official ‘We the People’ platform, asking Obama to deport Sun Wei. From David Bandurski at China Media Project:

The petition for the deportation of Sun Wei received more than 107,000 signatures by 8:30pm today. According to the terms and conditions of the service, the petition has now reached the required “signature threshold” (100,000 signatures within 30 days) and should receive a response from the White House.

[...] Users have predictably made light of the fact that Chinese have turned to an American petition site seeking justice that, some say, is impossible at home.

[...] Zhang Xian (张弦), a media professional in Hefei with more than 153,000 followers, wrote on Sina Weibo: “Hello, Comrade Obama, chairman of the National Office of Letters and Calls! Requests on the Zhu Ling case have already reached 100,000. We hope Chairman Obama answers the Chinese people for the sake of the autonomy of the Chinese people!”

CN ppl set up a new Weibo account for Obama: the officer of Central petitions office. Trending. twitter.com/MissXQ/status/…

— XQ (@MissXQ) May 8, 2013

The petitioning caught on. Besides the Zhu Ling case, netizens have also asked Obama to encourage the suspension of a PX Project near Kunming, Yunnan Province, which was the target of local protests last Saturday. More radical petitioners called for the US to “send troops to liberate Hong Kong“, while others hoped that it “will tofu curd official taste is sweet,namely the use of granulated sugar,brown sugar and other sweet condiments.”

The more serious White House petitions are just the latest efforts to turn to foreign authorities and news media as a last resort. From Yang Yingjie at Global Times:

Yuan Yulai, a Ningbo-based lawyer and active microblogger on Sina Weibo, told the Global Times Tuesday that the petitions to the White House were regarded the last straw when seeking justice after frustrations over official probes and assessments.

[…] Meanwhile, some petitioners unsatisfied with the way the authorities have dealt with their grievances also turn to UN missions and foreign embassies as well as overseas media.

[…] Yuan noted the move was aimed at pressuring the authorities at home in the hope the government could direct attention to their grievances and devote itself to providing remedies to their problems.

However, Zhang Yiwu, a professor of Chinese literature with Peking University, disagreed, calling it “irrational and more of a way to vent people’s frustrations than offering any practical help.”

[…] Last year, a petitioner surnamed Peng from Sichuan Province was sentenced to 18 months of re-education through labor punishment for appealing directly to a foreign embassy in China.

At Tea Leaf Nation, David Wertime recalled the trend’s online predecessors:

In early February of 2012, when China’s so-called Great Firewall of censorship temporarily lifted its block on Google Plus, Chinese Web users took advantage of the brief reprieve to flood President Obama’s re-election page with comments. More recently, in mid-March of this year, a well-known provocateur tweeted the results of an imaginary election on Sina Weibo, a micro-blogging service. Hundreds of users replied in surprisingly serious tones, with one estimating that true elections would not be held until 2033, another saying it would be “a thousand years” hence. That provocateur’s tweet, and the comments to it, were deleted in less than 24 hours.

One cannot interpret these instantiated movements as representing China writ large. Given the massive size of China’s social Web, even a tiny but determined minority can quickly make its presence felt on the American Internet. Even within these comparatively small groups, motivations vary; some White House petitioners wrote in rage, others in jest.

Nonetheless, it’s a valuable reminder of American soft power in the digital age. In China, the Letters and Visits Office is charged with accepting petitions from aggrieved citizens. But often, thugs known as “jiefang” intercept would-be petitioners from outside of Beijing, sometimes before they can even board a train headed for the capital. The contrast with the White House’s approach is jarring. As one Weibo user commented, “Going to the gates of the White House to petition may or may not be useful, but I know that going there to petition won’t get you in trouble.” Another wrote, “Too funny; but after I laughed, I felt like I’d never be able to slake my thirst.”

See also Ministry of Truth: White House Petition Goes Viral at CDT. Samuel Wade contributed to this post.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, corruption, judicial corruption, online petition, online public opinion, petitioners, weibo, White House, Zhu Ling
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Shanghai resident’s are protesting a new lithium ion battery factory.

Factory Protest Planned for Saturday: Chengdu netizens have been calling for residents to “take a walk” on Jiuyan Bridge tomorrow to protest the start of operations at the new Pengzhou Petrochemicals factory. Weibo about Pengzhou Petrochemicals have been deleted and blocked, while the Chengdu government has publicly stated that it has arrested netizens who have “disseminated rumors of protest.” On May 4th, 2008, residents protested the construction of the same factory.

Today, Weibo user Song Shinan posted that the authorities are requiring secondary school and university students to attend class on Saturday to keep them from protesting. Song’s account has since been deleted. Coincidentally, state media have also been covering the State Council Information Office’s “focused attack on rumor-mongering Weibo VIPs.”

