Bloggers trick the censors

Online writers in China try to dodge state watchdogs

By Juliet Ye and Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Wall Street Journal

Sunday, July 6, 2008

To slip past Internet censors squashing reports of a weekend riot in China's Guizhou province, some bloggers have started writing backward.

Some 30,000 rioters set fire to government buildings last weekend to protest the way authorities handled the death of a teenager in the province's Weng'an County. While state-controlled media provided immediate coverage, government censors moved fast to delete posts providing unofficial accounts and deactivate those users' accounts.

So bloggers on forums such as Tianya.cn have taken to posting in formats that China's Internet censors, often employees of commercial Web service providers, have a hard time automatically detecting. One recent strategy involves online software that flips sentences to read right to left instead of left to right, and vertically instead of horizontally.

China's sophisticated censorship regime - known as the Great Firewall - can automatically track objectionable phrases. But "the country also has the most experienced and talented group of netizens who always know ways around it," said an editor at Tianya, owned by Hainan Tianya Online Networking Technology Co., who has been responsible for deleting posts on the riot.

With the Beijing Olympics a little more than a month away, the Chinese government has shown little patience toward dissent, online or offline. On June 27, authorities in Nanjing imposed a four- year prison sentence on Sun Lin, who had written posts on the overseas dissident Web site Boxun.com, after convicting him of "gathering crowds to cause social unrest" and other offenses. Media-freedom group Reporters Without Borders says that since the beginning of 2008, there have been 24 cases of journalists, cyberdissidents or free- expression activists being arrested or sentenced to jail terms.

Guizhou officials recently reopened the investigation into the death of the 17-year-old student that led to the riots. Police originally had labeled her death a suicide, but outraged local residents believed she had been raped and killed by people who had connections with local officials.

Public-security officials defended the police actions, saying they showed "great restraint," the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. It said about 100 police were among the 150 injured during the rioting but that most injuries were slight.

In comments to Xinhua, provincial Communist Party chief Shi Zongyuan emphasized social stability, underscoring the government's heightened anxiety ahead of the Olympics. The incident "was used and incited by very few people with ulterior motives" Xinhua reported.

But some Chinese journalists and Web writers have been emboldened by the Guizhou incident. Citizen journalist Zhou Shuguang, who goes by the online name Zola, has been using different kinds of technology. After arriving in Guizhou on June 30, he began sharing snippets of information via Twitter, a kind of public instant-messaging feed that delivers information more quickly than censors can block it.

• July 7, 2008

  4:54 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  LOUIE writes:

  Hey, something to be learned here; maybe the people should develope code words and phrases to regain free speech here.

• July 7, 2008

  5:34 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Oh_Wise_One writes:

  Louie, take your meds, we have free speech here.

• July 7, 2008

  5:38 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  leroypaula writes:

  .aedi taerg a si sdrawkcab gnitirw taht kniht I

• July 7, 2008

  6:18 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  LOUIE writes:

  No, I disagree. But hey if you think you're free, that's all that matters for you!

• July 7, 2008

  6:27 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  LOUIE writes:

  Oh_Wise_One, check out the blog in the opinion section titled "Fairness or censorship". It has some intresting thoughts that are starting to develope and hopefully take shape. I have to go, but I will read that blog for sure when I return.

• July 7, 2008

  7:10 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  LOUIE writes:

  Oh_Wise_One, with the sad shape of healthcare in America, might I borrows some of your meds? I am kidding, I enjoy your posts; thought I'd return the laugh before I leave out the door!

• July 7, 2008

  10:41 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Oh_Wise_One writes:

  Froward69- you are right. When did we start putting you and your "ilk" into re-education camps? When did we send you and your mates to Siberia?
  What, that didn't happen?
  Feel free to keep posting your weak-minded liberal mush but stop projecting your intolerance upon the right.

• July 7, 2008

  7:39 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  KaySieverding writes:

  Free speech requires a court system that will fairly handle constitutional complaints--retaliation against whistle blowers for instance.