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Written by: Luce
Welcome to the 404 Archives, here, we will cross the Chinese digital wall together. Today we will pay attention to the large-scale speech control triggered by the Peng Shuai incident.
On November 2, 2021, Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai posted on Weibo, accusing Zhang Gaoli, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee and former deputy prime minister, of sexually assaulting her. The censorship system immediately took large-scale actions to delete and block key information about the incident to prevent people from spreading and discussing the incident.
This week’s CDT Sensitive Words Weekly in China Digital Times collected and sorted out the “sensitive words” that were blocked by network administrators in this incident. In this program, we will introduce and interpret them one by one.
Sensitive word 1: Peng Shuai
Peng Shuai, 35 years old, is a Chinese female professional tennis player. Peng Shuai is one of China’s best tennis players. In 2014, she was ranked No. 1 in the world in doubles.
In a post posted on Weibo, Peng Shuai accused Zhang Gaoli, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, of sexually assaulting her several times in more than a decade. She said, “About three years ago, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, you retired. Find Doctor Liu from the Tianjin Tennis Center and then contact me… After playing in the morning, you and your wife Kang Jie took me to your home. Then you took me to your house. Brought into your room, just like when I was in Tianjin more than ten years ago, forcing me to have sex.”
Peng Shuai elaborated on the many injustices and insults brought about by this experience, so “even if I hit the rocks with the pebbles, the moths extinguished the fire and killed myself, I have to tell the truth about you.”
This Weibo only survived for about 20 minutes and was subsequently deleted. Peng Shuai’s account of more than 500,000 fans is still there, but he is unable to comment and follow the post, which is essentially the same as blocking.
The China Digital Age test found that on the Chinese Internet, most of the variants of Peng Shuai’s name have been cleaned up, and most of the screenshots of various content circulated on the Internet that try to bypass sensitive words can no longer find the original text. Some netizens tried to use puns such as “Peng Yuyan Shuai” to refer to Peng Shuai, bypassing Weibo censorship. Even so, “Peng Yuyan + Shuai” has only a small amount of missing content on Weibo, which has obviously been cleaned up.
In addition, Baidu search turned off the automatic search completion function for the word “Peng”, and the Zhihu platform included “Peng Shuai” as a search forbidden word.
Netizen Xi Dahai commented: “It is estimated that the name’Peng Shuai’ will soon disappear from all network systems controlled by Great China, and other people with the same name will never be allowed to appear on the network. This is full of four. Confident, “full-process democracy” with Chinese characteristics.”
Sensitive word 2: Zhang Gaoli
Zhang Gaoli, born in 1946, from Fujian, served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council.
Statistics in China’s Digital Age found that Zhang Gaoli, as a former “national leader”, has a high sensitivity in her name. Affected by this incident, her sensitivity has further increased. Weibo, WeChat public platform, Zhihu and other platforms only retain official media content while closing comments; Douban, Station B, Douyin, and Kuaishou are directly banned; Weibo has also severely cleaned up irrelevant content and searched for “Zhang “Korea” can only see the content released by Blue V, and the irrelevant content released by Blue V has also been cleaned up. In addition, an original post involving an official organization with the same name as Zhang Gaoli was made private.
Variations of “Zhang Gaoli” have obviously been cleaned up and blocked. For example, a Douyin search for “Zhang Gaoli”, the results all come from a video posted by a user nicknamed “Zhang Gaoli”, not title matching or fuzzy search result.
The name of Zhang Gaoli’s wife, Kang Jie, was not sensitive before the incident. Currently, search results on various platforms are irrelevant except for a very small amount of official media content.
Fergus Ryan of the Australian Institute for Strategic Policy (ASPI) commented that Chinese social media uses different censorship standards for online discussions with senior officials. The reason Leaders should be completely blameless, and they should be clean.”
