Dissenting netizens in China have to move fast in order to keep up with the government's ever-changing list of blocked search terms on Weibo. A new Tumblr page is looking to help by providing an updated list of the terms — 384 at last count.
Many are predictable: the names of famous dissidents or shamed comrades, political events (even ‘1989’ is blocked, as that’s the year of the protests at Tiananmen Square), and anything pornographic, even including the innocuous "women with" opener.Some terms are less recognizable, but are key words in politically sensitive stories like a recent car crash involving a Ferrari rumored to belong to a politician's son. A search for the word "Ferrari" soon started to produce an error message. Not to worry: “Audi” is still uncensored.
Others are well know memes that serve as code words for more detectable terms of dissension.
And yet there are still others that are even more vague. "Multidimensional scaling" seems too boring to be censored, but it refers to a technique for data analysis that has been used to test water quality in the South China Sea, while "sodium azide" is a toxic chemical commonly used in air bags. Perhaps the blocking of these terms indicates an effort to hide unknown scandals involving water quality and automobile accidents? I have no idea…
And then there are the real head scratchers: The words "sensitive", "hairless", "pantyhose" and "resign" apparently strike fear into the hearts of politburo censors. Maybe they have the vague potential of sexiness. Not allowed!
And then there is some downright weird stuff. Like "moaning language"… What the heck does that even mean? "Three color cat", am I missing something? A browse through the list is both informative and giggle-worthy. Keep an eye on it.
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