In-Depth Analysis

Why Can't We Access Google?

May 21,2023

by Yang Fei (in Changsha)

Preface: This 30,000-word article is probably the most detailed account of Google's forced withdrawal from China on the Internet. Through event review, cause analysis, future prospect, and supplemented by many cases, it presents a panoramic view of the real facts of the Google incident, and refutes the lie of the so-called "Block the Internet for the People". It points out that vested interest groups and senior government officials who seek personal gains are the real reasons why world-famous websites such as Google and YouTube are blocked in China.

The paper also intersperses a review of the history and current status of press publication and Internet regulation in China, and concludes with four suggestions that will hopefully contribute to the normalization of China's Internet environment.

Contents

(click on links:)

An Overview of the State of Internet Regulation in China

Part One The Google Chapter

1. The Giant Breakup

2. I Will Block Whatever I Oppose

3. Filtering and Censorship (Why There is no press law in China)

4. Regulation Inside and Outside

5. What are the Differences? (What was censored?)

  the Wikipedia Method

  the "Well-informed" Method

  the Comparative Method

6. Instructions from the Ministry of Truth

7. Case Analysis of Internet Censorship

8. What are the Differences? (The way of censorship)

9. Secret Law

10, Censorship and Assassination

11, Italian Cars and Panama Bananas

12, Who are the "Veteran Cadres"?

13. Don't be evil

14, Really don't do evil?

15. An analysis of Blocked Google Products

   Google Scholar  Gmail  Google Play  Youtube

16. Returning to China?

17. Four Suggestions

An Overview of the State of Internet Regulation in China

Let’s begin with a little thing. Every time my niece returns to China from Singapore for holiday, she always complains about the difficulty of getting online. The internet connection of my house is FTTH (Fiber to the Home), and the speed is lightning fast. For sure, what she complains about is not the speed, but the inaccessibility of many websites, especially Google, which she uses to do her homework, and Facebook, which she uses to keep in touch with classmates.

There are many websites that cannot be accessed normally in mainland China. In addition to Google, the largest search engine of the world, Facebook and Twitter, the leading social media platforms of the world, there are also Bloomberg, the largest financial website of the world, YouTube, the largest video site of the world, Instagram, the largest visual platform of the world, and the New York Times, the world renowned newspaper, etc. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 2,000 websites blocked by the Chinese government. The Wikipedia entry "Websites blocked by the People's Republic of China" lists hundreds of them, covering politics, economy, culture, mailboxes, photos, videos and cloud storage, etc., involving almost all categories of the internet, and they are mainly leading large-scale websites in the industry.

Many overseas returnees and foreigners who newly arrived in China are very much dazed. With so many major websites and mobile apps that cannot be accessed, coming to China is like landing on an isolated island of the Internet, instantly losing contact with the rest of the world. They have no choice but to find a way to get past the Great Firewall of China. It is a troublesome thing. First, the speed of the internet is seriously slowed down. Second, tools such as VPN must be updated from time to time, which is laborious and costly.

Foreigners are not the only ones who are at a loss. All Chinese people who need to obtain information from blocked websites, including teachers, students, journalists, scientific researchers, foreign trade and financial practitioners, etc., are forced to practice their VPN technique every day, and their work and life are seriously hampered. The blockade of the internet in mainland China is still gradually escalating. The complete blockade of Gmail in 2014 caused tens of millions of Chinese accounts to be unable to send and receive emails, causing users to wail, especially foreign trade practitioners and children applying for foreign schools.

It should also be noted that while more than 400 million people across China use Android (developed by Google) smartphones, the Chinese government has blocked Google Play, Google's mobile app store, making hundreds of millions of smartphone users across the country unable to install officially certified software, exacerbating the proliferation of pirated software and smart phone viruses. The list goes on and on. It should be told that China's Internet blockade has seriously affected national production as well as people's lives.

Strangely, I can't find any specific reason why these sites are blocked. Take Google as an example. After being blocked for years, I can neither find the court judgment nor the notice of administrative enforcement. The spokesperson of the Chinese government only said in general that this is "administrating the Internet according to the law", but there is no comment on which law the website violated or how it endangered national security. I had no choice but to find the reason myself. There are so many blocked sites, so let's start with some of the big ones.  back to Contents

Part One The Google Chapter

First of all, Google, the largest Internet corporation on the planet, ranks number one in the world in terms of business volumes of search, video, map, email, etc. More than 70% of smart phones in the world use the Android operating system developed by Google. It is a real cyber giant.

