Censorship on the 33rd Anniversary of June 4, 1989

After 33 years PRC websites continue to censor information about what happened in Beijing on June 4, 1989. Let's start with some obvious examples – censorship of the date. In English Baidu web search returns 2 results, in Chinese 6 results, all from PRC state-sponsored media.

Baidu's main social media product - "PostBar" (贴吧) has forums dedicated to "1988" and "1990," but searching for "1989" just yields a censorship notice "In accordance with relevant laws, regulations, and policies, relevant results have not been displayed."

Baidu's Q&A product (知道) finds tens of thousands of results for "Tiananmen 1988" and "Tiananmen 1990," but zero results for "Tiananmen 1989."

Tencent-owned Sogou web search also censors information relating to what happened in Beijing in June, 1989. A search for "Tiananmen 1989" returns no results, but the same search for "Tiananmen 1988" and "Tiananmen 1990" returns thousands of results.

The same thing happens with Sogou's image search - Sogou has no trouble finding images for "Tiananmen 1988" and "Tiananmen 1990," but is unable to locate a single image for "Tiananmen 1989."

And again, the same thing happens with Sogou's WeChat search engine - plenty of results for "Tiananmen 1988" and "Tiananmen 1990," but a search for "Tiananmen 1989" yields no results.

The same kind of censorship occurs on PRC social media sites. For example, these screenshots show that Sina Weibo has no problem finding results for "32nd Anniversary" and "34th Anniversary," but finds none for "33rd Anniversary."

Now for a look at PRC censorship of the iconic "Tank Man" images. This screenshot shows a Baidu search for "Tank Man" in English returns no results.

While a search for "Tiananmen 1989 Block Tanks" in Chinese returns no results, Baidu says its has found 22,070 "relevant images"! Not surprisingly, however, clicking that Baidu Image link lands users on a page telling them that, in fact, Baidu cannot find any relevant images.

Other PRC-based image search engines, such those of Qihoo and Tencent-owned Sogou, are unable to find any image results for searches for "Block Tanks."

Even terms with no obvious connection to what occurred in Beijing in June 1989-like "Tiananmen Mothers"-are censored. In addition to a screenshot showing Baidu finds no results for that query, I've included a screenshot of a Yahoo SERP for the same query to show what Baidu is censoring.

The Wikis operated by PRC Internet companies take different approaches to censoring the history of what happened in Beijing in June 1989. Today, the "This Day In History" sections show:

• Baidu: Khamenei elected supreme leader
• Qihoo: Nothing for 1989
• Sogou: Nothing for 1989

The top search results for "1988 year" and "1990 year" on Tencent-owned Sogou are Sogou's own Wiki articles about those years. The top result for "1989 year" is an article on Taylor Swift's album by that name. It appears Sogou simply has no article about the year 1989.

Sogou does have a Wiki article about "Tiananmen Square," but according to their article, nothing worth mentioning happened in Tiananmen Square between 1976 and 1997.

Qihoo does have a Wiki article about 1989, but unlike its Wiki articles about 1988 and 1990, Qihoo's article on 1989 has no section on "Major Events." So there's nothing to indicate anything noteworthy happened in/around Tiananmen Square (or anywhere else) that year.

Baidu has articles on 1989 and Tiananmen Square. But according to Baidu nothing happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and the only noteworthy events on June 4 were:

• Walesa elected prime minister of Poland
• Khamenei elected supreme leader of Iran

Here's another stark example of how PRC Internet companies treat modern Chinese history - this screenshot shows a search for "64 Remembrance" (六四 纪念) on Baidu returns ZERO results. Someone in the PRC would be better off using a Korean search engine like Naver. . .

Finally, it should be noted that people in the PRC haven't forgotten, and still get punished for peaceful attempts to commemorate, what happened in Beijing in June 1989. For example,  Jie Ruixue was jailed for wearing a t-shirt  in Tiananmen Square in 2019. According to the court judgment, the t-shirt Jie was jailed for wearing in Tiananmen Square in 2019 read "Freedom of Speech, Vindicate June Fourth, Oppose Repeating the Tragedy." The court judgment claimed this "caused severe chaos," but cited no evidence to support that claim.