• May Fourth+take a walk (5月4日+散步)
• May Fourth+demonstrate (5月4日+示威)

Shanghaiers Protest Battery Factory: Residents of Shanghai’s Songjiang district are protesting the construction of a lithium ion battery plant by Shanghai Guoxuan Electronics Ltd., fearing the manufacturing process will contaminate the water.

• Guoxuan (国轩)
• battery factory (电池厂)

Netizens Sleuth Poisoning Case: In 1994, then Tsinghua University student Zhu Ling was poisoned with thallium, most likely by her politically connected roommate. The bright, ambitious young woman suffered severe neurological damage. She is now paralyzed, nearly blind, and intellectually impaired. Netizens recently “reopened” her unsolved case on Weibo. Offbeat China looks at the history of case and its significance as a test of China’s rule of law, while Fei Chang Dao has tracked online censorship of netizen inquiry and demand for justice.

• Zhu Ling (朱令)
• Sun Wei (孙维): Zhu’s former roommate at Tsinghua.
• thallium poisoning (铊中毒)
• Tsinghua+poisoning (清华+中毒)
• Tsinghua+poison (清华+投毒)
• thallium (铊)

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 | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Chengdu, Chengdu PX, environmental protests, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, Sensitive Words Series, Shanghai, Songjiang factory protest, Tsinghua University, weibo
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The following deleted weibo was selected by CDT Chinese editors from FreeWeibo.

19 suspects have been arrested after 21 people died in clashes between Han Chinese and Uyghurs last week in Kashgar, the far western city in Xinjiang Province. The Chinese authorities call the incident an “act of terror,” comparing the attack on police officers to the Boston bombing. But locals say the fighting began when a young Uyghur was shot during an illegal home search.

Police harassment continues. In the deleted weibo below, “Tamerlane Dawa’er Maiti” shares a photo of an officer in a Uyghur woman’s living room, pointing to neat stack of books on the floor. The woman looks at her sandals and holds one finger in her fist. “Tamerlane” explains the situation:

帖木儿达瓦尔买提: This isn’t shaming, this is terrorizing! She faces an unknown fear.

这不是羞愧，这是惊悚！她面对的将是未知的恐惧

April 30, 2013 at 8:28 a.m.

Unfortunately, none of the book titles are visible. They could be banned books. Then again, the officer could just be using them as a tool of fear.

Via CDT Chinese.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Internet censorship, kashgar, Ministry of Truth, River Crab Archive, Uyghurs, weibo, Xinjiang
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To be sure, some of Mr. Obama’s jokes managed to cross the culture barrier just fine. Photoshopped images of the president sporting a set of bangs to mask his receding hairline required little in the way of translation in a country where leaders are renowned for adulterating their comb-overs with the liberal quantities of black hair dye.

But for most Chinese commenters, more noteworthy than the individual one-liners was the general air of self-assuredness Mr. Obama displayed in making fun of his own foibles and failures—a self-assuredness many said they wished was more evident in their own leaders.

[…] Interestingly, quite a few Chinese viewers focused their attention on the end of Mr. Obama’s speech, when he dispensed with the jokes to argue that public officials and the media “can do better” in living up to standards set by the first responders and others who helped in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and other recent challenges.

“In the end Obama also said ‘serve the people,’” one Sina Weibo user observed. “It sounded so natural coming from him.”

Obama’s speech can be viewed at WhiteHouse.gov.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, leaders, netizens' voices, serve the people, sina weibo, United States, weibo, White House
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As Tea Leaf Nation writes, however, these new regulations have not yet had a significant impact on the daily work of the Chinese media, as two major recent stories demonstrate:

[..T]he rule was only two days old when it was ostensibly broken by hundreds of journalists and media outlets. When Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong paper closely affiliated with the Chinese government, published (and then retracted) a story about Xi Jinping taking a taxi ride in Beijing, it quick went viral and almost everyone in the journalist community on Weibo retweeted or commented on the story.

User @老辣陈香 asked, “What direction does the wind blow? Right after SARFT announced the strengthening of regulations on news editorial online activities, Ta Kung Pao broke the news that Xi Jinping had taken a ride in a taxi cab, and then domestic media were all reposting the news. In a word, the rule was brazenly violated – SARFT, what are you gonna do?”

[...] Two days later, a 7.0-point earthquake hit Sichuan province, immediately gathering full attention of the country’s media outlets. A picture of some journalists resting in a pigsty in the disaster zone was widely circulated in social media, with commentators praising their dedication to the profession. It soon emerged that the journalists in the photo were from Tencent.com, one of the major Internet portals in China, and thus lacked proper authorization to conduct journalistic endeavors. Sun Hai (@孙海) pointed out in his microblog: “Tencent news is covering earthquake with original reporting … The ‘journalist permit’ now exists in name only.” At least 10 reporters from Tencent were sent to cover the earthquake, according to Tencent’s feature page which carried the words, “we are on the front line.”

