Abstract
While the rest of the world debates the finer points of free speech, China is still banning hashtags, email providers and even puns, says
The killings in Paris focused attention on journalism, freedom of speech, and pressure not to offend – issues familiar to anyone watching China in recent times. For years, China has not only censored news media, but actively blocked journalistic access. Well before the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, China was already extending its Great Firewall, blocking significant chunks of what it deemed unsuitable on the internet, in an attempt to restrict information reaching its citizens, information it believes would provoke public response and undo government policy. Some measures restrict journalist access to visas, or even detain journalists themselves. (One recent victim is Zhang Miao, a Chinese woman working as an assistant to the German national newspaper Die Zeit. She has been detained indefinitely, following her coverage of the Occupy Central protests in Hong Kong.)
No incident exposed the fears of the Chinese government more than the banning of puns in November
For foreigners accustomed to an open media, especially those who relish satirical political commentary, living in China has required serious workarounds. In 2009 when I moved to China, it was almost a given that expats arrived armed with a virtual private network (VPN) to access Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Buried in all these platforms is also a great deal of ironic humour. Memes and other soundbites poke fun at current events and assumes a viewer is skeptical of political powers around them.
Photo-sharing app Instagram was not restricted until the end of September 2014, when the protests in Hong Kong were heating up. Photos of protesters uniting against the interference of the Beijing government were accompanied with trending hashtags like #UmbrellaRevolution, causing a swift blackout of the app on the mainland. During the Hong Kong protests, even pictures on WeChat, (China’s rival service to free phone-messaging service WhatsApp) were censored. I imagine that in the eyes of the Chinese government, blocking such a visually rich social media platform would prevent its own citizens from rallying and supporting the other half of the “one country, two systems”.
With such strict censorship in place, Chinese netizens rely heavily on coded languages, often substituting written characters with homophones: the written record may mean one thing, but if spoken, the message is quite clear.
No incident exposed the fears of the Chinese government more than the banning of puns in late November 2014, a real decree from the State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. Print and broadcasters were urged to crack down on the “misuse of idioms”, prompting witty headlines about the issue, including The Guardian’s: “China bans wordplay in attempt at pun control”. Already so deprived of many tools of their trade, journalists and netizens now find themselves subjected to arbitrary indictment in their use of language itself.
Even less of a laughing matter followed days before 2015 rang in, when Google’s Gmail was blocked in China. Though connection to Google’s search engine had been limited for years, the choice to block email access affected international businesses and personal interactions.
Now is the time to reflect on the balance between political commentary and the limits of free speech worldwide. But for those of us who work in and around China, it should also be a reminder that these conversations have less and less opportunity to even happen. And without unfettered email access to write “Je suis Charlie”, how does one even start a conversation?
Take just one incident as an example. In July 2009, mass riots in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, left almost 200 people dead. Following the event, China dealt with the situation by shutting off internet access in the region for six months and limiting calls out of the area. More violence and unrest has erupted since; on 28 July 2014, over 100 people were killed in a premeditated terrorist attack on a police station in Xinjiang. But because foreign journalists who visit Xinjiang are either harassed or banned, it’s hard not only to get transparency on what happened – let’s say “review the root causes” – but almost impossible to even comprehend how to avoid further violence.
China dealt with the situation by shutting off internet access in the region of six months and limiting calls out of the area
The issue the world has at hand is whether freedom of speech has its limits, whereas in China, it’s whether such dialogue can even occur, on any platform.