> It’s easy to make mistakes. One article about Peng Liyuan, China’s first lady, mistakenly used the photo of a famous singer rumored to be linked to another leader. It was caught by someone else before it went out, Mr. Yang said.
I’m betting this is the lameizi (spicy girl) singer Song Zuying who was rumored to be Jiang’s mistress. She is in the process of being purged as Xi is doing to many of Jiang’s supporters ATM. Xi’s wife is also a patriotic song singer from the same era, it makes sense young people might get confused.
That's interesting I didn't know Orwell had a connection to the British Ministry of Information. Wikipedia seems to suggest that he didn't work there but his wife did:
>"At the outbreak of the Second World War, Orwell's wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in central London, staying during the week with her family in Greenwich. Orwell also submitted his name to the Central Register for war work, but nothing transpired." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Second_World_War...
Wikipedia could be wrong though since any work he did for the Ministry might not have been public until recently.
> When asked whether he had shared with family and friends what he learned at work, such as the Tiananmen crackdown, Mr. Li vehemently said no.
> “This information is not for people outside to know,” he said. “Once many people know about it, it could generate rumors.”
That seems to imply that the censors are told that the events are basically true. I'd expected them to be taught as rumors in the first place, which they have to learn to recognize as a secret code used by enemies of the state. Humans are pretty good at ignoring cognitive dissonance, but I wonder how often someone ends up spreading the "rumors" even further by simply talking about what they do at work.
Like the other poster, I'm curious to hear your perspective. You don't find it a bit strange that "only government-owned websites and specially approved political blogs...are allowed to post photos of top leaders."?
You also think it's better to cover up events like Tiananmen Square? It seems like it's almost entirely forgotten even though it happened only 30 years ago. My country (US) doesn't have a great human rights track record either, but at least we're allowed to talk about it.
> My country (US) doesn't have a great human rights track record either, but at least we're allowed to talk about it.
Exactly. No country has a perfect history but by confronting past mistakes you have a chance to learn from them and hopefully support laws or norms that prevent them from happening again.
Perhaps this only applies in countries that practice democracy, where the people's awareness has a chance of translating into representation. Otherwise it's only likely to create discontent with the inability to change things (and thus unrest).
When Mao felt threatened he unleashed the very impressionable and mouldable Hongweibings. Once he reaffirmed his power, the Hongweibings were disbanded. So, they have a few more options as laid out by Lennin.
This perspective always cracks me up. The way the US does it is less brutal and obvious, but pretty much the same thing; old books are scrapped and forgotten. Formerly popular thinkers are memory holed or declared 'thought criminals' (pick your '-ist'). Their books are no longer taught in college, and the perspectives they represent are gone forever.
Present day thinkers and reporters are given the same silent treatment on mainstream media which is obviously controlled by the narrow oligarchy which controls everything else. Same treatment is happening on youtube as China is doing; non-conforming perspectives are actively sought out and removed by censorious apparatchiks. Oh yeah, and now they're also sometimes denounced as "russian agents" as well -a pack of absurd, paranoid and Orwellian nonsense which makes anything the ChiComs say look like objective common sense.
The US engages in ritual denunciation of itself for slavery and killing off the Indians. Somehow our most excellent international adventures, ridiculous military provocations, poisoning of the food chain, extractive slave economics of the native population and colonial control of half the population of the world is A-OK. For all I know, China engages in ritual denunciation of its pre-Maoist self as well. That doesn't mean they're not carefully controlling the narrative now.
> old books are scrapped and forgotten. Formerly popular thinkers are memory holed or declared 'thought criminals'
Name some, I'll get you copies on Amazon and you can yell about them here on HN.
You seem to be trying to conflate group think (which is a real thing) with censorship (also real, very different, and much worse). And that doesn't make much sense to me at all.
I mean, fine. Maybe "no one talks about" your particular favorite injustice. But you talk about it (you just did!) and can work to convince the rest of us about the truth of your opinions (like you're doing right now!).
