Global Times Deletes Article About Censorship of Social Media

Last week this blog noted that the state-sponsored Global Times had published an article entitled "Hackers, Bloggers and Professors Team Up to Tap into Blocked Microblog Content." Some excerpts:

From the list of blocked keywords provided on the website, it is also clear when some words become sensitive and when such scrutiny is lifted.
For instance, the name of Bo Xilai, former Party chief of Chongqing who was recently prosecuted on corruption charges, was banned from searches until July 25, the day the news of his prosecution was announced.
. . . .
China's regulation on Internet information lists nine types of banned content, most of which concerns national security, state unity, rumors, pornography and violence. But in practice it isn't always clear where the line is and in the event of a breaking incident, certain words or phrases that are otherwise normal might become sensitive for a period of time.
Data provided by Greatfire has been used by other researchers to get to grips with Internet restrictions. In May, for instance, two professors from Northwestern University in the US used its data to study how the GFW affects users' online behavior.

That article, which was originally available here - http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/799621.shtml - has been deleted. The following video shows what happens when a user tried to access the article on August 2.

The Global Times has been known to repost deleted articles, so perhaps this one will return as well.

Searching for Information About Milk Powder Safety on China's Web Sites: From Sanlu to Yili to Fonterra

On August 5, 2013, China.org.cn, a web site operated by the Chinese government's State Council Information Office, published an op-ed entitled "New Zealand Needs to Start Building Trust in the Long-Term." Some excerpts:

But with yet another trade imbroglio, this one Fonterra's botulism scare, surely it's time to ask the New Zealand government: "Where's the quality control?" 

Fonterra might have come away with some credit had it moved quickly to isolate the affected produce and implement a recall, but when such a problem takes more than a year to come to light, it's elevated from an industry event to a national issue.
. . . .
While it's true the government isn't responsible for the contamination of Fonterra produce, it should be held accountable for the fact that nothing was done to identify the problem before it was dispatched to export markets and domestic customers.

This screenshot was taken on August 5, 2013, and shows that a search for "Fonterra Botulism" (恒天然 肉毒杆菌) returned over 170,000 results.

Yili Milk Powder

On June 15, 2012, the state sponsored Global Times reported:

Dairy producer Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co said yesterday that it has started recalling most of its Quanyou series formula milk powder produced from November 2011 to May 2012 since Wednesday, due to excessive mercury content which is harmful to the nervous system.

The screenshots, taken the same day, show that while searches on Sina Weibo returned results for "Yili" (伊利) and "Milk powder" (奶粉), searches for "Yili milk powder" (伊利 奶粉) and "Yili mercury" (伊利 汞) returned no results, just a censorship notice.

Sanlu Milk Powder and Li Changjiang

On December 28, 2009, the state-sponsored China Daily published an article entitled "Tainted Milk Official in New Role." Some excerpts:

A government minister who lost his job over last year's tainted baby formula scandal has been appointed deputy head of a department leading China's war on porn. 

Li Changjiang, 65, former head of the top quality agency, is now vice-director of the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications.
. . . .
Li resigned as minister of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine days after the Sanlu milk scandal was exposed last September. 

The State Council had made a statement that the quality administration had to bear "supervision responsibility for the milk food contamination". 

The tainted formula killed six children and led to more than 300,000 more suffering urinary tract problems, such as kidney stones.

These screenshots were taken in December 2009, and show that searches on Baidu and Youdao for "Poison Milk Official Who Stepped Down Li Changjiang Reinstated" (毒奶粉下马的李长江复职) returned no results, just a censorship notice.

Zhao Lianhai and Kidney Stone Babies

In 2010, Zhao Lianhai (赵连海) was sentenced to 2½ years imprisonment for "disturbing social order" after he started the "Home for Kidney Stone Babies" (结石宝宝之家, jieshibaobao.com) web site and attempted to lead parents in getting restitution and treatment for their children who had been poisoned by Sanlu's melamine-tainted milk powder.