There's an entire section of my casebook "State Prosecutions of Speech in the PRC" devoted to PRC government documents showing people getting punished for commemorating and discussing what happened in Beijing on June 4, 1989.

You can download the casebook free at my website: https://feichangdao.com/publications/.

Baidu Increases Censorship of "Xi Jinping"

 China's search engines have censored the names of leaders of the Communist Party of China and the PRC government for over a decade (see: http://blog.feichangdao.com/2012/12/how-other-websites-are-censoring.html). They typically do this by restricting search results to a white list of around 20 websites under their own control or under the direct control of the central government and the Communist Party. This is illustrated below with a screenshot showing that a search for "Xi Jinping" in Chinese characters (习近平) on Baidu returns millions of results (left), but the same search limited to educational websites returns no results (right).

Paging through the result one finds that the only websites shown are Party and government mouthpieces such as Xinhua, the People's Daily, the China Daily, CCTV (the state controlled television broadcaster), CRI (the state controlled radio broadcaster), etc. This censorship is done for searches of leaders names in Chinese characters and in pinyin romanization (e.g. "Xi Jinping"). 

The screenshots below show that some time between April 2020 (left) and September 2021 (right)  Baidu changed how it was censoring search results for "Xi Jinping" in pinyin romanization. Whereas in April 2020 Baidu was limiting results to the Party/Government white list, it claimed to have found almost 6 million results. In September, Baidu was still limiting search results to that white list, but was only displaying nine results. 

At least Baidu is showing something. As the screenshots below show, China's two other major search engines - Qihoo (left) and Sogou (right) return no results whatsoever.

 

Interestingly, it is still possible to "trick" Sogou into showing search results containing "Xi Jinping" by entering his name in Chinese characters into its English language search engine. The screenshot below shows that in that case Sogou returns dozens of results (again, from the Party/Government white list).

How China's Top Search Engines Censor Results About Chloe Zhao's Oscar Win

On April 26, 2012, the state sponsored Global Times reported:

On Sunday, the film Nomadland directed by Chloe Zhao won the awards for best picture and best actress at the 93rd Academy Awards. Zhao also won best director for the film. This is good. When Zhao's film won the Golden Globe Awards in February, the Chinese public cheered for her. Later, people learned of her previous interview in which she made inappropriate remarks on China. Opinions about her changed. This is understandable.

The screenshot below was taken on April 29, 2012, and shows the report, originally available here - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1222108.shtml - had been deleted.

The report can still be viewed here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210426075846/https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1222108.shtml.

The screenshots below show that as of April 29, the Baidu, Qihoo, and Sogou search engines were returning no results for searches for "Chloe Zhao Oscar" [赵婷 奥斯卡]. 

This is extremely unusual. Normally this level of censorship is reserved for only the most politically sensitive individuals and events, such as:

• Xi Mingze (习明泽 - Xi Jinping's daughter): http://blog.feichangdao.com/2015/11/search-results-for-xi-mingze-name-of-xi.html;
• Peng Liyuan Suspected of Using iPhone5 (彭丽媛疑为iPhone5 - Xi Jinping's wife): http://blog.feichangdao.com/2013/06/peng-liyuan-takes-photo-with-iphone.html;
  
• Gao Zhisheng (高智晟 - A former Chinese lawyer who was disappeared in 2017) : http://blog.feichangdao.com/2013/05/almost-every-major-chinese-internet.html
  

How China's Top Search Engines Censor Results for "Xinjiang Concentration Camps"

Let's start with the easiest example - below is a screenshot taken on April 3, 2021 of the search result page for the query "Xinjiang Concentration Camps" (新疆集中营) on Qihoo's 360.com search engine:

Qihoo returns no results. Instead, Qihoo tells users "Apologies, did not find web pages relevant to 'Xinjiang Concentration Camps'." (抱歉，未找到和 "新疆集中营"相关的网页。)

Next is a screenshot taken on April 3, 2021 of the search result page for the query "Xinjiang Concentration Camps" (新疆集中营) on Sogou's search engine:

The censorship here is relatively easy to spot - every result is from a whitelist of about a dozen sources, all of which are under the direct control of the central government or the Communist Party of China. As the screenshot below shows, even Party mouthpieces like the Global Times did not make the cut for  Sogou's whitelist.

