Whack-a-mole

June 3, 2009 2:03 AM

With the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on Thursday, China's ever-vigilant censors have stepped up the reach of the "Great Firewall," blocking Western sites like Twitter, Flickr, and (just one day after its launch) Microsoft's Bing. via

The blocked sites include Twitter, Flickr and Microsoft’s Hotmail, according to the Telegraph. FoxNews added The Huffington Post, Life Journal and the MSN Spaces blogging tool to the list. BBC viewers in China also saw their screens black out when the news service broadcast stories about the anniversary, and foreign news crews have been barred from filming in the square. Readers of the Financial Times and Economist magazine found stories about Tiananmen ripped from their pages. Authorities also plan to begin cracking down on unapproved internet cafes, according to reports from state media. via

posted by infini (54 comments total)

Let's see if I can still post from Beijing...
posted by michswiss at 2:18 AM on June 3

Yep. Still works. It's been a pain not having access to a number of services and sites that absolutely don't have any political overtones blocked for what ever reason. Hopefully, Metafilter isn't caught in the lock down and this all starts to clear up once the anniversary is past.
posted by michswiss at 2:21 AM on June 3

Huffington Post has been ongoing for a while in my experience - not that I'm a regular reader but following any links to it always meant using a proxy. I wonder if Microsoft were flattered that they apparently included Bing? (Actual touted reason was it played blocked YouTube videos inline). The Hotmail block was a bit of a surprise - the rest wouldn't be noticed by the vast majority of Chinese Internet users I presume, but Hotmail had a fair few followers (and did come back already I believe - don't use it myself).
There's never rally much discernible rhyme nor reason to the censorship and it always smacks of an over-staffed state security apparatus making work for itself to justify its no doubt obscene budget - the same people who can nick a student for the most obscure bit of online ranting but seem incapable of catching child slave-drivers or Mafiosi-style local officials.
posted by Abiezer at 2:57 AM on June 3

"Chinese Internet Maintenance Day" Heh.
posted by Abiezer at 3:01 AM on June 3

the same people who can nick a student for the most obscure bit of online ranting but seem incapable of catching child slave-drivers or Mafiosi-style local officials.

Students generally can't afford to pay bribes.
posted by Malor at 3:04 AM on June 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

As an added bonus, China's homegrown search engine is protected from competition.
posted by Hello Dad, I'm in Jail at 3:27 AM on June 3

Wow, that was fast. Blocking Bing like that?

Maybe this will all go away after June 4th. It had better, anyway.
posted by Michael Leung at 3:29 AM on June 3

As an added bonus, China's homegrown search engine is protected from competition.

You mean Google.cn? They contracted that one out.
posted by dunkadunc at 3:41 AM on June 3

Can we block Twitter here in the US? Please?
posted by orme at 3:50 AM on June 3 [6 favorites has favorites]

When visiting yesterday, security at the square was as tight as I've ever seen it (though I don't exactly frequent the place), with more than ten smiling uniformed police at every entrance point, in addition to the usual security guys. Lots of backup sat idly by just west of the Tiananmen Gate, should someone try lowering the flag before all the red-cap tourists could gather around.

Posted just a week ago: "Michael Anti: enjoy Twitter in China while it lasts".
posted by klue at 4:16 AM on June 3

You mean Google.cn? They contracted that one out.

Nope. Baidu. Safe searching for China.
posted by michswiss at 4:57 AM on June 3

orme: "Can we block Twitter here in the US? Please?"

We may have been too hasty in condemning totalitarianism.
posted by Joe Beese at 5:13 AM on June 3

Well, this is dumb. Everyone is going to want to know why all of their favorite web resources are down, all at once. And then someone in the next cubicle over is going to say, "Tienanmen Square," and what the Chinese authorities hoped no-one would think about today, everyone will be thinking about today, and they will not be thinking kind thoughts about the government. Not because of the tanks. But because they broke twitter.

And some of them are going to wonder if, perhaps, there's a better way to run the country than what they've got...