My college education was pretty honest about the atrocities of the USA. I get to openly post about politics all day on facebook without any fear of reprisal. Pretty different from a country with a whole dictionary of secret codewords used to discuss politics and history. There is no 'both sides', there's just your self-pity - the people you call censorious apparatchiks are just people who don't respect your opinion. You mistake being unpopular for being persecuted, which is common for privileged engineering types like us.
The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade. -Julian Assange
Can you say anything to back up the claim that "speech still has power" in China? That seems to go against what the pro-censorship commenters are saying, which is that most people in China know all the bad stuff anyway and just don't care. If that's true, it seems like words have lost all power.
You don't post political views which threaten the US regime. The fact that you don't fall under the eye of Sauron just means you're a good citizen, just like the Chinese guy in the article. For the love of god, Facebook employs former Stasi agents to police people's comments.
Again, US colleges definitely engage in ritual denunciations of the bad old days. So do the Chinese. US colleges engage in political indoctrination that talks about problematic issues in the modern US which the US regime wants changed. So do the Chinese.
The only real difference is the US doesn't have to be as brutal and obvious as the Chinese to police thought. It does occasionally look a lot like old Maoist struggle sessions, but somehow people never make that connection.
I regularly support the idea impeaching our leader in public and participate in a democratic process of electing representatives to enact policies that I want to see change.
EDIT: As a matter of fact, we just had a Muslim congress-woman openly discuss goals to impeach our sitting president. Things work differently in a democracy with representatives than they do in an authoritarian dictatorship.
The president isn't "our leader." And as I keep saying, yes, the US system isn't as brutal and obvious (in most cases; policing online content, it is) as China. As far as I know, they only attempt to kill American citizens who deviate from the party line when they live abroad.
Let me give you a bit of obvious propaganda by people who really do run the country:
Yes, exactly. Because this isn't an authoritarian dictatorship. We have democracy. We vote in representatives. We discuss policies with peers and campaign for people who represent changes we want to see. That's the difference and that's what our free speech protects.
EDIT:
> Let me give you a bit of obvious propaganda by people who really do run the country
Are you being censored for speaking up against Raytheon though? Are you being stopped from electing politicians who would curtail their power or regulate them in some way?
>We have democracy. We vote in representatives. We discuss policies with peers and campaign for people who represent changes we want to see.
Read and/or watch Manufacturing Consent. This is what Chomsky calls[1] the "standard model" of social democratic societies (the one that the technical class helping run society must be "deeply indoctrinated" to believe).
Problem is, if you look at whose interests are actually represented in our politics it's nothing but a pacifying fiction. His "alternate model" describes how the society actually functions, and... well... why spoil the video? :D
You're really persisting in missing the point. I am no threat to Raytheon, or the class of people who work there, or the ruling elite of the country who think burning Yemeni children alive is a good idea as long as we teach women to participate in STEM careers.
If I were and could get my message out (people are trying on youtube; they're being censored), well, no doubt my life would be worth girl scout cookies. I'd be unpersonned at the very least.
FWIIW yes, I am being stopped from voting for politicians who would make this state of affairs end. Just as effectively as Chinese people are.
Get your message out to your peers. Write your representatives. And vote on representatives who plans to change whatever it is that you're indirectly complaining about.
Otherwise it sounds like you're talking vaguely about what I can only interpret as a conspiracy theory of some kind but I have no idea what point you're trying to make.
There's a great Mitchell and Webb sketch called "are we the baddies" -google (or better yet, qwant) it. If you can't put yourself in their shoes, well, you'll never get it.
Which just goes to show you more or less why the Chinese guy above doesn't see anything wrong with how his country's regime polices content either.
>>> If I were and could get my message out (people are trying on youtube; they're being censored), well, no doubt my life would be worth girl scout cookies. I'd be unpersonned at the very least.
