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Things are becoming dicey for the CCP/PRC regime:

"A cartoon cat has been vexing China’s censors – now he says they are on his tail"

By Tessa Wong, Asia Digital Reporter, BBC (6/10/24)

Here's the dilemma faced by the Chinese communist authorities.   It would be very easy for the censors to shut down all VPNs and invoke strictly draconian internet controls that would make it impossible for netizens to communicate with the outside internet.  But that would mean that China would no longer have access to external information and communication, which the government desperately needs if they are going to continue to acquire advanced technology and science from abroad, not to mention operate their economic initiatives such as BRI (Belt and Road Initiative).

Mixing my metaphors, VPNs are a two-edged sword by means of which China can have its cake (keep out non-communist ideology) and slice / eat it too (make money and acquire technology from the capitalist, democratic West).  Mixing the metaphorical melange still further, they want a Chinese internet that is both open and closed.  Sorry folks.  No go.  Can't have it both ways.

We've been through this all before (see the bibliography below), i.e., people have been using VPNs to jump over the Great Firewall for decades, but something is different now.  What has happened to make the situation truly perilous for the communist government at this critical point?

I believe a critical mass has been reached whereby Chinese citizens no longer deceive themselves into believing that Weibo and other heavily censored social media networks in the PRC can afford them access to the full riches of the www.  Furthermore, so long as they are allowed to purchase and use VPNs, they now have a reliable vehicle for obtaining and sharing data, knowledge, ideas, opinions, and views freely, namely X.  This is a truly perilous situation for the PRC/CCP.

What makes it all the more ironic is that the current tipping point has been reached in no small measure by an art school student in Italy named Li Ying.

Mr Li has since become a vital chronicler of information deemed politically sensitive by Beijing. His X account is a window into Xi Jinping’s China where authorities’ vice-like grip on information keeps tightening. From major protests to small acts of dissent, corruption to crime, it is zealously scrubbed off the Chinese internet, only to turn up on Mr Li’s account.

…

Li’s online existence began with writing and posting love stories on Weibo, the Chinese microblogging platform. “I was someone who had made love my main creative theme, I had nothing to do with politics,” the son of two art teachers explained. Even the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which Beijing stamped out, hardly made an impact on him: “I was just like many ordinary people, I didn’t think that the protests had anything to do with me.”

Then the pandemic struck. As China sealed itself off, Mr Li – by now studying at a prestigious art school in Italy – became desperate to find out what was going on back home. Scouring social media, he was shocked to read about the crushing lockdowns: “There were people starving, even jumping off buildings… the feeling at the time was of a lot of suffering and pressure.”

He started discussing these stories on Weibo. Some followers privately sent him their stories asking him to publish on their behalf, which he did. Censors took notice, and blocked his account.

Undeterred, he began a cat-and-mouse game, setting up a new Weibo account each time they shut one down. Fifty-three accounts later, he had enough: “I said okay, I’m going on Twitter.”

The ball is in your court, Mr. Xi.  You want safety, security, and stability for your communist regime?  Shut down the VPNs.  Make it truly impossible to communicate on a large, global scale via X.

He won't do it.

Eventually, the Chinese people will also consult Google, Wikipedia, and many other worldwide sources of material that are currently closed to them.

And that is how a determined, energetic, creative art student in Italy is helping to shape the future of China

 

Selected readings

• "God use VPN" (12/28/15)
• "Mixing (or ignoring?) metaphors" (6/9/24)
• "Badge of honor: Language Log is blocked in China" (12/26/19)
• "The ultimate protest against censorship" (11/27/22)
• "The reality of censorship in the PRC" (10/13/16)
• "The face of censorship" (1/11/19)
• "Bad words on WeChat: go directly to jail" (12/17/17)
• "The letter * has bee* ba**ed in Chi*a" (2/26/18)
• "Censoring 'Occupy' in China" (10/24/11)
• "Using riddles to circumvent censorship in China" (3/6/18)
• "Peppa Pig has been purged" (5/2/18)
• "Censored letter" (12/19/14) — about a nine-year-old boy who suggested that Xi Jinping lose weight
• "Excessive quadrisyllabicism" (2/17/18)
• "Censored belly, Tibetan tattoo" (8/28/17)
• "Chinese translation app with built-in censorship" (11/29/18)
• "Lepus oryzinus" (2/10/18)
• "Banned in Beijing" (6/4/14)
• "Where's Xi?" (9/11/12)
• "Digraphia and intentional miswriting" (3/12/15)
• "It's not just puns that are being banned in China" (12/7/14)
• "Annals of literary vs. vernacular, part 2" (9/4/16)
• "The PRC censors its own national anthem" (2/9/20)
• "Hemorrhoids outbreak" (914/21)
• "Typos as a means for circumventing censorship" (7/22/22)
• "Circumventing censorship in the PRC" (11/7/21) — with a very long bibliography
• "Melon eaters and censorship in the PRC" (12/8/21)
• "Blocked on Weibo" (8/23/13)
• "'Bad' words" (12/5/21)
• "Franco-Croatian Squid in pepper sauce" (3/12/09)
• "Mee Tu flavor" (11/29/18)
• "Lepus oryzinus" (2/10/18)
• "'Grass Mud Horse' and other homophonic puns threatened with extinction" (7/15/22)

June 10, 2024 @ 8:56 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Censorship, Information technology, Language and computers, Language and politics

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