Can't fight the Goddess of Democracy forever. She is the wisest of those in heaven.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:15 AM on June 3

Everyone is going to want to know why all of their favorite web resources are down

They're not stupid, they already know. And, for the most part, probably don't care.
posted by aramaic at 5:19 AM on June 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

Here is a picture of tankman on baidu. The censorship software can't be that good.
posted by stavrogin at 5:19 AM on June 3

I've never been to China, but it was mentioned in one of my foreign policy classes that there's some ridiculous (yes, i know the country's huge) number of protests in China per day- 70 comes to mind.
posted by dunkadunc at 5:19 AM on June 3

Everyone is going to want to know why all of their favorite web resources are down, all at once. And then someone in the next cubicle over is going to say, "Tienanmen Square" "new company policy, probably".

At least that's how the youtube blockage was (and is) perceived where I work.
posted by klue at 5:24 AM on June 3

From the Goddess of Democracy Wikipedia page:

President George W. Bush dedicates the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C. on June 12, 2007 which includes a replica statue

Oh FFS.
posted by DU at 5:26 AM on June 3

You know what would be cool? A little banner web service available for any web site that says "This site is current unavailable in: " and has the names or flags of countries. If a few major sites were to put that on the top of every page for a coordinated week it might raise awareness. We'd just need to find test clients in China, Australia, and wherever else.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 5:26 AM on June 3 [6 favorites has favorites]

President George W. Bush dedicates the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C.

I would love to see a Victims of Capitalism Memorial. The Beehive Collective could design it.
posted by dunkadunc at 5:29 AM on June 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

Can't fight the Goddess of Democracy forever.

I worked with a lot of educated young whitecollar professional people in my office in China and all of them were very net savvy just like any American 20-something cubicle rat. They all knew how to avoid the firewalls. They'd all seen Tiananmen images both on the net and in the hip and super trendy artwork of 798. Honestly, none of them gave much of a shit about it. They used the proxies and back doors to shop, socially network, and surf porn. Anyway, my point is, the force the Chinese have to watch out for is not the Goddess of Democracy, but the Goddess of Individualist Consumer Materialism.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:38 AM on June 3 [2 favorites has favorites]

Pollomacho's experiences line up with my own. Capitalism and Democracy are not necessarily wedded at the hip like most Americans seem to believe.
posted by absalom at 5:53 AM on June 3 [2 favorites has favorites]

They're not stupid, they already know. And, for the most part, probably don't care.

Lost Memory of Tiananmen.

Young clerk let Tiananmen ad slip past censors.

Frontline Documentary on the Tank Man. In the last segment they show university kids the Tank Man photo and they have no idea what's up.

Of course lots of people are going to know what's up, but there are also plenty of people who apparently don't.
posted by chunking express at 5:58 AM on June 3

Guess they figured they'd blocked something people actually use this time. Hotmail unblocked again.
posted by klue at 6:06 AM on June 3

There was a BBC News article yesterday saying that almost nobody got killed and that the injured were rushed "by any means necessary" to the hospital. The article seems to have disappeared now, but it stank to high heaven.
posted by dunkadunc at 6:07 AM on June 3

Front page of nytimes.com has a link to some stories from 4 photographers who got the infamous man+tank image. Interesting stuff.
posted by inigo2 at 6:13 AM on June 3

Anyway, my point is, the force the Chinese have to watch out for is not the Goddess of Democracy, but the Goddess of Individualist Consumer Materialism.

Having just finished Jan Wong's Red China Blues, I was suprised to find this point in the final couple of chapters (hope that doesn't spoil it for anyone -- it isn't a new book). Where there was much complaint about the incredibly spoiled new generation -- not just because of the one-child policy but because of parents who lived through the Cultural Revolution -- this emerging middle-class, with its massive sense of entitlement, would not suffer gladly the kind of restrictions that had been placed on former generations. Tying democracy to the middle class is not a new point, but I hadn't thought of the effects of this "spoiled" generation in quite that way before.

(I also highly recommend the book. I thought I knew all about the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen before reading it. I most certainly did not.)
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:22 AM on June 3

BBC News: China's Tiananmen generation speaks
posted by almostwitty at 6:39 AM on June 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

Mr. Hu Jintao, tear down this firewall!
posted by Kabanos at 7:00 AM on June 3 [5 favorites has favorites]

In April, a New York Times article discussed several ways China's authoritarian regime is attempting to more sharply define and regulate the boundaries of their society. Among them, they're creating a vast database of China's 1.3 billion citizens and issuing uniform, computer-readable identity cards complete with color photos and embedded microchips.