>> Otherwise it sounds like you're talking vaguely about what I can only interpret as a conspiracy theory of some kind but I have no idea what point you're trying to make.
> There's a great Mitchell and Webb sketch called "are we the baddies" -google (or better yet, qwant) it. If you can't put yourself in their shoes, well, you'll never get it.
It would be helpful if you precisely specified which ideas you think are getting censored on youtube and could cause you to get "unpersonned" before you start throwing around vague insinuations like that. Otherwise what you say has very little credibility.
The US definitely has a problem with terror campaigns. But yes, I really really dislike it when media and general people start thinking the president is a king or something. I actually wish the media would lay off treating the president like royalty. I personally believe we need to get rid of the white house and treat the president more like we do the speaker of the house. More like a regular person that has a specific role.
That's not apples-for-apples. Yes, history and society are subject to shifts and bias.
But do you think that there's a hidden branch of US government dictating which books are used or what words aren't allowed, carefully crafting this revised perception of our reality? Or is it just social effects that happen in all countries?
Withholding information about military strategy or the operations of an intelligence agency to the press is one thing.
Meticulous and widespread censoring of phrases like "rubber duckies" just because it might remind people of Tiananmen Square or "Winnie the Pooh" just because people mocked Xi Jinping is another thing.
The first law in the US outside of basic government structure: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
No matter how many mistakes are made in the US, we have that as a bedrock. There is a fundamental difference between the US and China in this regard.
Arguably the Espionage Act could be interpreted and used to prosecute any speech that is not supportive of the US government and lately for any federal whistleblowers, it seems pretty incongruous with the First Amendment but the law has been supported by the Supreme Court multiple times and here we are.
It’s true that Americans are pretty extremist about freedom of speech, but even they understand that speech in the service of actual espionage should be punished. Outside of that I’m unaware of how the Espionage Act has been used to suppress speech.
"My country (US) doesn't have a great human rights track record either, but at least we're allowed to talk about it." You cannot possibly be serious when taken scale and timeframes into account
About which part? The US has done some pretty terrible things (slavery, interment camps, destabilizing the middle east and south america). So you disagree that we're allowed to talk about it? Is there a government agency censoring HN comments?
The things you listed wouldn't even top my list of horrible things the US have done. You can talk about them all you want. But if you have half a brain you should be able to them in context of time and scale and take a look at what else was going on in the world at the same time and how many people were actually effected. Saying that todays US is somehow comparable to todays China because of slavery doesn't make any sense whatsoever
A quick Google came back with words and phrases banned by the US government. It's federal employee who are ordered not to use the words and phrases not individuals, but chilling nonetheless.
> "Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead."
That sounds more like a branding guideline for employees than censorship of a topic. But, as you said, this doesn't apply to normal citizens and presumably is done so that the spokespeople seem like they're on the same page.
No, that's clearly censorship. Climate change had a different contextual meaning than extreme weather. One indicates that the climate is on a path towards something different, the other indicates events outside the norm but no overall change. This is an attempt by the Trump administration to cover up the fact that humans are fucking ourselves, so that their corporate overlords may continue to reverse-Robinhood the masses.
I'm not saying that I agree with it, but this is an agency with leaders who have a say in the wording that their employees use in public documents.
It's not censorship, it's just stupid leadership and it's from ephemeral positions that our democracy can be used to reverse by putting people with sane policies in place.
It is a pretty factual article that doesn’t have much editorial. I wonder how they got people to talk from that company, but not many Chinese in tech would find the inner workings of censorship surprising.
Totally personal, but I notice that you have a lot of insights on China and I would love to connect with you somehow. You should be able to find my contact pretty easily.
Could you help us understand why? I've always wondered about Chinese nationals true feelings regarding the censorship they're subjected to.
From my perspective as an American, I view the free exchange of ideas to be the bedrock upon which all other human rights depend. A government deciding which ideas their citizens can express is simply beyond the pale and indicative of evil and corruption.
