Despite the blocking of Twitter, Chinese politically-active tweeters are still tweeting away. The upcoming 60th anniversary of the PRC is a hot topic. Here are selected tweets on that topic and more, translated by CDT:
* Overseas, the significance of Twitter lies in its use as a tool to chat and kill time; here at home, Twitter indicates how computer savvy a person is and whether he believes in freedom.
* Hey, quick! Read this news: On the 22nd, Beijing will again raise the national security level. The “three lines of defense” level that was held during the Olympics is coming back. http://bit.ly/iS3ys
* The National Day celebrations are being celebrated as if everyone were attempting to overthrow the government. The party state is so nervous even the martians are envious: look, those earthlings are raising guns to celebrate their National Day, there are even three lines of defense!
* Since our government is upside-down, the following unbearable events can occur: turning a funeral into a wedding, like the post-5.12 earthquake propaganda and memorializing; at the same time, turning a wedding into a funeral, like the so-called 60th anniversary of the National Day.
[Image courtesy of Global Voices Online]
* Ai Weiwei received cold treatment at the Jin Niu Public Securities Bureau. He sat in a very nice lobby and sang a few hours worth of karaoke. The officers inside couldn’t stand it, and one by one they requested to be dispatched out in order to escape being in the police station.
* People’s Daily conclusively stated: “After implementing measures to add iodine to salt, Chinese children’s IQs have increased by 12 points overall.” // If people’s intelligence levels really were to increase, People’s Daily would probably have disappeared long ago.
* On this day twenty years ago, these were the aspirations of a Peking University student: to strengthen the country, and to unceasingly struggle for democracy. These student’s aspirations, 10 years ago: to establish a Chinese Microsoft, and to surpass Bill Gates. Today, these student’s aspirations have changed once again: to have his own apartment in Beijing.
* When Chen Liangyu was in prison, Xi Jinping was sent to Shanghai and criticized the Shanghai cadres: “Talking to the new social class, you can’t find their language; talking to the poor masses, you don’t know the right thing to say; talking to the young students, you can’t get them to listen; talking to the senior comrades, they turn you away.”
* According to a Guangming Daily report, an academic from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Beijing Telecommunications University President Fang Binxing expressed at August 10th’s “First Session of the Chinese Internet Governance and Law Forum” that in regards to promoting information security, the time was already ripe to implement an online real name registration system. They stated that the system should be widely popularized and quickly put into practice.
What is the meaning of this so-called “information security”?* A: Do you know TaoTao’s [Hu Jintao’s] astrological sign? B: River Crab [Cancer]
* “One day, will there be legislation to make climbing the Great Firewall a crime? ”
Do they have that many jails?* Wu Hao [the deputy director of Yunnan’s provincial propaganda bureau]: Many old leaders with rich political experience have exhorted me: do not care about what’s on the Internet, you must not pay it any attention, it won’t affect you one bit. It’s a bunch of clamor; don’t mind it. All this commotion, and then you’re sapped of your energy. The more you feel like respecting it, responding to it, making sense of it, the more likely it will be for it to madly rush over and bite you. This is the Internet; these are Netizens.
