China Quietly Unblocks Names of Its Leaders 39
hackingbear writes "One of the Chinese Web censorship's central features has long been blocking searches for the names of top leaders to maintain their public images. Sina Weibo, China's largest microblog service, unblocked searches for the names of many top political leaders in a possible sign of looser controls a month after new senior officials were named to head the ruling party, though a number of other senior leaders are still blocked on Weibo, including Premier Web Jiabao. That (President) Xi might be leading by example on softening Web censorship could be a promising sign for future reforms. It isn't on a major shift, but it could portend one."
Re:Chinese Censorship Is Not News Or News (Score:3, Insightful)
It's relevant because web censorship in China is being slightly reduced. Considering web is part of tech and this is a tech website, posting it here makes sense.
Based upon a recent BBC report, there is a majority of Chinese who will go right along with anything the government wants to do, because the consider the Goverment practically a member of the family -- like a wise parent looking after them -- and go so far as to take pride in that. What's more important to the Chinese people is cutting down corruption, not censorship.
Reasons for original takedown (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear god people if you dont know anything about the topic dont post....
China blocked the names of a number of their leaders of late (on Weibo [twitter] and Sina [google]) for a few reasons:
1. There may have been an attempted coup - that accounts for a few names
2. There for sure was the downfall of a major regional leader (Bo Xilai) under very ugly circumstances (right hand man tried to defect to US embassy to avoid being murdered,wife poisoned a spy, etc.)
3. There was a huge NYT article calling out Hu Jintao that was straight propaganda - so much so that they disseminated a chinese language pdf of the article to the general web
4. The old leader Jiang Zhemin has been near death and rumors have swirled.
5. Some other guys kid wrecked a car and killed some people
THESE ARE THE REASONS WHY THOSE NAMES WERE CENSORED. This doesnt portend to any changes. Watch the next few years as freeing China becomes a constant narrative....
I could give the reasons why they have unblocked them now but id rather get out to a party. Try to RTFA and then RSMFAs before posting nonsense.