Yes you definitely have a point there. Your censorship is done centrally and explicitly by the government. Ours is done by the ever changing unwritten rules of sanctimonious mobs performing their offense rituals and the corporate advertisers who fear them. Which is worse is up for debate I guess.
I'll let that speak for itself on "which is worse". I find these cases where modern, educated westerners are afraid to draw the obvious, self evident conclusion sad. You know which is worse, but you actually think someone else who disagrees is worthy of respect. They aren't. They are brainwashed.
Until people wake up from this silly idea that there are infinite interpretations of reality that are all equal, this weak kind of statements will continue.
Roseanne Barr didn't get arrested, imprisoned, or executed. The CCP fears and hates it's own people. I walked through an Ai Wei Wei exhibit 2 years ago. I was awestruck and moved to silence by his amazing work. Along with the aforementioned Nobel Laureate, these are individuals that are gifts to the human race. But their mere opinions threaten the CCP, and the last I heard, Weiwei had his studio burned and had been intermittently imprisoned. An amazing, once in a generation artist..... And you have the audacity to act as if there is an equivalency here.
Angry mobs can execute people too, and did so frequently in the US not so long ago. To a black man in the 1920's non governmental censorship was a deadly threat. Freedom of speech is not an interpretation of reality. It can't be proven or falsified. It is a religious belief, and not all societies share it.
I do personally think that their system is worse in terms of magnitude of consequences, and that ours is worse in that its rules are completely arbitrary and unwritten.
That's the kind of relativisation that were this another medium and I would call it paid shilling.
You cannot with any seriousness compare the de-normalisation of certain opinions, as it happened in the US in the past few decades, with the systematic, brutal, ubiquitous repression and censorship happening in China right now. China is one of the most un-free countries on earth in nearly every measure. Claiming that, eh sure, it is one way to do things and in the west they fire you if you say you hate niggers, so this is two flavours of pretty much the same thing, claiming this is the kind of gaslighting and propaganda that regimes such as China and Russia are trying to push on the West.
I have actually lived in China and can confirm that it is extremely unfree.
I went to a good school in Beijing, and after arriving in the US, I realized they were teaching us basically propaganda in our Chinese, History, and Poli Sci classes. They even managed to sneak propaganda into our chemistry class, it’s nuts!
I don't think you need to have lived in a place first-hand to comment on it. I don't need to have lived in Syria to comment on the situation there; I have read extensively about it and that will do.
> with the systematic, brutal, ubiquitous repression and censorship happening in China right now
If what happened to pewdiepie isn't "systematic, brutal, ubiquitous repression and censorship", I am not sure what it is. That's effectively what happened to Bi Fujian, after he was caught bad-mouthing Mo Zedong [1].
> On the other hand, people in US enjoy freedom to exchange ideas on whatever they want, except politically incorrect topics in public.
I can, and do, publicly express politically incorrect (and sometimes downright incorrect) opinions in public. That's why Twitter exists. The only thing stopping you is cultural norms (should you choose to accept and fear them).
Post "XYZ is a nigger" or "I hate gays" on your Twitter and I will concede.
Edit: Seems like I have crossed the line on HN. Moderators, feel free to moderate this comment. And apologies for unintentionally starting this long and boring thread.
You're right that the words we say can determine what other people think of us. But that's how language works. Most people, rightfully, don't want to associate with someone who invokes racial slurs.
The point is that we are free to do so without fear of retaliation from the government. People are free to argue with each other and determine for themselves where to draw the lines.
Nobody gets arrested or imprisoned for these statements.
Can you say the same? Of course not. You are a victim of a government that fears it's own people. The fact that you accept this as normal and ok is a consequence of Maoist brainwashing. If a government can control what you say, they by extension control what you think. You're a slave. And you're descendingt your master.
It's not illegal just because Twitter doesn't allow it on their platform.
You can run your own site, tattoo is on your face, say it to your friends... As long as you aren't directly inciting violence against others. That's really the only thing that's outright censored (genuine hate speech).