1. The Giant Breakup

Google officially entered the Chinese market in 2006, and by the end of 2009, it had captured nearly one-third of China's Internet search traffic, earning a huge amount of money. However, on January 12, 2010, Google suddenly published a statement on its official blog, titled "A New Approach to China", claiming that it had been hacked (and implying that the hackers were from the Chinese government) and that the company had decided to stop search censorship requested by the Chinese government with immediate effect.

The statement reads, "We have evidence that the attackers' primary goal was to hack into the Gmail inboxes of Chinese human rights activists. These unreported attacks and surveillance, as well as government attempts to further restrict freedom of expression on the Internet over the past several years, have led us to conclude that we should re-examine our business operations in China. We have decided that we will no longer continue to review search results on Google.cn and may close our China-based office."

 
The above text is quite striking, and it is tantamount to an open confrontation with the Chinese government. It has been extremely rare in the history of multinational companies, and even in the history of the world, for a commercial company to openly break with a major government with a harshly worded statement. It came as a total surprise to many financial commentators that an Internet business company, whose goal is to make money, chooses to give up the most rapidly growing Internet region on earth as well as billions of dollars in revenue.

I was also confused when I first heard the news. Pulling out of China because of a hacker attack? What kind of logic was that? Internet hacking is a common thing, all governments, Internet companies and private masters are all good at it, if you pull out once getting hacked, then Google should have died many times. In terms of technical strength, Google is not so easy to lose to hackers, right?

I rushed to Google's official statement and read it carefully, it includes the following sentences: "We are uncomfortable that some search results are subject to censorship," and "We will be in discussions with the Chinese government about whether we can legally operate an unfiltered search engine," But "the Chinese government has made it very clear in discussions with us that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement."

These words were very straightforward, and combined with the attitudes of both sides and the comments of the world media, it was easy to find that the hacking attack was just a trigger, the real reason why Google and the Chinese government turned against each other was that since 2006, Google and the Chinese government had not been able to get along on the issue of search result filtering (sensitive word censorship).  back to Contents

2. I Will Block Whatever I Oppose

While Google was singing a high note on its side, Chinese officials as usual had remained silent about the internet blockade. Nonetheless, some officials have talked about the Google story, intentionally or unintentionally. A January 2010 talk by Li Wei, former Deputy Secretary General of the CCP Central Publicity Department and Director of the National Publicity Cadre Training Center, reads as follows:

"You comrades are very concerned about this (referring to Google's statement that it will withdraw from China), and I will talk to you about the situation I know. The two sides are talking now, and they (referring to Google) require the disclosure of special character restrictions and making the filtering mechanism public; our side requires it to transfer data, and to set up servers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or other cities. There is a big gap. In fact, the talk is doomed to fail. They are challenging our internet monitoring system here. This is a policy basis. There is no possibility. Our principles here are: first, we must express our attitude. I will block whatever I oppose. This is an ideological statement; the second is to show the veteran cadres, to show that we have not forgotten our roots, we are maintaining the reputation. These two points, within this scope, can only be told in this way, and you can understand for yourself. As for the final result, they will leave. We can’t keep them, and we don’t want to keep them. Let it go for one year, for two years, it will beg from us to come back one day. The central government has confidence of that, and we must also have. I want to emphasize that this is a legal issue, and the nature is like this. Don’t add other colors without authorization. Speak in one voice in public, otherwise you will be held accountable internally. Please pay special attention. Again, this is a legal issue!"

"Special character restriction" sounds academic and scientific, but it is actually sensitive content censorship. For search engines such as Google, it means filtering search results for certain words. The speech by Li Wei, the former deputy secretary-general of the Central Publicity Department, is quite shocking: I will block whatever I oppose. This is a typical rule of man, where is the slightest hint of rule of law?

There is a reason why Mr. Li Wei was so vocal. As we know, the biggest boss of China's media management is neither the courts nor the public security departments, but the Publicity Department of the Central Committee (PDCC) of the Communist Party of China（CCP）, which holds the highest authority on media in the country. All media, including newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations, websites, etc., online or offline, must follow its instructions or face shutdown.