These screenshots were taken in November 2010, and show that the state-sponsored newspaper Southern Weekend posted, and then deleted, an article entitled "Kidney Stone Baby Father Zhao Lianhai's Lawyer is Dismissed" (结石宝宝父亲赵连海律师被解除委托).

This screenshot was also taken in November, 2010, and shows that Baidu was restricting search results for "Zhao Lianhai" to a white list of about a dozen web sites controlled by the central government and the Communist Party.

On November 2, 2011, China's state-run media reported that a Beijing court had ordered Hudong (互动) CEO Pan Haidong (潘海东) to pay 120,000 yuan in compensation and publish 30 days' of apologies to Baidu for making defamatory statements including: "Baidu once took 3,000,000 yuan to help the Sanlu Group block negative information about the Sanlu melamine poisoned milk powder incident" (百度曾帮助三鹿集团屏蔽三聚氰胺毒奶粉事件的负面消息并借此挣了300万). According to the report:

This court's decision not only held that Pan Haidong should be held responsible as a public figure for spreading malicious rumors, it also washed Baidu clean of the misrepresentations and misunderstandings it had suffered from some Internet users who did not know the facts. 

此没有事实依据的言论被法庭认定判定为“已构成用侮辱及诽谤方式侵害百度公司名誉权的侵权行为”。此次法庭的判决，一方面追查了潘海东作为公众人物恶意传谣应负的责任，一方面也洗清了百度在此问题上曾经遭受一些不明真相网友的误传和误解。

Zhao continued to campaign after his release, and in January 2012 he tried to launch a poll on Sina Weibo asking people whether they supported Sina's censorship of the phrase "Kidney Stone Babies." Here's a translation of his poll:

Do You Support Sina Weibo Blocking Keywords Related to "Kidney Stone Babies"?
Participants: 438
According to Baidu's Baike Entry on Kidney Stone Babies:
"Kidney Stone Babies" (结石宝宝) refers to those infants who became ill with "twin recurring kidney stones" and "urethra kidney stones" as a result of ingesting infant formula containing melamine from Sanlu and other brands. This was a phrase that arose after China's 2008 Sanlu Milk Powder Incident, and expressed the concern and pity people had for these children.
However, in the years following the Kidney Stone Babies incident, all information about assisting Kidney Stone Babies published on Sina Weibo has been completely blocked by Sina Weibo. So I want to ask: What law does the phrase Kidney Stone Babies actually violate? What regulation does it violate? As a large media broadcasting company, Sina is not only not helping Kidney Stone Babies, on the contrary, it is for a long time blocked searches relating to Kidney Stone Babies. Their behavior flies in the face of the bottom line for social morality. I demand that Sina must stop blocking the phrase Kidney Stone Babies and Apologize!
Sina Must Stop Blocking the Phrase Kidney Stone Babies and Apologise: 437 (100%)
Support Sina's Censorship: 1 (0%).

This screenshot was taken on the same day Zhao launched his poll, and shows that a search on Sina Weibo for "Kidney Stone Babies" returned no results, just a censorship notice.

These screenshots show that, within hours after Zhao launched the poll, Sina deleted it.

Here's Zhao's Weibo posts about the censorship:

9:36 pm Its really weird: Sina sent me a system notice clearly saying: "Your poll 'Do You Support Sina Blocking Phrases Relating to Kidney Stone Babies?' has been deleted." But when I look now its still possible to vote at this address http://t.cn/Sa5Ar7, and there are currently 413 people who have voted for "Sina Must Stop Blocking the Phrase Kidney Stone Babies and Apologise"!
好奇怪：新浪发来的系统通知明明说“你支持新浪微博屏蔽结石宝宝相关词条吗？”这个投票被删除，但发现目前还可以投票呢，投票地址：http://t.cn/Sa5Ar7 目前投给“新浪必须解除所有结石宝宝词条屏蔽并道歉”这一项的已达到413人！ 