The PRC is also continuing down the "character simplification" path laid out by the Kuomintang government, (which even pre-dated that regime.) More at these links.

(The written Chinese language contains about 50,000 characters, but the average person needs to know only about 3000-5000 to be literate. In the early years of the 20th century a push to secularize and modernize China resulted in a movement to simplify the written language to increase literacy in the population. The PRC released two documents in the 1950's and '60's, intended to create easier linguistic standards, which are in some ways comparable in structure and intention to Orwell's "Newspeak". Perhaps they feel that limiting their citizens' ability to express certain concepts or show creativity will curtail rebellion.)

A standardized list of approximately 8,000 characters will be released later this year for people to use in everyday life, including those acceptable for use in children's names. Yes, the PRC is attempting to eliminate unique or unusual names, which seem to be viewed by them as yet another normative threat.

Someone should teach the PRC about King Canute. I keep wondering how much inconvenience their people will put up with before they cry "Enough!"

Some additional fun facts from that article:

* 100 surnames already cover 85% of China’s population; while 70,000 surnames cover 90% of Americans.

* At last count, there were more than 92 million "Wang"s in China, (first MeFite to make a joke about that gets a cookie,) 91 million "Li"s and 86 million "Zhang"s. Also, there are nearly enough Chinese named "Zhang Wei" to populate the city of Pittsburgh.
posted by zarq at 7:10 AM on June 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

Oh, those Chinese and their internets.
posted by kldickson at 7:11 AM on June 3

So China is totalitarian, then? Hm.
posted by grubi at 7:21 AM on June 3

From the BBC article: Our textbooks do not include topics like this...I was angry and upset...I think the government should tell the truth...Hiding the truth wouldn't solve problems.

Sadly, it would appear it does, at least from the government's perspective. For the one person who finds out, how many do not? Nine, ninety-nine, nine hundred ninety-nine?
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:31 AM on June 3

zarq: I humbly refer you to this comment for the best wang joke on MeFi.
posted by MuffinMan at 7:37 AM on June 3

Between this and the North Korea thread below, I am starting to have some not so friendly feelings toward China.
posted by adamdschneider at 7:50 AM on June 3

I worked with a lot of educated young whitecollar professional people in my office in China and all of them were very net savvy just like any American 20-something cubicle rat. They all knew how to avoid the firewalls. They'd all seen Tiananmen images both on the net and in the hip and super trendy artwork of 798.

Do you really think that an "educated young white collar professional" is a good representation of the average Chinese person? Most middle class people in the U.S. either are white collar or make as much money as a white collar worker. So if you talked to the average white collar cube dweller you'd probably have a pretty good idea about what the average American life was like.

But while I don't know how the income distribution actually works, I would imagine that there's a huge number of people who are peasants or work construction and crappy jobs or work in the enormous number of "low cost labor" factories in China. Is Chinese consumerism really working well for them?

That's the thing. The white collar professionals aren't "the masses", they are the elites. They're worried about what would happen if China became democratic. Because a democratic government would probably care less about what they wanted and worry much more about how poor people (the vast bulk of the voters) are being treated. Just look at Jackie Chan's comments a couple months ago about how Hong Kong and Taiwan were 'chaotic' and how he thought democracy might not be a good idea for China. That's how a lot of "middle class" people feel now, but those people don't make up the majority of who would be voting.

It's also interesting how you hear reports who talk about these rich or middle class city dwellers and how they feel about the future of China, but rarely do reporters go and talk to peasants, factory workers, etc.
posted by delmoi at 8:03 AM on June 3

The PRC is also continuing down the "character simplification" path laid out by the Kuomintang government, (which even pre-dated that regime.) More at these links.

_{The written Chinese language contains about 50,000 characters, but the average person needs to know only about 3000-5000 to be literate. In the early years of the 20th century a push to secularize and modernize China resulted in a movement to simplify the written language to increase literacy in the population.}

That's idiotic. Character simplification only means cutting down the number of strokes it takes to draw a character. If you were listening to someone read Chinese, you would have no idea if the characters were simplified or traditional. It would be like simplifying the spelling of English words.

