As rumors of the mysterious Ferrari crash have been circulating in cyberspace, CDT staff conducted an independent test on Sina Weibo (on March 19th and 20th) and uncovered a brief list of banned search terms that are directly related to the crash:
“Ferrari” (法拉利), “Shangshu” (尚书, a government official title in Imperial China)*
“North 4th Ring (area) + car accident” (北四环+车祸; area of the crash), “Baofusi + car accident” (保福寺+车祸; location of the crash), “falali” (Chinese pronunciation of Ferrari, often used by netizens to bypass censorship)
* There have been rumors that the driver was the son of some high-ranked government official. “Shangshu” is used by many netizens as an code term for high official to bypass censorship.
CDT Chinese has launched a project to crowd-source 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.
