Archive for Censorship

The true (sort of) story about VPNs in China, part 2

August 15, 2025 @ 6:12 am· Filed by under Censorship, Language and computers

The reason for this part 2 about VPNs in China is that so many good responses to my inquiries about VPNdom in China came pouring in just after the first post went out.  Also, there is such a wide variety of different viewpoints and experiences that you cannot expect there to be a single standard out there.  One thing has become very clear to me, and that is that the Chinese government wants to keep people on their toes and resort to a lot of self-policing.  This is common government policy in China, not just with regard to the internet, but to many aspects of social and political life.

For an up-to-date comprehensive primer about VPN usage in the PRC, I recommend that you read carefully this article:  "Are VPN's Legal in China?"  Not really.  It's a tricky business. You can be heavily fined and get in real trouble if the internet police catch you with one, especially if you use it to read / write something the CCP disapproves of.

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The true (sort of) story about VPNs in China

July 28, 2025 @ 6:37 pm· Filed by under Censorship, Language and politics

Most of the population of China cannot afford or obtain a VPN (Virtual Private Network).  For the privileged portion who do manage to purchase and install a VPN, does that solve their global internet access problem?

Some people claim that, with a good VPN, you can see anything on the global internet in China.  But I don't think that's quite true.  Sometimes I direct my students (all of whom have VPNs) to various Wikipedia and Wiktionary articles, and they say, "Sorry, Prof. Mair, I can't access that in China" (blocked without warning or explanation twenty-some years ago*).  The problem is even more acute with YouTube.

YouTube has all sorts of stuff:  richly informative, inflammatory, educational, political, DIY, linguistic, etc., etc.  Practically anything one can imagine, except probably outright pornography.  The Chinese government is deathly afraid that its citizens might see YouTube content that is critical of Xi Jinping, the CCP, and so forth.  So YouTube is a no-no, and that means nature films, music, poetry, art, archeology, chemistry, physics, recipes, Chinese / Japanese / Indian / Iranian / etc. culture.  How impoverished the Chinese people are because of the benighted policies of their government!  The nearly 15 BILLION videos on YouTube are off limits to Chinese citizens.  And that's just YouTube.  Think of all the internet riches that are unavailable to the people of China.  No wonder so many of them are desperate to go abroad to study where they have free access to the internet.

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Hotdogs banned in North Korea

January 11, 2025 @ 7:28 pm· Filed by under Censorship, Language and food

Kim Jong-un’s bizarre new ban for North Koreans:
The hermit kingdom has outlawed popular items in recent months as part of a massive crackdown on Western cultural influences.
Heath Parkes-Hupton, news.com.au (1/6/25)

"Weird", as some attendees at the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year vote last evening might have said.

The hermit kingdom has outlawed popular items in recent months as part of a massive crackdown on Western cultural influences.

North Koreans have reportedly been banned from eating hotdogs as part of a crackdown on Western culture infiltrating the hermit kingdom.

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PRC censorship of Tūjué, an important historical name of the Turks

October 29, 2024 @ 8:28 pm· Filed by under Censorship, Names

An outstanding Chinese scholar of Central Asian art history and archeology told me that any mention of Tūjué / Tújué 突厥 online or on social media would be subject to censorship by the authorities in the PRC.  Since Tūjué  突厥 is an important early name of the Turks, that makes it hard to do serious, honest research on the history of the Turkic peoples in Chinese.

Tūjué  突厥

Etymology

Ultimately from a form which also gave rise to the name Türk (cf. (Türük)), but the phonetics are difficult to reconcile.

It has been suggested that this is a transcription of Rouran *türküt, a plural of the Mongolic type, composed of *türk +‎ *-üt (cf. Khalkha Mongolian -үүд (-üüd)) (Pelliot, 1915). Pulleyblank (1965) proposed that this is a direct transcription of Türk.