9:59 pm Damn! The Sina Poll has been completely deleted http://t.cn/Sa5Ar7. The last time I checked there were over 455 vote for "Sina Must Stop Blocking the Phrase Kidney Stone Babies and Apologize," and the number of voters was growing rapidly, with only one vote for "Support Sina's Censorship." Its really gratifying to see those supporters in just four hours. Censors - we will not forget!
他娘的！新浪那个投票还是被彻底删除了 http://t.cn/Sa5Ar7 ，最后我看到的投票数字是455投给“新浪必须解除所有结石宝宝词条屏蔽并道歉”这一项，并且投票速度逐渐在加快，只有1票投给“支持新浪屏蔽”。短短4个小时看到的支持让人欣慰！删吧，咱先记上！

These screenshots were taken on August 5, 2013, and show that Sina Weibo was not censoring search results for "Zhao Lianhai" or "Kidney Stone Babies.

These screenshots were taken the same day, and show that Baidu was still banning users from creating PostBar (Tieba 贴吧) forums about "Zhao Lianhai" and "Kidney Stone Babies."

China's State Run Media Publishes English Language Reports on Book/Internet Censorship (Again)

In the last week the Global Times (published by the Communist Party mouthpiece The People's Daily), published several English language articles discussing free speech with mainland Chinese characteristics:

Hackers, Bloggers and Professors Team Up to Tap into Blocked Microblog Content 

From the list of blocked keywords provided on the website, it is also clear when some words become sensitive and when such scrutiny is lifted.
For instance, the name of Bo Xilai, former Party chief of Chongqing who was recently prosecuted on corruption charges, was banned from searches until July 25, the day the news of his prosecution was announced.
. . . .
China's regulation on Internet information lists nine types of banned content, most of which concerns national security, state unity, rumors, pornography and violence. But in practice it isn't always clear where the line is and in the event of a breaking incident, certain words or phrases that are otherwise normal might become sensitive for a period of time.
Data provided by Greatfire has been used by other researchers to get to grips with Internet restrictions. In May, for instance, two professors from Northwestern University in the US used its data to study how the GFW affects users' online behavior. 

Update August 8, 2013 - The aforementioned report was deleted from the Global Times web site within a few days of its posting. See here - http://blog.feichangdao.com/2013/08/global-times-deletes-article-about.html

Hengqin New Area Aims to Skirt Firewall 

Local authorities of the Hengqin New Area in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province confirmed Tuesday that they are planning to bypass the Great Firewall by opening special access to the Internet.
"We're cooperating with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and telecommunication providers including China Telecom to work on a plan. The local government will hand over the plan to related government bodies for approval," Liu, a press officer from the Hengqin government, told the Global Times, without giving details of their proposed timeline.
The Zhuhai Daily reported Tuesday that the New Area is also trying to gain support from the State Internet Information Office that would facilitate the establishment of this special access.
If passed, Hengqin will be the first region on the Chinese mainland where local residents can skirt the firewall and get access to blocked websites including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

New Freedoms for Banned Books

The so-called banned books are mainly works by Chinese authors that have been outlawed by the authorities, such as Yang Jisheng's Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962, in which the author spent 20 years investigating the reasons that led to mass starvation, including the death of his own father. They can also be books that had some politically sensitive content removed from mainland versions, such as historian Zhang Yihe's The Memories Haven't Vanished, in which she tells the stories of prominent intellectuals who suffered from brutal attacks during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76.)
Many mainlanders who buy political books at the Book Fair told the Global Times that they did not feel comfortable talking about it as they were afraid their comments might land them in hot water.

Is there anything new about China's state-run media publishing English language reports about book and Internet censorship?

In August 2009, the China Daily published a report entitled "Lawyer Arrested on Tax Evasion Charges" in which it noted:

Information about Xu has been blocked on the internet yesterday as the search for "Xu Zhiyong (Chinese characters)"on Google.cn and Baidu, two major search engines, generated: "Your search results don't conform to related laws and policy."

