Forbidden terms
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Xinhua News Agency has published another list of banned words:
Xīnhuá shè xīnwén bàodào zhōng de jìnyòng cí 新华社新闻报道中的禁用词 ("Forbidden words in news reports of Xinhua News Agency").
Since it is designated as 第一批 ("first batch"), we can expect that more batches will be issued in the future.
You can find versions of the current list circulating all over the internet. Here's one from a WeChat (Weixin.qq.com) post that I have relied on for the following account. The proscriptions may also be found here.
All together, there are 102 terms divided into 5 major categories:
1. current affairs and social life
2. laws and regulations
3. ethnicities and religion
4. Hong Kong, Macau, and territorial sovereignty (exceedingly numerous and detailed entries)
5. international relations
I do not have time to translate and explain all 102 forbidden expressions, but will just mention a few by way of illustration.
They have some very peculiar rules pertaining to terms relating to language. It is explicitly forbidden to refer to the language spoken by the people of Taiwan as "Taiwanese" (Táiyǔ 台语). If for some reason you must mention the daily language spoken by the people of Taiwan or sung by their singers, you have to call it Táiwān Mǐnnán yǔ 台湾闽南语 ("Taiwan Minnan Language"), and you should put quotation marks around it. I suppose that's to convey the sense of "so-called" (but not real) or simply to serve as scare quotes. Similarly, you should avoid mention of Guóyǔ 国语 ("National Language", i.e., "[Modern Standard] Mandarin"), but if for some reason you have to refer to it, you are required to put it inside quotation marks. If you need to refer to language exchange ("yǔyán jiāoliú 语言交流") between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, you have to call it liǎng'àn Hànyǔ 两岸汉语 ("Cross Strait Sinitic"). You may not refer to it as liǎng'àn Huáyǔ 两岸华语 ("Cross Strait Chinese").
It is not permitted to refer to "indigenous peoples; aborigines" (yuánzhùmín 原住民); you have to call them by their tribal names, such as "Āměi rén 阿美人” ("Amis") and “Tàiyǎ rén 泰雅人" ("Atayal"). In official documents they should be styled "gāoshān zú 高山族" ("montagnards; high mountain tribes").
It is forbidden to refer to leading cadres and heads of state owned enterprises as "lǎobǎn 老板" ("boss").
Terms like "star", "diva", "movie king", etc. may not be used to refer to entertainers. You have to call them "zhùmíng yìshùjiā 著名艺术家" ("famous artists"), and so on.
Most of the rules are ludicrous. For example, "xiǎosān tōng 小三通" ("mini three links") must be replaced by "Fújiàn yánhǎi yǔ Jīnmén, Mǎzǔ dìqū zhíjiē wǎnglái 福建沿海与金门、马祖地区直接往来" ("direct contact between the Fujian coast and Quemoy and Matsu").
I have only touched on a tiny handful of this flood of forbidden words, and more batches are coming. If someone has the time, it would be worthwhile to write a paper on such lists. I believe that they reveal much about the political fixations and broad range of paranoia that grip the Chinese leaders.
Will all of this language policing help to keep China from descending into chaos? It's all part of the Chinese obsession with wéiwěn 维稳 ("stability"). The rulers are terrified that, if the people use the wrong words, diplomatic uncertainty and social instability will ensue.
[h.t. John Lagerwey]
cameron said,
November 3, 2017 @ 4:50 pm
"gāoshān zú 高山族" ("montagnards; high mountain tribes")
Is the implication that they're Chinese, not people that were conquered/absorbed by the Chinese empire? I'm reminded of the term Dağ Türkleri to refer to the Kurds. Though in this case they don't seem to ban the use of the actual ethnonyms.
Jerry Friedman said,
November 3, 2017 @ 5:08 pm
What if the Xinhua New Agency needs to refer to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?
arthur waldron said,
November 3, 2017 @ 5:15 pm
They are taking the approach of the awe inspiring late Michel Foucault vis you can only think the things that have words on the little cards Hegemony gives you. You are trapped, incapable of thinking outside the confines of the "discourse"
Some wise guy interviewer asked the Great Man: "You agree that discourses change. If so, how do you get from one to another. Where does the new one come from?"
The great man replied "Here the French passive voice is very useful "Il y aura un discours" No more. Flags down on the play! Plane in flames falling into the sea.
But as we have just seen that the Chinese believe that 指馬謂鹿 really works! ANW
David Marjanović said,
November 3, 2017 @ 5:52 pm
There's nothing grammatically passive about il y aura "there will be".
Mark S said,
November 3, 2017 @ 7:06 pm
In George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', the major part of developing Newspeak was eliminating words, on the Sapir-Whorfian theory that people would no longer be able even to think subversive thoughts.
Victor Mair said,
November 3, 2017 @ 7:07 pm
From Mark Metcalf:
Aside from the thoroughly entertaining #10, #8 seemed strange:
不使用“践行‘八荣八耻’”的提法，应使用“践行社会主义荣辱观”。
While it's probably a rhetorical question, is Xi Dada so petty that he renamed them as "socialist principles of honor and disgrace" simply to remove some of his predecessor's designated ideology?
Christopher Henrich said,
November 3, 2017 @ 9:38 pm
"The rulers are terrified that, if the people use the wrong words, diplomatic uncertainty and social instability will ensue."
I seem to remember a passage attributed to Confucius, to the effect that when things are called by their right names everything goes well, but when things are called by the wrong names the result is not just social instability but chaos.
Tom Dawkes said,
November 4, 2017 @ 4:40 am
Analects 13.3 名不正、則言不訓。言不訓、則事不成。事不成、則禮樂不興。禮樂不興、則刑罰不中。刑罰不中、則民無所措手足。
“If terminology is not corrected, then what is said cannot be followed. If what is said cannot be followed, then work cannot be accomplished. If work cannot be accomplished, then ritual and music cannot be developed. If ritual and music cannot be developed, then criminal punishments will not be appropriate. If criminal punishments are not appropriate, the people cannot make a move. [http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/analects.html#div-14]
Anonymous Coward said,
November 4, 2017 @ 7:30 am
cameron: the 高山族 is the current PRC official designation of those peoples, so the thing is "naming sovereignty": say what well you pleases, but use our version of the nomenclature.
James R Palmer said,
November 6, 2017 @ 9:48 am
When I was at Global Times, there would be periodic attempts to block the term 'Taiwanese' in English. They usually gave way when I pointed out that we used 'Henanese' or 'Cantonese' without any implication of separatism.
Eidolon said,
November 9, 2017 @ 6:27 pm
Xinhua is the official news agency of the Chinese government, so proscriptions on its use of terms certainly reflect a desire on the part of the Chinese government to regulate or encourage their "politically correct" versions of sensitive terminology. But there's a decent chance that it'll back fire, in the sense that it'll make Xinhua less relevant as a news agency as people find its lexicon too obscure and hard to understand.