Language Log

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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?

Chapter 2

From a distinguished American professor (what he says may sound devious and hypocritical on the part of the Chinese authorities, and it is, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest):

When I was in Hangzhou a decade or so ago, the university there had a series of grad students take us sightseeing to various places, and during such trips I had conversations with them about this very issue. Turns out most of the grad students in arts and/or humanities-related disciplines were without access to the banned VPNs and were thus, as expected, often seriously cut off from the outside world. But then the grad students in science-related fields were different. They told me quite openly that they were encouraged by faculty to use VPNs and did so as a matter of course. “After all, how could I possibly do any of my research without access to a VPN?” one told me. He added that he sometimes helped friends in other fields obtain VPNs because he felt so sorry for them.

Chapter 3 — conclusion

This is further proof, if you didn't already have enough, that China is dependent on the West for basic ideas / information / knowledge / techniques in science and technology, and doesn't want to learn anything from the West when it comes to social sciences and humanities. 

Unless and until it thoroughly recreates its educational, ontological, and epistemological priorities and procedures, it will be virtually impossible for China to succeed / flourish in the modern world, which is based on completely different premises, values, and modalities.

 

Selected readings

• "Fissures in the Great Firewall caused by X" (6/10/24)
• "Shadowsocks" (2/8/18)
• "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)

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

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