From the Global Times article "What Writers Can and Can't Write" in January 2012:

Faced with sometimes ambiguous regulations that are often blamed for stifling artistic creativity, some writers give up, some put up a fight, but most seem to cooperate.
The manuscript of a book usually needs to be reviewed at least three times by the publishing house. Depending on the subject matter the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), various propaganda departments and other government agencies may also be involved in the approval process. Television and movie productions require the approval of the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).
"There is also self-censoring, and writers and playwrights are very sensitive to this," said Shi Hang, a playwright who has written dozens of TV series, mostly historical dramas.

From the Global Times article "Cloud Transcends Firewall" in June 2011:

The construction of China's first international cloud computing hub is progressing apace in Chongqing, a local official told the Global Times Wednesday, adding that the zone will be free from any Internet content oversight.
"We have completed the outline of the International Cloud Computing Special Zone in the city's Liangjiang New Area. The first phase of construction is set to be completed in three years," said an official surnamed Li with the Chongqing Economic and Information Technology Commission. "There have been several foreign enterprises signing contracts to do business in the zone."
The special zone, covering about 10 square kilometers, is the only area in China that is directly connected to the outside Internet through optical fibers without being filtered, according to the Southern Weekend.
Foreign companies can run offshore data services in the special zone after obtaining a license for telecommunications and data management businesses. Some can even keep a 100 percent shareholding of businesses in the zone, the newspaper reported.
. . . .
"A special optical cable directly connected to the outside Internet is not necessary to run a cloud zone, but its installation in Chongqing could be attributed to demands of foreign companies as some websites are blocked in China," Cao said.

Its also worth noting that the People's Daily itself has published articles about the Great Firewall in Chinese. For example, there is this article from April 2007 entitled "Baidu's Japan Web Site Being Blocked by the Great Firewall Suspected to be  Connected with Pornographic Content." (百度日本站被GFW屏蔽 疑与色情内容有关)

Most Major Chinese Web Sites Completely Censor Search Results for "Huang Huahua Reported"

Huang Huahua (黄华华) was governor of Guangdong province from 2003 - 2011.

These screenshots show that, while a Baidu search for "Huang Huahua" in late July, 2013 returned apparently uncensored results, a search for "Huang Huahua reported" (黄华华 举报) returned no results, just a censorship notice.

Similarly, Baidu was also completely censoring search results for "Huang Huahua High Level Corruption" (黄华华 高层贪腐).

These screenshots show that all of China's major search engines also returned no results for "Huang Huahua reported" (黄华华 举报), just a censorship notice.

These screenshots show that Baidu had banned users from establishing PostBar (贴吧) forums on Huang Huahua, and a search for "Huang Huahua reported" (黄华华 举报) on Sina Weibo returned no results, just a censorship notice.

This screenshot shows Yahoo.com search results for "Huang Huahua reported" (黄华华 举报).

Baidu Temporarily Relaxes Censorship of "GlaxoSmithKline"

On July 26, 2013, the Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily published a report from China's official news agency Xinhua entitled "Police Reveal Details of GSK China's Alleged Violations." Some excerpts:

The Chinese police on Thursday revealed details of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) China's alleged bribery and tax-related violations that pushed up drug prices and disrupted market order. 

After the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced on July 11 that some employees from GSK China were being investigated for suspected bribery and tax-related violations, more individuals involved in the case, including salespeople and doctors, are now under investigation. 

Xinhua has learned from police officers handling the case that they are suspected of offering bribes to doctors, asking them to prescribe more drugs in order to grow sales volume, and in the meantime pushing up drug prices.

These screenshots show that at some time between July 22 and July 27 Baidu relaxed its censorship for searches of "GlaxoSmithKline" (葛兰素史克), and started returning news results for that term. Baidu was still censoring search results, however, restricting results to a white list of about a dozen web sites controlled by the central government and the Communist Party.

These screenshots show that as of July 28, Baidu was once again censoring searches for "GlaxoSmithKline" and was not returning any news results for that term.

These screenshots show that as of July 27 most other search engines and Weibos were continuing to completely censor searches for "GlaxoSmithKline."

The exception was Tencent's Soso search engine, which has not appeared to censor search results for "GlaxoSmithKline."