 
Google was certainly aware of this Chinese approach to Internet content control, but later became increasingly uncomfortable with it. As we will see, there was a serious conflict between the Chinese government's secretive approach to Internet regulation and Google's "Don’t be evil" company culture. But since Google decided to do business in China at that time, it had to comply. The end result of this half-hearted effort was that since 2006, Google had been implementing the official Chinese censorship orders, but not actively enough, with occasional omissions and untimely filtering.

The PDCC was quite annoyed about this, but it was not convenient to make public accusations, so it repeatedly warned and knocked Google through CCTV (China Central Television), People's Daily, etc., and Google China was caught in various "gates", such as the license gate in February 2006, rogue software gate in July 2007, tax evasion gate in March 2008, data leak gate in June 2008, vulgarity gate in January 2009, and pornography gate in June 2009, etc.

Google, an online giant, has done a lot of nasty things such as bullying customers, forced mergers and acquisitions, and arbitrary withdrawal of products regardless of user opposition, but to say that Google is a pornographic hooligan, Lao Yang thinks it was a little unfair. In terms of filtering pornographic content, Google has been working quite hard. For example, Google’s Simplified Chinese search engine (Google.cn) enables strict filtering by default, and very few pornographic images can slip through it, while the default setting for Google search in the United States (Google.com) is medium strength filtering. Of course, if necessary, users can also switch to strict filtering, like this (screenshot):

Google may not understand why I am already very strict, but CCTV still bombards me as a pornographic hooligan? With the same search mechanism, why has there been no problem in other countries? I think Google executives may not have a good understanding of the Chinese language, with idioms such as "knocking a mountain to shake a tiger", and "scold the locust while pointing at the mulberry".

CCTV said that mother and son incest content appeared in the first page when searching for "son" on Google, so it’s proven that Google is a pornographic rogue. This logic was actually not complete. A geek forum revealed that two weeks before the CCTV news was aired, Google's servers received a large number of search requests containing the word "son", and users then specifically clicked on incestuous links, with the traffic mainly coming from mainland China.

According to Google search’s algorithm, effective visits account for a large proportion. When a sudden outbreak of a large number of "son" searches click on incestuous links, it is natural for incestuous images to rank high. There might be another driving force behind the Google pornographic "Gate", and the possibility of evidence planting cannot be ruled out. The logic of CCTV's news was faulty, but Google didn't turn against it either.

The Pornographic Gate is just one example. All in all, Rome wasn't built in a day. From 2006 to 2009, Google and the Chinese government had confronted each other many times and developed a long-standing grievance. Therefore, the December 2009 hack (by Chinese authorities) was the last straw that broke the camel's back. Among the straws, the thorniest one was the search filtering.  back to Contents

3. Filtering and Censorship (Why There is no press law in China)

To explore the origins of Internet filtering, we have to look back at traditional publishing censorship, or publishing regulation. In short, regulation is to keep you from reading certain things. Governments in all countries have been doing this all the time，ancient or modern. In 213 BC, Qin Shi Huang，the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty in China，burned thousands of books and buried hundreds of scholars alive. The moral of the story: there are always some things that the government does not let you see, and if you must see it, they'll cut your head off.

For thousands of years, China has been banning whatever the emperor said, and only in modern times has it slowly embarked on a legal track. The first formal publication law in China was the 1906 Qing Empire Special Law on Printed Matter, followed by the 1908 Qing Empire Newspaper Law, the 1914 Publication Law, and the 1937 Publication Law Amendment. 1949 saw the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the subsequent promulgation of the Constitution, which confirms citizens' freedom of speech and publication. However, there is no Publication Law and Press Law in mainland China so far. This is very rare among countries in the world.

Why is there no Press Law and Publication Law even though PRC has been established for more than 60 years? The new China can't be worse than the Qing Empire, right? This is mainly because the Constitution has explicitly provided for the freedom of speech and publication, and if the Press Law is enacted, the freedom of press and publication is a chapter that cannot be circumvented. No law can be against the constitution. But if the Press Law establishes freedom of the press, then the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the CCP will not be able to issue orders to the media. The CCP Central Committee will not allow this to happen.

Professor Sun Xupei, one of the promoters of press legislation in China, once quoted from Chen Yun, a veteran revolutionist of the Chinese Communist Party, in his article The Road to Press Legislation: “During the rule of the Kuomintang (KMT), they enacted a Press Law, and we communists carefully studied its words, grasp its braids, and take advantage of its loopholes. Now that we are in power, I think it’s better not to have a Press Law, lest people take advantage of our loopholes. If there is no (press) law, we will take the initiative and control it as we want.” Chen Yun's speech reflects the attitude of some high-level members of the CCP Central Committee towards press legislation.

