Why China Blocked Wikipedia in All Languages
May 21, 2019 10:46 AM   Subscribe

Hint: There’s a big anniversary coming up. The Chinese government has long been suspicious of Wikipedia. It’s been blocked in China intermittently since 2004, and the Chinese-language version has been blocked since June 2015. Now the government has gone even further. The Wikimedia Foundation released a statement on Friday announcing that it had determined that China blocked all versions of Wikipedia.

Why the rush to censor? June 4th will be the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

(Previously, on the 20th anniversary)(Previously, new photos of the protests)
posted by Homo neanderthalensis (4 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
Does the Russian IRA / Troll Factory target China at all? I haven't seen any information that they are able to, but this seems like a case where they would try to exploit the anniversary to foment unrest.
posted by benzenedream at 11:26 AM on May 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


I worked in China in the late nineties/early 2000s and knew some people who had been at the Tiananmen protests and the Shanghai solidarity protests.

Looking back, I realize how recent those events were. They didn't seem especially recent to me because I'd just graduated college and had been a teenager when they happened. The people at my university [where I was working] had, for a while, access to international news broadcasts from the campus media department facility so had seen some of the coverage of events before it all got cut off.

People said that the Shanghai protests were huge but were treated relatively gently because Beijing has always been afraid of Shanghai people since Shanghai is so large, rich and coastal and has a strong international history. In other ways, too, it has exercised some political independence because of this.

How I wish that things were different.

Perhaps you would like to hear Cui Jian's Yi Wu Suo You/"Nothing To My Name", which was the song of the protests. I was lucky enough to hear Cui Jian in 2001 (80 yuan which was a lot, a very tiny Beijing venue because he was only allowed to perform in small places when in Beijing for political reasons). Cui Jian has a lot of other good music besides the ones on A Piece of Red Cloth, but I can't seem to find my other favorite songs handily on the web - they're not as famous and they're not famous in the West at all.
posted by Frowner at 11:26 AM on May 21, 2019 [30 favorites]


In 2014 Atlas Obscura published an article titled 'The World’s Only Tiananmen Square Museum May Be Closing'.

Today I looked for confirmation of whether that happened, and found that in Kowloon, Hong Kong this April, the: 'Flat for new June 4 museum in Mong Kok broken into, damaged'. The article states that the previous museum was closed in 2016.

Of course Wikipedia has it covered. And of course, a search for 'tiananmen square' at archive.org is very productive.

Those looking for coverage of the outcome of our 1932 Bonus Army march on Washington will find it easily.
posted by Twang at 5:46 PM on May 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


Perhaps you would like to hear Cui Jian's Yi Wu Suo You/"Nothing To My Name"

I for one always like to hear it.

China is clearly, blatantly, quickly, and absolutely trying to create a panopticon dystopia. I read a thing the other day about how if they catch you with an unlicensed electric bike in Beijing, you get your Zhima/Sesame Credit score deducted, and here's the wikipedia article explaining that it's the closest thing to a credit score in China's smartphone/QR payment ecosystem, run by Alipay. Yup, that's linked now. They're actually trying this.

As someone with a temp visa and a foreign passport, I'm GLAD I get to run out the clock for a few years and decide if I opt in or out of this society they're building, and I'm interested to see what the public pushback becomes. It's not real yet, but it will be soon.

Baidu Baike (Baidu's wikipedia clone) is a joke. The only time they have substantial content is when the paid writers get free reign, which is on entertainment and linguistics stuff. Half of the content in those articles is lies they found on clickbait blogs or just straight made up.

They also just took Tantan off Chinese app stores, for good reasons (lots of fake profiles, I tried and gave up), but also that's Chinese Tinder.

The implementation in a lot of Chinese things is wanting. They blocked Wikipedia, meanwhile everyone I know has a VPN and NordVPN, among many others, takes Alipay. True, not everyone understands the circumvention, and in Xinjiang they check your phone on every street block, but does anyone honestly think the whole country would put up with that? And do we see why they allow this?

It's a dystopian hellhole, but it's also corrupt, inconsistent kabuki. And, I predict, so it shall remain.
posted by saysthis at 5:48 PM on May 21, 2019 [9 favorites]


« Older Plaid shirt optional, but recommended   |   Fish Below Your Feet Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments