Watching How China Censors

As Officials Crack Down on Web Chatter, New Technology Finds Out Why

July 2, 2012
By PAUL MOZUR
The Wall Street Journal

China's government isn't the only one paying close attention to what the country's citizens are saying on social media sites.

As China's 500 million Internet users rapidly adopt social media, academics and entrepreneurs are figuring out ways to track online messages and blog posts to better understand what the government censors—and even how to predict its intent.

China's government employs software and an army of thousands to police the Internet, but it leaves much of the censoring to social-media sites like Sina Corp. to take down posts that violate local and national rules issued each week. While it is generally known that certain words or phrases, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, will trip the censors, the scope isn't fully understood.

These sites usually offer clues that they deleted a post due to censorship—rather than by the user or due to a technical problem—leaving special messages or images such as an Internet police cartoon character. That is helping researchers figure out how China's opaque power structures work to control its citizens.

"We have a degree of translucence now about censorship we never had," said David Bandurski, a researcher at Hong Kong University's China Media Project.

Hong Kong University developed software called WeiboScope, which scans posts from Sina Corp.'s Weibo, a popular Twitter-like Web messaging service. The software was designed to understand how Chinese respond to different news events, but it is also useful for analyzing censorship trends, said King Wa Fu, a research assistant professor at HKU, who helped develop WeiboScope.

Two More Monks Self-Immolate [in Tibet]

An undated photo of Lobsang Kalsang. (Photo courtesy of Kanyag Tsering)

An undated photo of Lobsang Konchok.

2011-09-26
RFA

Tibetan monks at Kirti monastery protest Chinese rule in a 'desperate' act.

Two more Tibetan monks from Sichuan's troubled Kirti monastery have set fire to themselves, Tibetan sources and rights groups said on Monday.

One of them, Lobsang Kalsang, 18, was identified as the brother of Phuntsog, who died in a self-immolation protest against Chinese rule in March, marking an anniversary of unrest three years before.

The two monks were "rescued" by police shortly after setting fire to themselves in Ngaba county, in southwestern China, China's official Xinhua news agency said.

Quoting a statement from the Ngaba county government, the agency said the incident happened at 11.22 a.m. local time on Monday.

Crowds flock to shows by China’s dissident art star Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei, “My Surveillance Camera” (2010) (photo by author)

Ai Weiwei

Wednesday, Jun. 22, 2011
Elizabeth Renzetti
LONDON— From Thursday's Globe and Mail

The giggling Grade 10 students point at Ai Weiwei’s marble surveillance camera, sitting on a perch at London’s Lisson Gallery: What could be sillier than a stone camera? The artist would certainly appreciate their laughter, if he could hear it. China’s celebrated provocateur has always wanted his work to be playful as well as pointed, to be appreciated by everyone from scholars to school kids.

One week ago, the kids’ teacher was telling them somberly about the plight of the artist, who had been in custody since Chinese authorities arrested him at Beijing’s airport on April 3. On Wednesday Ai was released, much to the relief of the global art community, which had been campaigning for his freedom.

While he’d long been a thorn in China’s side for his politically pointed, and often downright accusatory artworks and public statements, the official line had been that Ai was detained for unspecified “economic crimes.” A report from state media on Wednesday indicated his company “had evaded a huge amount of taxes” and the 54-year-old artist had agreed to pay.

China internal security spending jumps past army budget

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING, March 5 (Reuters) - China's spending on police and domestic surveillance will hit new heights this year, with "public security" outlays unveiled on Saturday outstripping the defence budget for the first time as Beijing cracks down on protest calls.

China's ruling Communist Party also issued its loudest warning yet against recent Internet-spread calls for "Jasmine Revolution" protest gatherings inspired by popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.

The 13.8 percent jump in China's planned budget for police, state security, armed civil militia, courts and jails was unveiled at the start of the annual parliamentary session, and brought planned spending on law and order items to 624.4 billion yuan ($95.0 billion).

By contrast, China's People's Liberation Army budget is set to rise 12.7 percent to 601.1 billion yuan ($91.5 billion).