Of course, a Press Law with Chinese characteristics can also be enacted, stipulating that all media should follow the CCP's command. In theory, there is no problem in doing so, but at a time when the whole world is advocating freedom of the press and ensuring the right of media supervision, wouldn't it be ridiculous for China to introduce such an anti-trend Press Law? People can't be completely shameless after all.

As we all know, press and publication law is one of the most important laws concerning freedom of expression and is known as the "second constitution" in international legal circles. However, for the reasons mentioned above, the press law and the publication law have been difficult to produce in China for decades, and there is no hope of enacting these two laws in the near future. The Chinese government is caught in a dilemma. It's not good to enact, and it's not good not to enact, so it's better to just drag it on. On March 10, 2016, at the press conference of the fourth session of the 12th National People's Congress, a reporter asked if there was a specific agenda for the press law legislation, and the spokesperson simply refused to answer the question.

Since there is no hope for the "second constitution", let's go back to the Constitution, which explicitly provides for freedom of speech and publication (Article 35: Citizens of the People's Republic of China have freedom of speech, publication, assembly, association, procession, and demonstration). Isn't it unconstitutional for the Publicity Department of the Central Committee (PDCC) to regulate the media (including personal Weibo acounts) so tightly? Wouldn't it also be unconstitutional for Ling Jihua, director of the General Office of the CCP Central Committee, to order the national media not to report on the Ferrari incident? This is true in theory, but China's constitution is basically just for show, it is not justiciable.

The Chinese Constitution clearly stipulates that the National People's Congress (NPC) is the sole supervisory body of the Constitution. The NPC has a bunch of committees, the Education, Science, Culture and Public Health Committee, the Finance and Economics Committee, etc., but only the most important Constitutional Committee is missing. We don't have a constitutional court in China either. Therefore, when there is a case of unconstitutionality, such as the central government’s prohibition of reporting on the Ferrari incident, if a reporter gets mad and wants to sue, he or she will find that there is nowhere to sue, and there is no court or institution to accept the case of unconstitutionality. We have neither a press law nor a publication law, and the Constitution has been hollowed out, so freedom of the press and publication in China is just an empty phrase.

While there isn't any formal legislation, there are dozens of regulations and notices related to publishing. Mainland China has one of the most stringent publication censorships in the world. Private publishing and private newspapers are prohibited, and printing is a strictly regulated special industry. Every publishing house has a full-time censor, and many manuscripts are shot down every year. For example, I once published a novel "Starry Yunnan, Starry Tibet". The editor-in-charge passed it, but it still couldn't pass the censorship. In the end, I was forced to delete thousands of words before it could be printed.

Among a large number of publishing regulations, the "Regulations on Publication Management" promulgated by the State Council in 2001 is the most important one, but it is also a big framework without specific censorship standards. There is a widely circulated "Publication Review 100" on the Internet, which is known to the industry, but I didn't find out which department promulgated it, you can refer to:

Screenshot(above), Publication Review 100, Articles 80-87，the table below is its translation：

From my humble point of view, these publishing management regulations are actually suspected of being illegal if they are seriously investigated. The original text of Article 89 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China is as follows: “The State Council shall exercise the following functions and powers: stipulating administrative measures, formulating administrative regulations and issuing decisions and orders in accordance with the Constitution and the law.” It is clearly written that administrative regulations must be formulated in accordance with the Constitution and laws. Now that we do not have a press and publication laws, the basis for these administrative regulations should be the Constitution, and Article 35 of the Constitution clearly stipulates that citizens of the People's Republic of China have freedom of speech and publication.

Perhaps you are asking, what is the point of talking so much about printing and publishing while reviewing Google incident? This is because the Chinese government's management policy on the media is the same, no matter online or offline. In most cases, if a piece of information is not permitted to be printed in physical form, the government will not allow it to appear on the Internet, and vice versa.

 
Since 1994, the Internet has largely changed the way of publishing and information dissemination. The freedom of online speech (publishing) is great, forums, blogs and mobile apps are free, and users can post anything, anytime and anywhere. The amount of information has increased dramatically and the speed of transmission is extremely fast. This new way of information dissemination poses new challenges to publishing and publicity management.

First of all, there are many different names for government control of the Internet, such as Internet control, Internet censorship, Internet management, Internet filtering, etc. All of them are similar. This article mainly uses the term "Internet control".