But criticizing the government, laws, society, anything really, is totally legal and in fact constitutionally protected. Just don't hurt or threaten other people.
> Edit: Seems like I have crossed the line on HN. Moderators, feel free to moderate this comment.
Did you get an actual warning or are you trying to make a point about censorship?
The curtailing of freedom of speech in America is more due to media platforms, social more or academia than the government's use of force. In America, no one is going to be placed in jail and have their organs harvested for speaking in public on some subject. I regularly stand outside abortion facilities with signs depicting graphic abortions (very politically incorrect), and do not get arrested. Even in the UK I would be arrested for such things.
Do you know what you don't know though? People can freely find info on politically taboo topics if they want in the west.
Whereas, do you know about the famine in the great leap forward? And it is widely known?
I was talking to one chinese student who maintained that there was no censorship in china. She was surprised to learn that I, a foreigner, could not make a wechat account for my business. And she is well educated, has travelled abroad, etc
This is not correct. I grew up in China (Beijing to be more specific) and it is definitely not taught in school. All history I’ve learn casts China as having done everything right.
Were you taught using 人教版 or 北师大版 history textbook? I'm pretty sure 四人帮 and 大跃进 were inside 北师大版 and called a mistake. Well at least for my year. Maybe they changed it, or you didn't pay attention in class.
It was quite a while ago so I don’t recall who made the book, I went to high school there more than 10 years ago. I used whichever books were standard. But if I remember correctly, they portraited Si Ren Bang as a group of four planning against the state, no fault was assigned to China or Mao.
> So basically in both cases, people are just hiding what they truly know/think in their minds instead of speaking them out.
Every culture is going to have taboos and forbidden things. The important questions are who enforces them and why.
> On the other hand, people in US enjoy freedom to exchange ideas on whatever they want, except politically incorrect topics in public.
People in the US enjoy the freedom to exchange almost all ideas in public, including politically incorrect topics. For some extreme examples, look at the "Dark Enlightenment" folks and racists like Richard Spencer. However, many people choose to not use that freedom because they wouldn't enjoy the experience of other people using their freedoms to personally reject them or to tell them that their ideas are stupid, wrong, bad, etc.
That situation is only superficially comparable to Chinese censorship, and that comparison ignores the very important and fundamental differences.
I was wondering, and I think you may know the answer:
Let me classify politically (potentially sensitive/incorrect) topics into 2 classes: 1) concerning concrete specific claims of history or what is happening or happened, 2) abstract discussion of properties of systems, designing "utopias", expressing general complaints and identifying their root/radix/fundamental causes in the design of society, and concluding radical/fundamental proposals of what should change etc... without naming nor insinuating specific politicians/leaders etc...
Are subjects in the second class also taboo/censored in China? All the examples in these articles about chinese censorship relate to specific individuals or events, and not to ideology/normative/prescriptive statements of what humans may or may not desire/expect/demand from a system.
For example would it be taboo or censored in China to discuss the following idea:
No one created the world/China, so we are all equal co-owners of the world/China. Everybody and every company rents their locations (farmland, buildings, ...) The highest rent bidder becomes the accepted renter. And the sum of all rented is divided equally among all humans/citizens. This could happen in a decentralized fashion (I hate the term blockchain), using OpenStreetMap etc. Nobody is forced to live here or there, so there is freedom, and there is equal rights. If you get a job you can thus rent an above average place, Without a job you can afford an average place and food, and if you rent a small unwanted shack for a few years you have the budget to start your own enterprise, or perhaps party all life long if you are otherwise OK with your shack...
Would this be considered taboo? Parasitism? Irrespective of our religion, no human created the sun (and the edible chemical energy it generates in plants), the earth, ... and all systems worldwide take claim of these resources, in order to make the puny little individual feel guilty about being born and having needs...
that's kind of the question: would a decentralized version of libertarian communism or communist libertarianism be considered offensive since it doesn't tow the party line? it highlights to a communist that communism is different from oppression parading as an egalitarian society.
or would it be the freedom part that would be considered offensive: that beijing can no longer dictate who does what work and lives where?