Baidu Censors "Xinhua Reporter Exposes Minister Accepted Bribes and Drank Human Milk"

On July 22, 2013, China-based web portal 163.com published an article entitled "Hong Kong Media: Xinhua Reporter Exposes Minister Accepted Bribes and Drank Human Milk." (港媒：新华社记者曝正部级官员接受贿赂喝人奶) An excerpt:

According to a report in the Ta Kung Pao, some officials are vicious beyond measure, and a Xinhua correspondent has published a post stating that several years ago a minister-level official participated in expensive parties thrown by wealthy businessmen at a time when he was still a deputy-minister. One of the dishes was the breast milk of a beautiful woman, and every guest was accompanied by a young, beautiful, naked girl. 

据大公网报道，有官员荒淫无度，新华社对外部记者周方发博文称，一正部级官员几年前仍是副部级官员时，曾在北京高级会所参加富商组织的宴会，有一道菜是美女人奶，即每位食客旁都来了一位全裸的美艳少妇。

This screenshot shows that a search for the title of that article in quotes on Baidu on July 27 returned no results, just a censorship notice.

These screenshots show why - shortly after the article was published, Baidu began restricting search results for the title of that article to a white list of about a dozen web site controlled by the central government and the Communist Party.

Baidu's censorship coincided with the publication of a denial of the story by Xinhua on China-based web portal Sohu's "Rumor" web site. According to that story:

We have learned that the correspondent Zhou Fang was merely an evening English editor, who usually did not take part in news reporting, and had absolutely no means of knowing what supposedly goes on behind the scenes, and his real name report is utter nonsense. The aforementioned [Xinhua insider] went on to disclose that every year Zhou Fang "exposes" something online, but everything he has exposed was proven to be false. 

获知这位对外部记者周方只是值夜班的英文编辑，平时不参与新闻报道，没有任何渠道获知所谓的内幕信息，实名举报更是无稽之谈。上述人士还透露，周方之前每年都会在网络上“爆料”，但所爆的料，都被证明是假消息。

Sina Weibo Censors Searches About Jack Ma's Comments About June 4, 1989

On July 20, 2013, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post published the following announcement in English and Chinese on its web site:

On July 13th, 2013, reporter Liu Yi submitted an article for an interview with Jack Ma which was published by SCMPChinese.com. After a period of time and without authorisation, she accessed the system and replaced the editor-approved article with an altered version in which Mr Ma's reference made in relation to June 4th was removed. Given this alteration's departure from our interview recording, the original article was reinstated immediately following discovery of discrepancy. Liu Yi has since been suspended from work for making unauthorised alterations to company property. A full disciplinary enquiry was instigated. Liu Yi however chose to resign on July 19th, 2013, while the investigation is still ongoing. Notwithstanding, the South China Morning Post continues to stand by the original article. SCMP will continue with our in-house inquiry as with all cases relating to professional discipline. 

2013年7月13日, 南华早报中文网刊登记者劉怡采写的与马云的专访。刊登一段时间后，劉怡未经授权擅自进入系统，对已由编辑同意刊发的最后定稿进行删改。删改后的版本將受访者马云对六四的言论刪除。这与采访的录音原始记录不相符。我们发现后，马上恢复文章的原貌。同时，我们暂停该名员工的工作，并展开全面内部调查。就在调查期间，劉怡却于7月19日提出辞职。但是南华早报对该报道的真实性确信不疑。南华早报将继续按公司员工纪律规定，进行调查。

This screenshot was taken on July 22, and shows that a search on Sina Weibo for "South China Morning Post Editorial Department Announcement" (南华早报编辑部声明) returned no results, just a censorship notice.

This screenshot was taken on July 21, and shows that Sina Weibo was censoring searches for "South China Morning Post Liu Yi." (南华早报 刘怡)

These screenshots were taken on July 20, and show that Sina Weibo was censoring searches for "Jack Ma Six Four," (马云 六四) but not searches for "Jack Ma," (马云) or "Six Four." (六四)