The language reforms mostly involved making two-character words: so for example one word for "compose" (a word I picked arbitrarily) in Chinese is Zhuan4 Xie3 but both Zhuan and Xie mean write or compose on their own
posted by delmoi at 8:13 AM on June 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

Anyway, my point is, the force the Chinese have to watch out for is not the Goddess of Democracy, but the Goddess of Individualist Consumer Materialism.
I very much agree. Killed that day along with the many ordinary citizens was a great deal of enthusiasm for continuing the work of modernising the nation and "building New China." Although civic activism survived and revived the chilling effect was unavoidable and the cynicism or apathy that greeted subsequent official campaigns like the Three Represents or Eight Virtues and Eight Shames highlighted the dilemma that the state has done so much to exacerbate. The ongoing endemic rural resistance often draws on more traditional strategies of peasant resistance even as it appropriates the language of rights (now widely understood here) but again the lack of any public means for redress (the petition system is broken) and harsh suppression push this towards intermittent explosions of violent confrontation. Unfortunately, the state or its local agents and proxies are well equipped to handle these piecemeal, but this "whack-a-mole" (to borrow our post title) approach of course just leaves all the underlying causes simmering.
zarq - while of course new technology brings its own set of issues, I think you're making too much of the new ID card scheme. China is not the totalitarian state it was in technologically cruder times, when every aspect of your life up to and including permission to marry might be controlled by the collective (village or work unit) you belonged to, and the new cards will no doubt be aimed as much at facilitating delivery of welfare services as much as enhancing control. Similarly, the continued simplification of the language strikes me more as bureaucrats failing to avoid the temptation to tinker than a coherent Orwellian strategy. Even if it were the latter, I have boundless faith in the vibrancy of Chinese vernacular culture and they really would be pissing in the wind.
Sadly, it would appear it does, at least from the government's perspective. For the one person who finds out, how many do not? Nine, ninety-nine, nine hundred ninety-nine?
This I agree with too. There's healthy scepticism aplenty about official accounts, but ultimately the lack of any opportunity for public recollection and debate does impoverish and makes what discourse there is at best cryptic and obscure to those who didn't live through the experiences. One of the dark ironies of this was the incident a year or two ago when a newspaper in Chengdu accepted a personal ad saluting the "resolute mother of 6-4 (i.e. June 4)" - a reference to the group of bereave parents who sought to keep the memory of their murdered children alive and apparently accepted for publication because the young person on the phone at the paper's ad department was ignorant of the reference.
posted by Abiezer at 8:29 AM on June 3

The language reforms mostly involved making two-character words: so for example one word for "compose" (a word I picked arbitrarily) in Chinese is Zhuan4 Xie3 but both Zhuan and Xie mean write or compose on their own.

My understanding (and I'm not a Chinese speaker, so feel free to refute what I say,) is that by removing the pictography underlying each character (which in many cases symbolized etymology and phonetics,) the PRC used simplification to further its political agenda, and alter interpretation of classic texts. For example, the depiction of a king as a wise sage has been replaced with more mundane imagery, that of soil.

Abstractly touched on here. Discussed directly here.
posted by zarq at 8:44 AM on June 3

If you were listening to someone read Chinese, you would have no idea if the characters were simplified or traditional.

Yes. This is why I mentioned literacy several times. Orthography matters.
posted by zarq at 8:46 AM on June 3

MuffinMan, great story! :)
posted by zarq at 8:47 AM on June 3

Do you really think that an "educated young white collar professional" is a good representation of the average Chinese person?

Average Chinese person, no. Average Chinese internet user, certainly. The masses of Chinese don't have running water, much less high-speed internet, so why would they enter into a conversation about the Great Firewall? Incidentally, the masses also were not the people out on Tiananmen square 20 years ago either.

Is Chinese consumerism really working well for them?