Wired Up [-Internet censorship in the proletarian Middle Kingdom]

Monday, Feb. 21, 2011
By Austin Ramzy / Beijing
Time Magazine

Shortly after christmas, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof opened an account on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblog service that, like Twitter, allows users to share short messages of up to 140 characters. Kristof began testing what topics would be censored. He found out quickly. One of his first messages was "Can we talk about Falun Gong?" — a reference to the spiritual movement banned by Beijing. Within an hour of his first post, Kristof's account was canceled.

At first glance it would seem that China's new Internet is a lot like its old Internet. Overseas sites that are deemed sensitive — including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, among thousands of others — are blocked, part of a network of control sometimes called the Great Firewall of China. Inside the wall, Chinese search engines won't, for example, link to content to do with the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo or Tibetan independence; also, domestic Internet companies are required to delete any material that the authorities find objectionable. Even as China's Netizens have rushed to embrace Web 2.0, an Internet in which users are more closely and quickly linked by social-networking services, microblogs and free video hosting, those rules have still applied.

Chinese father punished for food safety activism [-China is Hun Xen's model for Cambodia's injustice?]

 In this Jan. 22, 2009 file photo, Zhao Lianhai, center, the father of a boy sickened after he drank tainted milk formula, speaks to journalists outside the Intermediate People's Court in Shijiazhuang, in China's Hebei province. Zhao, the Chinese man who organized a support group for parents of children sickened in one of the country's worst food safety scandals was found guilty of inciting social disorder and sentenced Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010, to 2 1/2 years in prison, his lawyer said. (AP Photo/Greg Baker, File)

Thursday, November 11, 2010
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
Associated Press

BEIJING – A father who organized a support group for other parents whose children were sickened in one of China's worst food safety scandals was convicted and sentenced Wednesday to 2 1/2 years in prison for inciting social disorder, his lawyer said.

Zhao Lianhai had pushed for greater official accountability and compensation for victims and their families after the 2008 scandal that shocked China. His sentence appeared particularly severe because the case related to a public safety incident that the embarrassed leadership had pledged to tackle in a bid to restore consumer confidence.

"We'd expected it to be much less than that. It is such a harsh sentence," lawyer Li Fangping said. "The crimes he was accused of were nothing more than what regular citizens would do to defend their rights."

Zhao, a Beijing resident whose young son was among the nearly 300,000 children sickened by melamine-tainted milk, vowed to appeal and began a hunger strike to protest the verdict, Li said.

Zhao set up an online forum to share information about the poisonings in 2008 after his son, then 3, was diagnosed with kidney stones.

"When he heard that his sentence was two and a half years, he was appalled, and he pushed away a sign that was in front of him, and said, 'I'm not guilty. I want to appeal.' He tried to remove his prison uniform, and refused to be handcuffed," Li said.

Amnesty International condemned the sentence.

"We are appalled that the authorities have imprisoned a man the Chinese public rightly view as a protector of children, not a criminal," said Catherine Baber, the human rights group's Asia-Pacific deputy director.

Zhao, a former reporter and media advertising salesman, has been jailed since he was taken away by police in November 2009.

His sentence appears to be part of a trend of growing intolerance for government critics and independent social activists. Environmentalists, AIDS activists and lawyers who took on sensitive cases have disappeared, been locked up, or otherwise harassed, while this year's Nobel Peace Prize recipient, dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, is serving an 11-year prison sentence for subversion handed down after he co-authored a call for widespread reform of the authoritarian, one-party political system.

Li said prosecutors leveled three charges against Zhao: That he organized a gathering of a dozen parents of sick children at a restaurant, held a paper sign in front of a court and factory involved in the scandal as a protest, and gave media interviews in a public place.

Six children died and hundreds of thousands were sickened by baby formula tainted with melamine, which can cause kidney stones and kidney failure. The industrial chemical, used in the manufacture of plastics and fertilizer, was added to watered-down milk to increase profits and fool inspectors testing for protein.

Several dairy industry figures were prosecuted and punished, including three people given the death penalty.

The general manager and chairwoman of Sanlu, the company at the heart of the scandal, was given a life sentence. Dozens of officials, dairy executives and farmers have been punished for allowing the contamination to take place.

The Middle Kingdom: A center of repression against Nobel prize celebration?

Celebrating Nobel, woman arrested for splashing champagne

October 11, 2010

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Rights group: "This is an absurd case"
• The revelers were marking the victory of a Chinese dissident
• A security guard walked up while a bottle was being opened, the woman says
• She's been released on bail and must appear before police in November

Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- A woman celebrating the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese dissident has been charged with assault for accidentally splashing champagne on a security guard outside the Chinese central government's liaison office in Hong Kong.

"The officer walked up as I was opening a bottle of champagne and he was splashed," said Ip Ho-yee, 22. "It was a minor incident. I never guessed that opening a bottle of champagne would lead to this."

Ip, who was arrested Sunday afternoon, made her comments in Cantonese.

The security guard was not injured, but he made a complaint, so Ip was arrested and charged with common assault, said Hong Kong police spokesman Lawrence Li.

"This is an absurd case," said Law Yuk-kai, director of Human Rights Monitor, a group based in Hong Kong. "This just shows who's the boss," Law said, referring to the mainland Chinese government.

The British returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, with China's promise that Hong Kong could continue to govern itself for the next 50 years. But critics of Beijing say the mainland government has encroached on Hong Kong residents' rights and interfered with the special administrative region's government.

Ip was released on her own recognizance and is to appear before police in late November, said the police spokesman.

She and others were celebrating the Nobel victory of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence after repeatedly calling for human rights and democratization.

Liu was sentenced in 2009 for inciting subversion of state power. He is the co-author of Charter 08, a call for political reform and human rights, and was an adviser to the student protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize to him on Friday.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the awarding of the prize to Liu was "blasphemy against the peace prize" that could harm relations between China and Norway.

The Nobel Committee stood by its choice and said it had expected China to react strongly.

"We have a very strong tradition of awarding the prize to human rights activists of many different kinds," Geir Lundestad, director of the Nobel Institute, told CNN.

"This is a tradition we are very proud of, and this is a tradition for which the Norwegian Nobel Committee has received much applause," Lundestad said. "We felt that if we were serious about this tradition, we did have to come to terms with the question of China in this perspective, and this is what we then did this year."

A record 237 names were submitted for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel committee said. Thirty-eight of the nominees are organizations. Nominees are not revealed for 50 years.

US decries Cambodia's deportation of Uighurs

Sunday, December 20, 2009
AP

WASHINGTON — The U.S. is condemning Cambodia's decision to forcibly deport 20 Muslim asylum-seekers back to China.

The State Department says U.S. ties with Cambodia will suffer as a result.

The department said in a statement Sunday that it was "deeply disturbed" by the move, which may have violated Cambodia's international obligations to asylum-seekers. The U.S. also says its concerned about the welfare of the Uighurs (WEE-gurz). There are fears the Uighurs may be mistreated in China.

Spokesman Gordon Duguid says the incident would affect Cambodia's relationship with the United States and its international standing.

The Uighurs fled China after ethnic rioting in July. China says they are criminals but their role in the rioting remains unclear.

Cambodia Deports Muslim Uighurs [-Chinese wish is command for Hun Xen?]

Uighurs deported before Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's arrival Sunday for state visit to Cambodia

19 December 2009
VOA News

Cambodia has deported 20 Muslim Uighurs who fled China's northwest region after ethnic unrest earlier this year in Xinjiang province.

An Interior Ministry spokesman told reporters the Uighurs were placed aboard a Chinese aircraft that departed Cambodia Saturday.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Phnom Penh said earlier that the would-be refugees were being expelled because they entered Cambodia illegally.

As expected, the Uighurs were deported before Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's arrival Sunday for a state visit to Cambodia.

The Uighurs arrived in Cambodia last month. Human-rights groups say they face possible torture and execution by Chinese authorities, who have already condemned to death at least 17 Uighurs as a result of July's deadly riots.

The disorders in Xinjiang, which pitted ethnic Uighurs against China's majority Han Chinese, killed nearly 200 people.

Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim minority concentrated in western China. In complaints that echo those of many Tibetans, they say they are victims of discrimination and cultural and economic domination by the Han Chinese majority.

Christian missionaries helped 23 Uighurs reach Cambodia last month. The exiles had applied for refugee status at the Phnom Penh office of the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR).

Earlier this week, China denounced the Uighurs as suspected criminals who should not be allowed to use U.N. protection to escape punishment.

Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.

Cambodia backs Chinese repression in Tibet

Cambodia backs China over Tibet unrest

Monday, March 24, 2008
Radio Australia (ABC)

Cambodia says the unrest in Tibet was elaborately plotted and organised by a small group of people with ulterior motives.

China's official Xinhua news agency has quoted a secretary of state in Cambodia's ministry of foreign affairs saying the distorted news coverage by the western media was aimed at disturbing the ongoing sessions of the National People's Congress, and to undermine the Bejing Olympic Games.

Cambodia's Long Visalo is also quoted as saying the Lhasa incident was not a peaceful demonstration but a serious riot.

Like Cambodia, Vietnam and Bangladesh have thrown their support behind China, saying that the Tibet issue is purely China's internal matter.

China Vows to Crush Tibet's Independence Movement

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lent her support to the Tibetan cause during a meeting with the Dalai Lama on Friday. Meantime, unrest continues in the region as Chinese officials try to calm the violence. (March 21)

Dalai Lama gestures as he speaks to the media in Dharmsala, India, 18 Mar 2008

By VOA News
22 March 2008

China's Communist Party newspaper is calling on the government to "resolutely crush" Tibet's independence movement.

A commentary in the "People's Daily" Saturday accuses the Dalai Lama of plotting recent anti-government protests in Tibet in hopes of undermining the upcoming Beijing Olympics and splitting Tibet from China.

The Dalai Lama has denied calling for protests.

Reports from China say Beijing has sent elite units of the People's Liberation Army into Tibet to crack down on the protests.

Witnesses in the Tibetan capital said armored troop carriers and other military vehicles in use there had their identifying numbers and insignia concealed.

In Lhasa Saturday, Chinese authorities raised the official toll from the past week's riots to 19 dead, including 18 civilians and a policeman. Tibetan exile groups say at least 80 people were killed in Lhasa, and that clashes in other Chinese provinces claimed nearly 20 lives.

The official Xinhua news agency has said police firing in self-defense during a riot wounded four people in a Tibetan area of Sichuan province earlier this week. However, human-rights groups have released photographs showing what appear to be corpses with bullet wounds. They allege that police killed 15 people during the clash in Sichuan.

China has expelled all foreign journalists from Tibet and tried to prevent others from reaching neighboring provinces. Before they were forced to leave, journalists were able to report on a buildup of thousands of troops, along with blockades and checkpoints across a wide swath of western China.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.

Hun Sen's regime support China's repression in Tibet

Television footage shows police escorting a man after he signed a confession at an unknown location March 20, 2008. Tibet authorities said on Thursday they had arrested dozens of people involved in a wave of anti-Chinese violence that has swept the mountain region and prompted Beijing to pour in troops to crush further unrest. (Tibet TV via Reuters TV/Reuters)

Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh support China's actions to stabilize Tibet

BEIJING, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Senior government officials of Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh have expressed their countries' support for Chinese government's measures to stabilize the situation in Tibet.

"Vietnam fully supports the measures taken by China to stabilize the situation in Tibet," said Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vu Dung in a meeting with Chinese ambassador to Vietnam, Hu Qianwen, on Thursday, adding that the Tibet issue is purely China's internal affairs.

The Chinese government has made great efforts for the economic developments and social progress of Tibet, and yielded tremendous achievements, said the official.

Meeting on Wednesday with Duan Jinzhu, charge d'affaires of the Chinese embassy in Cambodia, Long Visalo, secretary of state for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Cambodia, said the incident in Lhasa, the capital city of China's Tibet autonomous region, was elaborately plotted and organized by a small group of people with ulterior motives.

Some distorted news coverages by Western media were aimed at disturbing the then ongoing sessions of the Chinese National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the election of new Chinese leaders, as well as undermining the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games, said Long Visalo.

"The Lhasa riot is absolutely not so-called 'peaceful demonstration,' but a serious riot incident," he added.

A spokesman of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Thursday, expressing Bangladesh's solidarity with China on the Tibet issue.

"All matters pertaining to Tibet are internal affairs of China," the statement said.

Bangladesh wishes the Beijing Olympic Games great success and would not like to see the games be politicized by any organizations, he added.