While the tenacity and determination of China’s journalists may weaken the effectiveness of these regulations, the fact that they are being implemented now shows the limitations of prospects for reform under Xi Jinping, according to Sinostand:

So what’s the deal? Are these new leaders reformers or not? Obviously, it’s complicated, but you can make a pretty good prediction on the likelihood of a given reform just by establishing whether it threatens the Party’s absolute control over who educates the public, who holds any kind of political power, and which way the guns would face in the event of an uprising (AKA – Propaganda, Personnel, People’s Liberation Army).

[...] In some ways it may seem like the new government is more amenable to opening up the press. Xi has vowed to go after both “the tigers and the flies” (top leaders and low officials who are corrupt) and hinted that this involves more freedom for the press and the online public. But there will always be a cage over the press. If that cage gets bigger (and there’s been no meaningful indication that it actually will), it will be carefully designed to let reporters roam only in areas that serve the Party’s self-preserving interests. These new directives suggest that that the vetting process for those even allowed to roam in that cage is getting stricter.

So this is what we’ll need to get used to. Virtually everything outside the Three Ps is eligible for reform, and that’s good news. There’s still a lot of room for making China a better place within those confines. But the Three Ps will absolutely remain under complete Party control, barring some massive national movement that presents a crisis even greater than Tiananmen.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: foreign media, media conditions, media regulations, political reform, press freedom, weibo
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The “Nine Gentlemen”: Nine activists were arrested last week after demanding that public servants disclose their financial assets, including Zhao Changqing and human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi. Another protester, Li Wei, is missing, as activist Hu Jia explains:

@hu_jia: Li Wei is missing. No official documentation of his arrest has been received, as opposed to the other nine. RT @tengbiao: Yuan Dong, Zhang Baocheng, Ma Xinli, Hou Xin, Zhao Changqing, Ding Jiaxi, Wang Yonghong, Sun Hanhui, Li Wei, and Qi Yueying. However you count it, there are 10. The last two must have been detained as criminals. Were others arrested for calling for financial disclosure? #ninegentlemenoffinancialdisclosure

李蔚失踪，没有接到刑事拘留的法律文书。而其他九位都有。RT@tengbiao 袁冬、张宝成、马新立、候欣、赵常青、丁家喜、王永红、孙含会、李蔚、齐月英。怎麼算都是10個啊。後兩位應該也確定是被刑事拘留了。不知道還有沒有其他因為呼籲財產公示被刑拘的？#财产公示九君子

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) April 28, 2013

• financial disclosure+nine gentlemen (财产公示+九君子)
• Zhao Changqing (赵长青)
• Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜)

Yuan Dong, one of the “nine gentlemen” arrested after publicly calling on officials to disclose their financial assets. (@azurefoxlee)

“Terrorist” Attack in Xinjiang: 21 died last week in clashes between the police and ethnic Uyghurs in Kashgar, a prefecture-level town which borders Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The Chinese authorities and have accused the U.S. of a double standard for refusing to call this a “terrorist act.”

• Selibuya (色力布亚): The town in Kashgar Prefecture where the officers were killed.
• World Uyghur Congress (世维会)

Other:

• 25th anniversary (25周年): It is unclear why this is blocked. Reader suggestions are welcome.

Additionally, the following search terms have been blocked as of April 27.

Chengdu Environmental Protest: Chengdu netizens have objected to the construction of a petrochemical plant planned for Pengzhou, a town within the city limits. A number of netizens have suggested demonstrating against the project on May 4th, Youth Day, on Jiuyan Bridge, the site of May 4, 2008 protests against a p-Xylene (PX) plant in Pengzhou. On Weibo, the Chengdu authorities announced that they had arrested those calling for the demonstration, which they condemned as “inciting illegal assembly.”

• Chengdu PX project (成都PX项目)
• May 4th+Jiuyan Bridge+take a walk (5月4日+九眼桥+散步)
• Pengzhou+PX (彭州+PX)
• Pengzhou+petrochemicals (彭州+石化): retested

Other:

• Real Estate Party (地产党): A reference to the property owned by Party officials, both at home and abroad.

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 posts (April 27 and April 29).

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Chengdu, Chengdu PX, Ding Jiaxi, environmental protests, financial disclosure, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, protests, PX, Sensitive Words Series, Uyghurs, weibo, Xinjiang, Zhao Changqing
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