Rather than working in a factory or construction site they would mostly be scraping by on a "collectivized" subsistance farm (resembling the same peasant existance their ancestors had under some petty feudal lord on the same piece of land) on the edge of an ever growing mile high, 1000 mile wide ridge of yellow gobi dust. So, I suppose the answer is sort of relative.
posted by Pollomacho at 8:56 AM on June 3

The great Tiananmen taboo: It is 20 years since students and lecturers filled Tiananmen Square, demanding democracy, only to be crushed by tanks and fired on by the Chinese army. Banned novelist Ma Jian, who was there at the protests, returned to Beijing to find a country desperate to erase all memories of the thousands of innocent lives lost
posted by homunculus at 9:09 AM on June 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

...the new cards will no doubt be aimed as much at facilitating delivery of welfare services as much as enhancing control.

True. That's definitely an aspect of the cards which would be promising. Lord knows the country's poor could use better access to health care, basic services and education.

Similarly, the continued simplification of the language strikes me more as bureaucrats failing to avoid the temptation to tinker than a coherent Orwellian strategy. Even if it were the latter, I have boundless faith in the vibrancy of Chinese vernacular culture and they really would be pissing in the wind.

Fair enough. As I said above, I don't speak the language and don't live there, so I'm perfectly willing to bow to your more knowledgeable authority. :) (I have a friend living just outside of Shanghai and three others in or near Hong Kong, (that's one in the NT, two in the city,) so most of what I learn is second hand.)
posted by zarq at 9:13 AM on June 3

Incidentally, the masses also were not the people out on Tiananmen square 20 years ago either.
This I would pick you up on, Pollomacho. The protests spread nation-wide and amongst ordinary workers, and indeed it's been argued that it was when the workers started getting involved that the panic button got hit. Noticed the last man in prison for "hooliganism" in 1989 (Liu Zhihua 刘智华, he helped organise a strike) only got let out earlier this year.
posted by Abiezer at 9:13 AM on June 3

Yes, the PRC is attempting to eliminate unique or unusual names, which seem to be viewed by them as yet another normative threat.


Japan does this as well. I don't think it's a matter of thought control as much as a technical issue - if one can pick from the 50,000 characters that ever existed (and most of them are archaic, variants or generally never used) for a child's name it'll be a bureaucratic nightmare since a lot of them can't be entered into a computer system.
posted by monocot at 9:52 AM on June 3

Just read this and seems I was wrong about Hotmail being widely used other than to sign up for an MSN account, though it has come back while other sites recently blocked remain inaccessible.
posted by Abiezer at 9:57 AM on June 3

including those acceptable for use in children's names. Yes, the PRC is attempting to eliminate unique or unusual names, which seem to be viewed by them as yet another normative threat.

The PRC joins Sweden, Germany (I think here they even forbid hyphenated last names), Denmark, New Zealand and other countries in this regard. I can't really see why anyone would get outraged over it.
posted by cmonkey at 10:00 AM on June 3

about how Hong Kong and Taiwan were 'chaotic' and how he thought democracy might not be a good idea for China

Dunno about HK but Greatest Parliament Fights of All Time.

The protests spread nation-wide and amongst ordinary workers

Also, from what I gather the troops from barracks outside the city actually had to battle through blockaded intersections before they got to the protestors proper who were occupying the square.

Of course, China only has an internet usage rate of 25% or less so it is true the masses aren't even affected by these censorship moves.

Can't fight the Goddess of Democracy forever. She is the wisest of those in heaven.
pösted by Slap*Happy at 5:15 AM on June 3 [+] [!]

eponymous!

As for character simplification, I think there was something of a Orwellian element to it in making the old writings less readable (and not in limiting the expressiveness of the modern language).

Having come to the Chinese characters through the modernized Japanese I can say that the traditional characters certainly needed modernization, but I think the PRC characters went a bit overboard in the simplification since with computers it doesn't really matter how many strokes are in a character, eg. 漢語 vs 汉语. The 汉 simplification obliterated the history of the character, while 语 is a nice shortcut for writing but rather unnecessary for reading and actually complicates the teaching process, requiring students to learn the alternate radical for 言.
posted by @troy at 10:15 AM on June 3

"I've never been to China, but it was mentioned in one of my foreign policy classes that there's some ridiculous (yes, i know the country's huge) number of protests in China per day- 70 comes to mind."

