As of March 6, the following search terms are blocked on Sina Weibo (not including the “search for user” function).
– Changchun + ban (长春+禁令): Following the tragic murder of a two-month-old boy in Changchun, Jilin Province, a censorship notice to local media leaked on Weibo. Tea Leaf Nation has reported the story and translated the notice.
– Changchun + reporting requirements (长春+报道要求)
– succeed (接班)
– Wen Jiabao + leave office (温家宝+卸任)
– Wen + ten years (温+十年)
– govern + ten years (执政+十年)
– see off the god Wen (送温神)
– the god of plague (瘟神): “The god of plague” (瘟神 wēnshén) sounds the same as “the god Wen” (温神).
– Commun-x Party (X产党): The letter X substitutes for the first character in “Communist Party” (共产党 Gòngchǎndǎng). Other sarcastic references to the Party, such as “Commu-kidding Party” (哄产党 Hòngchǎndǎng) and “Commun-dam Party” (垬产党 Hóngchǎndǎng), are already blocked.
Retested: one-party dictatorship (一党独裁): “Dictatorship” (独裁) was recently unblocked.
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.