Sensitive word 3: melon
“Eat melon” is an internet term. “Melon-eating crowds” means crowd watching people around. The scandal of high-ranking officials aroused the enthusiasm of the “people who eat melons”. After “Peng Shuai” and “Zhang Gaoli” were listed as sensitive words, netizens used more obscure terms such as “gua”, “eat melon”, “big melon” and “giant melon” to track the progress of the incident.
The statistics of sensitive words in China’s digital age found that: Weibo set “gua” with a very wide matching range as a quasi-ban search where only blue V can be seen; Zhihu cleaned up all content involving “gua” with ambiguous subject after November 2 .
In response to the mentality of netizens who eat melons to watch the excitement, netizen MathaDenDen commented: “This is not melon, this is not entertaining, this is the brave sorrow of a woman who has been insulted and harmed.” And netizen 9000yearsold said: “The two parties with extremely different powers are still PUA even when talking about the universe.”
Sensitive word 4: Tennis
China’s digital age has discovered that even the word “tennis” has become a sensitive word: Weibo once closed the “tennis” super chat, and now only the blue V content can be seen. As a result, ordinary users’ Weibo cannot be found in various tennis-related topics. TikTok “Tennis” search results are comprehensively sorted, and all content is posted by professional tennis accounts.
Netizen Every_Salt_2725.2d said: “Well, next time there is no tennis in China, everyone will play football for Xi Jinping.”
Some netizens changed their ways to express their concern about the Peng Shuai incident. Many netizens left messages under a Weibo posted by tennis star Djokovic on the 2nd. For example, “Let’s see how many people leave a message with me”, “I’m afraid that Germany will not blow up and I’m gone”, “This number can still be bombed?”, “Is it safe here?”, “The right to speak too difficult”.
Sensitive Word 5: The Prime Minister and I
The Korean drama “The Prime Minister and I”, produced in 2013, tells the scandal story of reporter Nan Dazhen and the newly appointed Prime Minister Kwon Yu. As a result, many Chinese netizens left messages on Douban’s “The Prime Minister and Me” page, alluding to the Peng Shuai and Zhang Gaoli incident.
A netizen commented: “If it happened in South Korea, it should have been an urgent news break. According to a report by the Voice of America, Douban subsequently removed the page of this Korean drama.
Tencent Video has the copyright of this Korean drama, but currently the drama page cannot be searched on the site, and the feature film has been offline.
In addition, in order to circumvent the censorship of Weibo, netizens began to spread a photo of Marshal Peng Dehuai and former Vice Premier of the Communist Party of China Xi Zhongxun, referred to as “Peng Shuai and Deputy Prime Minister”, alluding to today’s “Peng Shuai and Deputy Prime Minister”.
Sensitive word 6: The universe is huge
In a Weibo post that revealed the matter, Peng Shuai wrote: “I didn’t agree to cry all the time that afternoon… You said that the universe is very big, the earth is just a grain of sand in the universe, and we humans don’t even have a grain of sand. I also said a lot, just to let me let go of my thoughts… I was afraid and panicked and agreed with you seven years ago…”
Statistics in the Chinese Digital Age found that most of the keywords in Peng Shuai’s original text have been cleared on Weibo, and Weibo has set “the universe is huge” as a quasi-ban search where only blue V is visible. Knowing that there is a small amount of ridicule content. Other platforms have no relevant content.
Some netizens working in an Internet manufacturer sharedSaid: “At two o’clock that night, 11 consecutive orders were issued from the above. I sorted it out yesterday. At present, there are more than 600 prohibited words (most of them are homophones, related vocabulary).”
Netizen Woooooooowilike said: “If you provoke someone you shouldn’t provoke, you’ll be dragged by covering your mouth just for a moment. As long as you see enough people, as long as you act fast enough, no one will remember afterwards. There is no way to remember. Or Say, what about the people you see? Everyone looks at each other and dare not speak.”
China Digital Age CDT is committed to recording and disseminating censored information on the Chinese Internet, as well as people’s efforts to fight censorship. We invite you to participate in the 404 article archive project and the sensitive word open source research project to make your contribution to record and fight against Chinese Internet censorship! For details, please visit our website CDT.MEDIA.