Chinese internet users are taking issue with a recent announcement that the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and Ministry of Education are trying to standardize online speech by cracking down on the use of “irregular and uncivilized language and text” appearing on the homepages, trending search lists, and suggested content sections of major online platforms. Such verboten speech includes variant or homophonic Chinese characters, abbreviations, online slang, “bad” memes, and phrases whose meaning seems obscure.
An October 11 Weibo post from The Paper (a digital newspaper owned and operated by state-owned Shanghai United Media Group) about the CAC’s latest campaign elicited an outpouring of comments from Chinese netizens. Many blamed government censors and large online platforms for censoring so many words and phrases that ordinary internet users have no choice but to turn to abbreviations, obscure language, variant characters, and homophones in order to express themselves online. “As the number of words we’re allowed to say shrinks, the volume of online slang expands,” commented one Weibo user. “It’s not clear what their underlying logic is—they just keep blindly banning things.” Another wrote: “Want to hazard a guess as to why jargon, bad memes, and obscure expressions proliferate?”
By October 14, comment filtering had been activated for The Paper’s Weibo post, and many of the comments under it disappeared. Numerous Weibo users noted the irony of censoring comments about censoring slang that itself arose as a response to online censorship. CDT Chinese editors have archived some of the now-deleted Weibo comments, a selection of which are translated below:
-孤卷残云：I think the official media ought to be banned from creating “bad memes”! The [euphemism] “malicious requests for unpaid wages” is one example.
迪南美：There are too many “sensitive words,” so we use homophones instead.
鸉鵗：Those words were invented to avoid using censored words.
恋枫居士：Why don’t you first make the various platform censors’ lists of blocked words public?
卡铱诺特：You don’t want to hear meaningful online speech.
双椒麻辣鱼头：Cut down on the number of banned words, and you’ll see an increase in the number of people who can speak properly.
大二笨WH：The point is that we want to speak properly, but you won’t let us!
库特纳霍拉的骨头：Vloggers use all sorts of abbreviations and shorthand in their video subtitles. You think it’s just because they enjoy being inventive?
河南原神小王：Who are the ones really polluting the Chinese language? Just look at the subtitles for TV programs, the most popular form of media. Even in a simple expression like “I’m dying of laughter,” the word “dying” has to be placed in quotation marks. And you’re blaming the public? With your invisible red lines and pointless censorship, you’re the ones who have perverted language, and driven my mother tongue from the land where she was born.
慕有枝613：Wouldn’t the most effective solution be to get rid of lists of “sensitive words”?
玫瑰色的我___ : “Abbreviations and symbols are not my mother tongue.”
珊煜君_山芋君：The simplified Chinese internet isn’t suited to proper speech. [Chinese]
Many online commenters pointed out that when it comes to deploying jargon, euphemisms, weird slogans, and obscure verbiage, the Chinese government is second to none. A collage of iconic terms from the COVID pandemic was recently shared on X by Teacher Li’s account. At the center of the image below are three white-suited, masked pandemic workers wielding a megaphone, a COVID-test swab and test tube, and a portable backpack and nozzle for spraying disinfectant. The text at the center reads: “November 2019-December 2022. Dedicated to all those who lived through these three years—Farewell, 2022, and may we never meet again!” Among the hundreds of words and phrases in the image are some universally recognized terms such as COVID-19, Omicron, N95 masks, PCR test, Paxlovid, Molnupiravir, and others. There are also numerous China-specific terms, some of them euphemistic or steeped in bureaucratese: health codes, itinerary codes, location codes, lockdowns, semi-lockdowns, dynamic clearing, dynamic management, silent management, social clearing, field hospital, centralized quarantine, mass nucleic-acid testing, big whites, “no non-essential travel,” “no non-essential homecomings,” vegetable/fruit/medicine/care packages, and Lianhua Qingwen [a brand of herbal medicine].
The recently announced crackdown on slang and memes is but the latest iteration of the CAC’s long-running series of “Clear and Bright” campaigns, periodic clean-ups that take aim at various forms of online content and behavior deemed undesirable by government censors. Past campaigns have aimed to eliminate exploitative or violent content targeted at minors, cyberbullying and other forms of online violence, libelous content targeting businesses, gloomy or pessimistic sentiments during Lunar New Year, extremes of fandom and celebrity culture, blatant displays of wealth and conspicuous consumption, and more. In the background, of course, there is always the ongoing effort to suppress online discourse; limit freedom of speech; tamp down on criticism of Xi Jinping, the CCP, or the Party-state; and guide public opinion in a way that suits the government and the Party.