If this really a large number? I'd imagine if you start digging that there are tens of protests per day in Canada every day. From long standing disputes like at the Akwesasne reserve to minor transitory events at universities.

"Frontline Documentary on the Tank Man. In the last segment they show university kids the Tank Man photo and they have no idea what's up"

I'm trying to think of a iconic photograph from 20 years ago anywhere that college students would recognize. Tank man has risen to internet meme but how about the Kent State shooting photo. I wonder how many American college students would know what it's about?

"A standardized list of approximately 8,000 characters will be released later this year for people to use in everyday life, including those acceptable for use in children's names. Yes, the PRC is attempting to eliminate unique or unusual names, which seem to be viewed by them as yet another normative threat. "

Whatever the motivation it is not unusual for countries to limit baby names to a list.
posted by Mitheral at 10:17 AM on June 3

I wonder how many American college students would know what it's about?

Chances are they've at least seen it in the history books, thanks to the America-hating leftists who control the educational system.

But I think asking the question is the tricky bit, as after seeing Tank Man I tried to ask some Chinese (immigrants for getting their post-grad) co-workers in their 30s here in California about it, and they seemed a bit squirrelly to me, not something they wanted to talk about in public.
posted by @troy at 10:29 AM on June 3

Mitheral, I agree it could just be that the kids are ignorant like regular ass kids are ignorant. Still, I think there is more to it then that. I'm willing to bet that most Chinese kids would be able to identify the much older photos of the South Vietnam soldier executing a Viet Cong, or a naked girl running after the US dropped napalm on her village, or a monk self-immolating himself, etc. I think those photos are just as iconic as the Tank Man photo. The Kent State photo is famous, but is it as famous as these? People should be aware of the Tank Man photo, even if they are barely aware of what happened at Tiananmen Square.
posted by chunking express at 10:32 AM on June 3

My understanding (and I'm not a Chinese speaker, so feel free to refute what I say,) is that by removing the pictography underlying each character (which in many cases symbolized etymology and phonetics,) the PRC used simplification to further its political agenda, and alter interpretation of classic texts.

That's ridiculous. There is nothing "political" in the structure of Chinese characters any more then there is anything "political" in the spelling of English words. If you simplified the spelling, it might obscure the origin (i.e. is this word from Latin or German or Arabic?) of the words, but it wouldn't change the everyday meaning.

the depiction of a king as a wise sage has been replaced with more mundane imagery, that of soil.

There isn't any "imagery" in Chinese characters, except for the very simplest ones (like for person). Other characters are composed from simple characters, and this true in traditional and simplified characters. In most simplified characters, the structure is the same but the 'complex' portion gets replaced with a simplified radical. So if two characters have the same radical in traditional Chinese, they'll have the same radical in simplified Chinese as well. But the very common words get replaced entirely (like the measure word "ge")

Yes. This is why I mentioned literacy several times. Orthography matters.

Matters to whom? Are you saying there are some ideas that can only be expressed in Chinese in writing? And that those same ideas are now expressible in Taiwan, which uses traditional characters, but that they don't make any sense when spoken or when written in simplified Chinese?

And that the government was so crafty they were able to figure out in advance what those ideas might be and alter the language so that they couldn't be expressed?

That's pretty absurd.

The point is. If you can say it in Chinese, you can write it in Chinese, regardless of what characters you're using. There is no "political" motive for changing the characters, and there is no way that you could alter a language at a character level to make certain ideas inexpressible. It does make writing Chinese much quicker.

Average Chinese person, no. Average Chinese internet user, certainly. The masses of Chinese don't have running water, much less high-speed internet, so why would they enter into a conversation about the Great Firewall? Incidentally, the masses also were not the people out on Tiananmen square 20 years ago either.

I didn't know you needed "high speed" Internet to use twitter. Look at the stories about Internet use in Africa, or homeless Americans with laptops. Lots of impoverished people are getting online these days. It doesn't really cost much. 25% is over 300 million people.
posted by delmoi at 2:55 PM on June 3

China's New Mandatory Censorware Creates Big Security Flaws
posted by homunculus at 12:21 PM on June 12