China Briefly Bans The Letter 'N' On Social Media After Anger Over Plans To Make Xi Jinping 'Dictator For Life'

from the Winnie-the-Pooh-strikes-back dept

Last week, the Communist Party of China issued a short statement:

The Communist Party of China Central Committee proposed to remove the expression that the President and Vice-President of the People's Republic of China "shall serve no more than two consecutive terms" from the country's Constitution.

As analysts were quick to point out, that seemingly minor change effectively allows China's current leader, Xi Jinping. to become "dictator for life". It wasn't just Westerners who were taken aback by the unexpected boldness of the move. One of the leading China experts, Victor Mair, explained in a post on his Language Log blog:

for as long as I've been studying China and observing Chinese affairs, I've never witnessed so much opposition to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] as what I've been seeing and hearing during the last couple of days -- except for the months leading up to the Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, 1989.

But as he points out, the big difference between then and now is that today people can turn to the Internet to express their feelings. Naturally, that has led China's huge censorship machine to go into overdrive, leading to some really weird bans:

since the Roman alphabet is part of the Chinese writing system, it's only fair for letters to be subject to censorship the way Sinographs are. Comments like this Twitter thread show the letter N being censored on Weibo (a microblogging website that is one of the most popular social media platforms in China). This is probably out of fear on the part of the government that "N" = "n terms in office", where possibly n > 2

China Digital Times notes that the block on the letter "N" was only temporary, but that doesn't mean the censorship was eased. On the contrary. The same post lists dozens of words and phrases that are forbidden because they contain direct references or even just allusions to the move to make Xi Jinping's rule life-long. Here are some of the less obvious ones:

Winnie the Pooh -- Images of Winnie the Pooh have been used to mock Xi Jinping since as early as 2013. The animated bear continues to be sensitive in China. Weibo users shared a post from Disney's official account that showed Pooh hugging a large pot of honey along with the caption "find the thing you love and stick with it."

The Emperor's Dream -- The title of a 1947 animated puppet film.

trust this woman is willing to be a vegetarian for the rest of her life -- Allusion to a meme inspired by the popular historical drama Empresses in the Palace. A screenshot of this line, being said by an empress as she pledges lifelong vegetarianism in return for the imminent death of the emperor, has been shared online.

Many activists received warnings not to make negative comments about the planned change. Some that did had their online accounts permanently disabled for daring to discuss the matter. The degree of censorship was so great that it led to people being "blank-screened", as Yuan Yang reported on Twitter:

Friend: *sighs, looking at her smartphone*

I've been "blank-screened."

Me: You've been what?

Friend: It's the word for when all the people you're following on Weibo (China's Twitter) have their accounts censored so your live feed is now a blank screen.

But as Techdirt has noted before, the Chinese online world has plenty of experience in circumventing censorship in clever ways. Here's a fine example of that, noted by Owen Churchill:

Durex in China reminding followers not to trust any advertising that isn't from their official accounts after "Two rounds just aren't enough" poster goes viral #XiJinping

The characters on the fake Durex ad are rather more explicit than "two rounds", which seems appropriate given what many people think Xi Jinping is doing to the Chinese people with this proposed change to the country's constitution.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

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Filed Under: censorship, china, internet, n, social media, the letter n, xi jinping


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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2018 @ 1:54pm

    I am eagerly awaiting the trump tweet that claims this would be good for the us.

    Hear no dissent, See no dissent, Speak no dissent - this obviously proves that the people are happy with their government, isn't that right great leader?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    PlagueSD (profile), 1 Mar 2018 @ 2:07pm

    Wow. Ba i g the letter " "? that is goi g to make posts a little hard to u dersta d.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Doctor Duck, 1 Mar 2018 @ 4:03pm

    Unsponsored

    What a shame. One of my favorite Sesame Street episodes was brought to us by the letter "N". And, um, the number 4.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    DONT MAKE ME LAUGH, 1 Mar 2018 @ 6:29pm

    and promptly creates a new image type

    ....and promptly creates a new image type

    THE JIPIG

    this image is overly large , always wide and never good for anything but taking up space....ITS also known to cover over other images types cause it thinks its more important.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Pixelation, 1 Mar 2018 @ 6:53pm

    I want one

    Chia Xi jipig!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2018 @ 7:02pm

    How, let's hot get hasty over this so-called bah. The huiahces of lahguage are hever idle, ahd sometimes chahge must come from whithih the rule of hatiohs. Hame it hohsehse if you waht, but Chiha and Xi Jihpihg cah certaihly ihspire the hext level of lihguistic evolutioh with this plah. Ohe wohders if it will stahd ih the comihg mohths.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      ryuugami, 1 Mar 2018 @ 9:54pm

      Re:

      I'd never be able to write a post like that. The squiggly red lines in my browser's edit box would drive me insane by the third sentence!

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2018 @ 10:21pm

        Re: Re:

        Intentional mis-spelling can be a very useful tactic in defeating Google's ban on certain words (but not their misspellings)

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2018 @ 8:17pm

    The letter "N" isn't just controversial in China. For example, Googling "jolly-N" or "greedy-N" returns images of some embarrassingly non-PC children's toys from an historical era that is best forgotten.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Dingledore the Previously Impervious, 2 Mar 2018 @ 3:53am

    Must have been a really bad episode of Sesame Street.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Mar 2018 @ 7:33am

    And here in America we rush to dismantle the 2nd which
    allows to 1st to stand .

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 2 Mar 2018 @ 8:29am

      Re:

      Sorry, it's Techdirt that allows the 1st to stand.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 2 Mar 2018 @ 9:16am

      Re:

      AR-15 vs M1 Abrams ... Tiananmen Square redux

      film at eleven.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Bluegrass Geek (profile), 2 Mar 2018 @ 10:11am

      Re:

      If your only defense of speech is a gun, you might be need some remedial English classes.

      ... oh yeah, I probably need to explain. "Remedial" means "for students having learning difficulties."

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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