Finally, below is a screenshot taken on April 3, 2021 of the search result page for "Xinjiang Concentration Camps" (新疆集中营) for Baidu's search engine:

Ever since Baidu stopped showing a censorship notice in 2016 (See: China's Search Engines (Except One) Stop Notifying Users of Political Censorship, http://blog.feichangdao.com/2016/06/chinas-search-engines-except-one-stop.html) Baidu's censorship is often difficult to spot. This is because it often restricts search results for politically sensitive terms to a broader whitelist that includes many websites that are licensed by the PRC government to report news. For example, unlike Sogou, in this case Baidu has included the Global Times in its search results ("huanqiu.com" appears twice in the screenshot above).

One way to spot censorship on Baidu is to compare search results over time. In this case, below is a screenshot taken on October 17, 2018 for the same query ("Xinjiang Concentration Camps" (新疆集中营):

One could be forgiven for thinking that because Baidu only showed 1.57 million search results in 2018 as opposed to 5.72 million results in 2021 that there was no censorship. The 5.72 million number is deceptive, however, because as the screenshot below taken on April 3, 2021 demonstrates, a search for "Xinjiang Concentration Camps" (新疆集中营) in quotes shows that Baidu has in fact only 10 results that contain that specific term.

 

By comparison, the screenshot below of search results for the same query taken on the same day shows that Microsoft's Bing search engine returns over 36,000 search results:

 Another indication that Baidu is censoring search results is that in 2018 Baidu was showing not only organic search results, but also a side-bar of "Relevant People" and "Popular Searches" - there is no sidebar in Baidu's 2021 search results. 

The clearest evidence of Baidu's censorship, however, is that it no longer shows any results from the  social media websites blog.sina.com.cn, tianya.cn, and Baidu's own PostBar - tieba.baidu.com - that appeared in the first page of its search results in 2018. The screenshots below were taken on April 3, 2021, and show that Baidu now tells users that it does not find any relevant web pages for searches for that query on any of those websites (e.g., 抱歉没有找到与“新疆集中营 site:blog.sina.com.cn”相关的网页).

China's Search Engines (Except One) Stop Notifying Users of Political Censorship

The following screenshots show that, at some time between mid-March and the end of May, 2016, China's three major search engines - Baidu, Sogou, and Qihoo - stopped displaying a censorship notice for the phrase "China's Last Leader" (中国最后领导人). Instead, Baidu and Qihoo tell users they are unable to find any search results, and Sogou returns a blank page.

It is unclear exactly when these search engines stopped displaying their censorship notices, but these screenshots show that, in the case of Baidu, it happened in mid-May.

This screenshot was taken in July 2009, and shows that Baidu had been placing a censorship notice at the top of certain search results for at least 7 years.

These screenshots show that, while Baidu has not always censored terms like "Tiananmen Massacre," it continued to do so in June 2016, and the only thing that has changed is that it is no longer informing users when it does.

This screenshot was taken on June 9, 2016, and shows that the PRC-based version of Microsoft's Bing search engine was still notifying users when it censored search results pursuant to a government order.

Xi Jinping Says China "Open to Foreign Media," China's Government and Search Engines Block Access to Foreign Media

On September 19, 2015, the state sponsored China Daily published an article entitled “Xi says China Open to Foreign Media, Eyeing Closer Co-Op with US.” Some excerpts:

President Xi Jinping on Friday said China will continue to be open to foreign media and he looks forward to more cooperation and understanding between China and the United States.

