China’s online censors appeared to be relaxing their grip yesterday as millions of internet users in the country suddenly found themselves able to search online for information about Communist Party leaders and even to post criticism.
Malcolm Moore
The Telegraph
December 11, 2012
In the past, anybody trying to search on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, for information about officials such as President Hu Jintao or his successor Xi Jinping, would get a simple message: “According to related laws and regulations, search results are not shown”. Yesterday, however, the 200 million Weibo users found what appeared to be at least a temporary hole in the Great Firewall.
Not only could they search for a range of Chinese leaders on the microblogging network, they were free to write criticism.
One comment called Mr Xi a “hypocrite” for suggesting that Communist Party officials should not enter politics for wealth or prestige. “Hasn’t he won wealth and prestige through politics?” asked the poster. Elsewhere, Li Keqiang, the incoming prime minister, was accused of covering up an Aids outbreak linked to infected blood in Henan province for five years. “Now he makes speeches [about Aids], but he is just making a show,” the comment said. The names of some leaders were still blocked. Wen Jiabao, the outgoing prime minister, was unsearchable.
The name of Ling Jihua, the former close aide to Hu Jintao whose son died in a Ferrari crash in March, was also blocked.
Bo Xilai, the disgraced former Politburo member, showed up in searches, as did Zhou Yongkang, the outgoing security tsar.
But Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace prize winner, the Dalai Lama and the Falun Gong were all censored. Any mention of the Tiananmen Square protests or of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, the reformist leaders of the time, were also blocked.
Xu Xiao, the chief executive of Xiabye.com, a restaurant promotion website, said: “It seems we can search for Hu Jintao on Weibo among other keywords now, although Baidu [China’s largest search engine] is still blocked. At least at the moment, our country has made a big step towards freedom of speech.”
For the most part, the stream of comments about China’s leaders were banal.
“I’m just having a hot pot [dinner], there’s a guy next to me saying Xi Jinping is clean, Zhou Yongkang is violent, Li Keqiang is handsome. I’m killing myself,” said one post.
Others noticed that while Hu Jintao’s name was unblocked, there were relatively few posts available about him.
Only 60,000 results appeared yesterday, compared with nearly 10 million for Ma Ying-jeou, the president of Taiwan, who had a shoe thrown at him by a heckler.
A report by Xinhua state news agency last week, citing Liu Qibao, China’s propaganda chief, suggested that it may be too early to call a change in censorship tactics.
Mr Liu said the Party must “deeply research the strengthening of the building, operation and management of the internet” in order to project a strong party line online.
