Word of the Week: Great Chinese LAN

Word of the Week: Great Chinese LAN

The Word of the Week comes from the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China’s online “resistance discourse,” used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness.

大中华局域网 (Dà Zhōnghuá Júyùwǎng): Great Chinese LAN

The filtered, monitored version of the Internet available in China.

A local area network (LAN) is a computer network covering a small geographic area, like a home or office. Computers in the LAN can share files and other information. A network administrator oversees activity.

Similarly, the Internet in China operates in many ways separately from the rest of the world. Major services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google are blocked, while home-grown services such as Weibo, Renren, andBaidu take their place. These Chinese web services monitor, filter, and censor content at the behest of the Chinese government.

See also Chinternet and Great Firewall of China.

Example of “Great Chinese LAN”:

Leidigagaxiaohaha (@雷帝gaga笑哈哈): When Google was blocked the idiots said we have Baidu, and Google has “wheels”* and should be blocked. Then when Google ScholarDropbox, and Gmail were blocked—tools which the global scientific community depend on—the idiots told us to spend a little on a VPN and quit whining. Now all the VPNs are dead, but don’t worry, the idiots always have something to say. In the future, the Great Chinese LAN will be more restricted than you can imagine, and the pile of censored content will only grow, because the Party takes care of everything that doesn’t obey its rules. (January 26, 2015)

以前google被封时傻逼们说有百度,google有轮子,该封;后来google学术dropbox和gmail这些和世界科研生产力密切相关的都被封了,傻逼们说花点钱用vpn别抱怨;现在vpn全死了,但放心,傻逼们永远有话说。大中华局域网未来一定比能想像的更封闭,禁掉的消失的一定会越来越多,因为党专治各种不服。 [Chinese]

*Falun Gong, literally “Dharma Wheel Practice.”

草泥马-green

Want to learn more subversive netizen slang? Check out Decoding the Chinese Internet: A Glossary of Political Slang. Available for $2.99 in the Kindle, Google Play, and iTunes stores. All proceeds from the sale of this eBook support China Digital Times.

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