Middle Sinitic (ca. 600 AD):  thwot kjut

(Wiktionary)

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Trespassed update, part 2 (suicided)

October 23, 2024 @ 7:35 pm· Filed by under Censorship, Grammar, Language and politics

In the first part of this post, we came across the notion of "bèi zìshā 被自殺" ("be suicided").  Since, for many people, this idea (of somebody being "suicided") is hard to comprehend, I asked several graduate students from the PRC if they could explain how it and the related expressions "bèi tiàolóu 被跳楼" ("was jumped off a building"), "bèi shīzōng 被失蹤" ("be disappeared"), and so forth work.  One of them responded thus:

For these expressions, yes one can say so, but it's not grammatically correct in the "orthodox" language of Mandarin. These expressions are used in a satirical way to accuse the government of héxié 和谐 ("harmonization") of the (ugly) truth being reported. "Tā bèi zìshāle 他被自殺了" ("he has "been suicided") means that, although the official / public report claims that the person died of suicide, the truth is that the "suicide" was faked — someone may have murdered him. So he has to appear as if he committed suicide to cover up the ugly deeds by the government. Ditto for "tā bèi tiàolóule"/ 他被跳樓了 ("he was jumped off a building") — his death has no choice but to appear as "owing to tiàolóu 跳楼" ("jumping off a building"), but we all know that this is not what really happened. 

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PRC cyberspace authorities fight against bad memes and distorted pronunciation

October 16, 2024 @ 9:35 pm· Filed by under Censorship, Etymology, Language on the internets, Pronunciation

Judging from these alarming top level official government proclamations, one might think that the Chinese language is going to hell in a handbasket, and it's all because of the deleterious effects of the internet, strict policing of which is absolutely necessary.

Rénmín wǎng: Rénmín rè píng: Jǐnfáng hēi huà làn gěng de yǐnxìng qīnshí 

Lín Fēng 2024 nián 10 yuè 13 rì 10:31 | Láiyuán: Rénmín wǎng-guāndiǎn píndào xiǎo zìhao jìnrì, zhōngyāng wǎng xìn bàn, jiàoyù bù yìnfā tōngzhī, bùshǔ kāizhǎn “qīnglǎng·guīfàn wǎngluò yǔyán wénzì shǐyòng” zhuānxiàng xíngdòng. Zhuānxiàng xíngdòng jùjiāo bùfèn wǎngzhàn píngtái zài rè sōu bǎng dān, shǒuyè shǒu píng, fāxiàn jīngxuǎn děng zhòngdiǎn huánjié chéngxiàn de yǔyán wénzì bù guīfàn, bù wénmíng xiànxiàng, zhòngdiǎn zhěngzhì wāi qǔ yīn, xíng, yì, biānzào wǎngluò hēi huà làn gěng, lànyòng yǐnhuì biǎodá děng túchū wèntí.

人民網 ：人民熱評：謹防黑話爛梗的隱性侵蝕
林 風
2024年10月13日10:31 | 來源：人民網-觀點頻道
小字號

近日，中央網信辦、教育部印發通知，部署開展“清朗·規范網絡語言文字使用”專項行動。專項行動聚焦部分網站平台在熱搜榜單、首頁首屏、發現精選等重點環節呈現的語言文字不規范、不文明現象，重點整治歪曲音、形、義，編造網絡黑話爛梗，濫用隱晦表達等突出問題。

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The languages of refugees fleeing to Bosnia

September 30, 2024 @ 7:38 am· Filed by under Censorship, Communication

"A path towards freedom: the new route to Europe for desperate Chinese migrants
Revealed: a small but growing number of Chinese people are travelling to the Balkans with the hope of getting into the EU" Amy Hawkins," The Guardian (9/24/24)

In a sleepy Bosnian town, barely five miles from the border with the European Union, a crumbling old water tower is falling into ruin. Inside, piles of rubbish, used cigarette butts and a portable wood-fired stove offer glimpses into the daily life of the people who briefly called the building home. Glued on to the walls is another clue: on pieces of A4 paper, the same message is printed out, again and again: “If you would like to travel to Europe (Italy, Germany, France, etc) we can help you. Please add this number on WhatsApp”. The message is printed in the languages of often desperate people: Somali, Nepali, Turkish, the list goes on. The last translation on the list indicates a newcomer to this unlucky club. It is written in Chinese.

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"Garbage time of history", part 2

September 23, 2024 @ 9:22 am· Filed by under Censorship, Language and economics, Language and history, Memes

This is a phrase that has been sweeping through China during recent months.  In Chinese it is "lìshǐ de lājī shíjiān 历史的垃圾时间".  The expression "lājī shíjiān 垃圾时间" started out in sports to characterize a situation where one side has such a commanding lead that it would be impossible for the other team to catch up.  It's a foregone conclusion who is going to win, so the leading team can do what is called "play out the clock", putting in second- and third-string players to give them experience.  Furthermore, it would be considered unsportsmanlike to pile up the score against the losing team.

