The craziest words that were blocked on Chinese social media this week
Those wanting to innocently write on Weibo about boarding a plane with someone named Winnie were out of luck.
What do Winnie the Pooh, Yuan Shikai, and the letter N have in common? They were all banned on Weibo this week following Sunday’s announcement that China would scrap its limit on presidential terms, allowing Xi Jinping to remain leader for life.
Since then, Chinese censors have apparently been putting in some serious overtime, harmonizing online critiques of the controversial constitution change, which have often been using some pretty nuanced references to get their points across.
China Digital Times has compiled an impressive list of phrases and words which were blocked on Weibo at some point or another this week. The list includes some obvious terms like: proclaim oneself emperor (称帝), long live the emperor (吾皇万岁), incapable ruler (昏君), personality cult (个人崇拜), and Xi Zedong (习泽东).
As as well as some terms that are much more vague like shameless (不要脸) and I oppose (我反对). Even the phrase “to board a plane” (登机) was blocked for being a homophone of “to ascend the throne” (登基), which was similarly scrubbed from Weibo.
A number of historical references are included in the naughty word list, like “oppose Qing, restore Ming” (反清复明), a rallying slogan that was used by activists seeking to overthrow the Qing dynasty, and Hundred Days’ Reform (戊戌变法), a failed reform movement that was launched in 1898 by the young Guangxu Emperor and his progressive supporters, which was squashed by his aunt, Empress Dowager Cixi, and her conservatives in the court.
Several of the terms have to do with Yuan Shikai (袁世凯), the first official president of the Republic of China, who then tried to start a dynasty of his own, proclaiming himself as the Hongxian (洪憲) Emperor in 1915 — something which ended up not going well for him.
Chinese Emperor stock (华帝股份) was also blocked, a reference to how on the day after the proposed change to the constitution was announced, companies with “emperor” in their names received a big boost on the Chinese stock market.
Meanwhile, the titles of popular dystopian novels like Animal Farm (动物庄园), 1984, and Brave New World (美丽新世界) were also censored.
Obviously, the list would not be complete without Winnie the Pooh (小熊维尼), a tubby fictional character that Xi Dada does not like being compared with one bit, but apparently Disney (迪士尼) itself also got blocked in the crossfire.
But undoubtedly the most perplexing thing to get blocked this week on Weibo was the letter “N.” While no one is quite sure why the letter was blocked, Victor Mair at Language Log guesses that it is “probably out of fear on the part of the government that ‘N’ = ‘n terms in office,’ where possibly n > 2.”
At the time of this writing, “N” is no longer banned from one of China’s biggest social media networks.
However, more than four days after the announcement, Free Weibo’s list of the top 10 most censored terms on site still includes: “constitutional change,” “Yuan Shikai,” “Xi Jinping,” and “Winnie.”