"[We] welcome foreign media and correspondents to cover China stories, introducing China's development to the world, and helping the world grasp the opportunities [afforded by] China's development," Xi said as he met with Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp. at the Great Hall of the People.

These screenshots were taken just prior to Xi’s trip, and show what people in China see when they try to access Reuters, Bloomberg, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Their connections are reset and the pages will not load.

These screenshots show the search results people get on three of China’s most popular search engines - Baidu, Qihoo, and Sogou - when they try to find information about Xi Jinping on the New York Time’s website.

This screenshot shows what users saw when performing the same search on the Bing search engine.

China's Search Engines Censor "Stock Disaster"

UPDATE August 25, 10:30 am: It appears Baidu has stopped displaying a censorship notice. See below for details.

On August 25, 2015, the state sponsored Global Times published an editorial entitled “Morale Needed as Pessimism Roils Market.” Some excerpts:

Chinese stock markets saw their biggest daily fall since 2007 Monday, with the Shanghai Composite Index dropping 8.49 percent, while the ChiNext Index plunged 8.08 percent. Other Asian markets experienced a dramatic fall along with them. US stock markets also plunged to daily limit in early Monday following the big drop in Chinese stocks. Some have therefore dubbed the day "Black Monday."

There seems to be only one reason for the tumble - investors lack confidence in China's economic outlook.
. . . .
There is no need to worry because of pessimistic voices from the outside world. China's economy is in a bitter period of structural adjustments. We should become inured to face all sorts of problems with grace. This temporary lack of confidence will not snowball to become destructive. 

These screenshots were taken in the morning of August 25, 2015 (Beijing time), and show that all of China's major search engines - Baidu, Qihoo, and Sogou - were censoring searches for "Stock Disaster" (股灾).

UPDATE August 25, 10:30 am: These screenshots were taken around 10:15 am on August 25 (Beijing time) and show that apparently Baidu was no longer displaying a censorship notice when users search for "Stock Disaster." Although Baidu is also telling users it is not able to find as many search results as when it was displaying the censorship notice.

These screenshots show the change in search results for "Stock Disaster" restricted to Sina's Blog domain.

China’s Search Engines, News Websites Censor Images About Mass Suicide Attempt in Beijing

At around noon on April 4, 2015, state sponsored news websites such as the China Daily published a report entitled “Dozens of People Lie Down in Beijing’s Wangfujing Pedestrian Mall, Cause Unknown” (北京王府井步行街10余人躺地 原因不明).

At 1:30 pm on April 4 the Beijing police published an announcement regarding the incident on its official Sina Weibo.

According to an English language report published on the website of the state sponsored China Radio International:

More than 30 taxi drivers from Suifenhe in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province staged a protest in Beijing's main pedestrian street in Wangfujing on Saturday, appealing for the right to renew their taxi licenses.
. . . .
The individuals are reported to have drunk the pesticide. But the police intervened on time and sent the individuals to a hospital. They are all reported to be in a stable condition.

These screenshots show that the China Daily report (which included images of the incident)was deleted within hours after the official police announcement (which did not).

Original URL: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/micro-reading/china/2015-04-04/content_13494839.html

These screenshots show that Tencent revised its initial report on the incident to remove photographs taken at the scene and substitute a video report from China's state run media.

These screenshots were taken shortly after the police announcement was published, and show that two of China’s search engines - Baidu and Qihoo - were censoring search results for the phrase “Dozens Lie Down on Wangfujing Pedestrian Mall.” (王府井步行街10余人躺地)

These screenshots show that Sina Weibo was curating its results for "Wangfujing Suicide" (王府井 自杀).

Previous examples of censorship of mass suicide attempts:

• China's Weibos, News Sites Censor Report on Group Suicide Attempt in Beijing - http://blog.feichangdao.com/2013/08/chinas-weibos-news-sites-censor-report.html
• Sina Weibo Censors Searches About Mass Suicide Attempt in Beijing - http://blog.feichangdao.com/2013/12/sina-weibo-censors-searches-about-mass.html