EDIT: also consider Joseph Brodsky [0], everybody calls the USSR "communism", but he was accused of parasitism, so I am inclined that the idea of Provably Affordable Average Rent, i.e. we don't even need taxation to insure everyone has the right to roughly the average food, average housing, average minerals etc.. the rent that is spent is redistributed as "basic income", so by definition you get the average rent. I am inclined the idea is taboo in both the West and the East, and would have been in the USSR as well...
That's interesting. Thanks for responding. Do you really think it's the same?
My perspective is that there's such an incredible difference in degree as to be a difference in kind. Politically incorrect speech in the US may get you socially ostracized, but not literally jailed. And occasionally some people actually do it (look at any self-proclaimed Nazi or the Westboro Baptist Church). And criticizing the government or governance in the US is not politically incorrect; it's rather in vogue these days.
I think there is a divide between people who think government (as well as private companies) should be in the business of managing offensive speech and people who believe in more liberal freedom of speech (with very narrow exceptions). One group is more aligned in this regard with socialism and the other with libertarianism.
My cousin has the same point of view. He knows about May-35th and the other issues (eg. Xi's insanity) but doesn't really care. He's making good money right now (30K/month) and things are looking good for him (family, home, car, economy, etc).
Hell when I was working in China (left in 2016), I didn't care that much and still doesn't. Money is good and the benefits are awesome.
Xi’s insanity is a new one, is there some kind of rumor about it going around?
I suspect kids in China would care about 1989 like kids in the USA in 1989 cared about the Kent state massacre: not very much, it was a long time ago right? But then that begs the question why the CPC bothers to censor it, perhaps they just don’t want to chance an open discussion about it since many of those people are still alive.
Xi's breaking the 10 year rule. Xi's involvement in the Bo Xilai incident. Xi's anti corruption campaign which is basically a purge of those who oppose him.
You have to remember that the people on HN from China or Chinese is not representative of the average person in China. My cousin was born and raised in China in a tier 2 city. He now works in a tier 2 city making 30K RMB/month which is extremely good pay. He has travelled abroad many times and reads western books/culture.
I was born in China and left at 16. Educated in Canada and went back at 26 and worked for 14 years there before I left. When I was there I was working in major IT companies in a tier 1 city.
You have to think about Hu's The Harmonious Society Idea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonious_Society) and part of the 'Stability At All Cost' ideal. The censorship is for the average person in China.
I worked in Beijing at Microsoft for almost 10 years, so I get the demographic divide and striving for stability. Still, it feels like they dug their hole and have to live in it now, gradual liberalization could have also been stable, maybe even more so.
I was there from 2007 through 2016. We were first down the street at Sigma/zhichunlu and then the new building close to the sinopec building in central zhongguancun.
Tiannamen could have ballooned into a full on revolution, there were many killed, imprisoned indefinitely with arbitrary trials, hurt, families threatened, careers stomped out etc..
To add:
Kent State was a spontaneous situation, violence broke out at a student sit in, with thousands of students potentially overwhelming a small number of state troopers, some of whom foolishly shot into the crowd.
Sure most people if you include the peasants and the migrant worker force. If you look at the true middle class in the cities, I'd say most know about the truth but don't care. When I was working there for major IT companies pretty much most of my reports know about it.
China's leaders tell the world that their citizens are all united behind the government, except for a few traitors. But the government acts like the population is so weak in its support that it could be easily provoked to revolt by exposure to uncomfortable truths.
I’m betting this is the lameizi (spicy girl) singer Song Zuying who was rumored to be Jiang’s mistress. She is in the process of being purged as Xi is doing to many of Jiang’s supporters ATM. Xi’s wife is also a patriotic song singer from the same era, it makes sense young people might get confused.