The expression "lājī shíjiān 垃圾时间" was only applied to historical analysis when essayist Hu Wenhui coined the fuller phrase "lìshǐ de lājī shíjiān 历史的垃圾时间" in a 2023 WeChat post.

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Internet IDs for China

August 19, 2024 @ 7:05 pm· Filed by under Censorship, Language on the internets

China Plans to Issue Unified Internet IDs to Netizens

Singapore’s primary Chinese language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao recently reported that the Chinese government plans to issue unified internet ID numbers and certificates to members of the Chinese public in order to verify the true identity of users. This raised concerns over control of speech.

China’s Ministry of Public Security and the Chinese Cyberspace Administration just released a document titled “National Internet Identity Authentication Public Service Management Measures (Draft for Comments).” According to the document, the purpose of the internet ID is “to strengthen the protection of people’s personal information.”

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'Tis the summer season for choking off VPNs

August 17, 2024 @ 7:04 pm· Filed by under Censorship, Communication, Language on the internets

"The mysterious slowdown of VPNs in China", Drum Tower, The Economist (newsletter), Gabriel Crossley (China correspondent) (8/15/24)

Every summer Communist Party bigwigs leave Beijing and go to recharge in the resort town of Beidaihe on the coast. This coincides with the silly season for China watchers. There is little hard news, so rumours fly. Some are baseless speculations about the health of Xi Jinping, China’s supreme leader. Others are more well-founded, such as a report that Hu Xijin, a prominent nationalist commentator, has been muzzled on social media (probably for accidentally overstepping the party line). And some are true but harder to explain: like the fact that virtual private networks (VPNs) are getting slower.

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What it's like inside the Great Firewall

July 31, 2024 @ 2:50 pm· Filed by under Censorship, Information technology

By now, we've had dozens of posts about the Great Firewall, VPNs, internet censorship, and so forth, but they're all from the vantage of the outside trying to look in.  Of course, that gives us a skewed picture of what the situation is really like with regard to the internet inside and outside of the PRC.  This is not a healthy situation, for nearly one fifth of the world's population (17.72%) live inside the borders of China.  To be ignorant of how they are living is dangerous, for we may make erroneous assumptions about what one fifth of humanity is doing and thinking.

Fortunately, at last I have found an American expat who has been living and working in the PRC for more than a decade at a remote location and is well connected with many Chinese colleagues.  He is an active scholar and very well informed about the internet, AI, databases, and so forth, both inside and outside of the PRC.  I should note that he does not live among expats.  In fact, he is the only Westerner where he is located, quite far from major metropolitan areas, so he truly understands what Chinese of all walks of life do on a day-to-day basis.

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Government dampers on AI in the PRC, part 2

July 20, 2024 @ 4:30 pm· Filed by under Artificial intelligence, Censorship, Language and politics

"China deploys censors to create socialist AI:  Large language models are being tested by officials to ensure their systems ‘embody core socialist values’", by Ryan McMorrow and Tina Hu in Beijing, Financial Times (July 17 2024)

Chinese government officials are testing artificial intelligence companies’ large language models to ensure their systems “embody core socialist values”, in the latest expansion of the country’s censorship regime.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), a powerful internet overseer, has forced large tech companies and AI start-ups including ByteDance, Alibaba, Moonshot and 01.AI to take part in a mandatory government review of their AI models, according to multiple people involved in the process.

The effort involves batch-testing an LLM’s responses to a litany of questions, according to those with knowledge of the process, with many of them related to China’s political sensitivities and its President Xi Jinping.

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China VPN redux

July 17, 2024 @ 10:29 am· Filed by under Censorship, Language and computers

Chapter 1

A professor in China who is collaborating with a famous American professor of Chinese literature wanted to read one of my Language Log (LL) posts because he had heard that it's being widely discussed around the world.  However, because of China's rigid censorship rules, he couldn't open the LL post.

The Chinese professor asked the American professor to help him gain access to my post.

The American professor asked me to help the Chinese professor.

I suggested to the Chinese professor to use a VPN.  Without a VPN, Chinese are not able to access LL, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Google, X, etc., etc.  In other words, without a VPN, Chinese are cut off from most of the information on the internet that is outside the Great Firewall, i.e., most of the cutting edge, valuable information in the world.

The Catch 22 is that it is a crime to use a VPN in China.

Can you imagine having to live in a benighted place like the PRC?

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