In general, there are two ways to control the Internet: content control and search control. The so-called content control simply means that the government does not want people to see some content, and immediately orders the website to delete it. This is easy to say, but in the era of information explosion, it is very difficult to censor all the content of the Internet seamlessly. When the draft of this article was soliciting comments, someone asked why the government must be consumed with Google, isn’t it just a search tool? This is also true. As long as the content of the Internet is controlled by the government, it is not afraid of you searching, no matter what search engine you use. But the workload of comprehensive content control is too great (we will have a case study later).

Compared with content control, which is thankless, controlling search engines (implementing keyword blocking and search result filtering) can be of a big payoff for a small effort, and the efficiency is much higher. Let's say a library has one million books, 10,000 of which the government doesn't want people to read. There are two ways to do this: one is to take them off the shelves one by one, and the other is to remove these books from the library's computer index so that readers can't find them. Which method do you think is more effective?

 
It should be noted that government control of the Internet is generally two-pronged, with content control and search control working in tandem. The later story of Ling Jihua and Ferrari is a typical example.  back to Contents

4. Regulation Inside and Outside

The above discussion is all about domestic websites, what could be done with foreign websites? The solution is also very simple, since you can't control it, then just block it. Please note that blocking is only valid within the territory of China, foreigners can play as usual. Sounds a bit like the online version of "no Chinese and no dogs allowed"?

On October 30, 2014, the first World Internet Conference held a press conference in Beijing. One foreign reporter asked why China shuts down foreign websites such as Facebook. Lu Wei, deputy director of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of CCP (China Communist Party), replied in amazing words: "We have not shut down any foreign website. Your website is at your home, how could I go to your home and shut it down?" What Lu Wei said is actually correct. No country has extraterritorial jurisdiction. The Chinese government cannot shut down foreign websites (and Chinese websites with servers in foreign countries), but can only block them.

Lu Wei, deputy director of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of CCP

It should be noted that China is not the only one that censors the Internet. Many countries and companies around the world do the same. For example, countries like Singapore and the United States have blocked many child pornography websites, and Facebook and Twitter have deleted a large amount of content related to terrorism. Mocking the Prophet Muhammad is illegal in some Islamic countries (but such content is legal in European countries such as France). Falun Gong is a cult in mainland China, and the government does not allow it to exist on the Internet, but it is legal in other countries and regions (including Hong Kong and Taiwan).

Are there things that are globally accepted that should be banned? Unfortunately there is not a global guideline for the management of the Internet contents. Personally, I believe that the most important thing in this world is life, and everything is meaningless if life is lost. This is the first universal principle. Therefore, anything that is detrimental to the survival of mankind should all be banned and punished. There are things that are public enemies of humanity that almost all legitimate governments want to get rid of, including terrorism, racism, child pornography, drug trafficking, and so on. Google should be consistent with the Chinese government in eradicating these contents. In July 2012, Google Ideas, a Google think tank, hosted a global conference to discuss how to eradicate these crimes from the web.

Understandably, Google has been enforcing some level of search engine censorship around the world. Here I have a report from Harvard Law School, "Localized Google Search Result Exclusions", it examines in detail how 113 websites are partially blocked (filtered) from Google Search in Germany and France, i.e. the search results for Google France (google.fr) and Google Germany (google.de) are not the same as Google U.S. (google.com) for the same term. The report noted that most of the removed contents in Germany and France were of white nationalism, anti-Semitism, Nazism, and Islamic radical sites, because these contents violated the laws of the host country. This case also illustrates that Google (according to local laws) applied stricter search censorship in Europe than in the United States.

Government censorship is pervasive across the planet, and Google itself has internal censorship. Both sides censor, why can't Google and the Chinese government reach an agreement? It is generally believed that their conflicts mainly lie in two points. First, there is a conflict in the content of the censorship (content control), that is, some content that the Chinese government wants to control but Google thinks it is inappropriate; second, there is a conflict in the way of censorship, as the Chinese government's Internet regulation is mostly in the form of secret notice, while Google tends to be open and transparent. This article will focus on these two points.  back to Contents

5. What are the Differences? (What was censored?)

Let’s talk about content control first. What exactly is the disagreement between Google and the Chinese government? This question seems simple, but it is extremely difficult to find a definite answer. There is no official information available in China, and the government at all levels does not even have a single word to explain the specifics of Internet censorship (except for a few big words such as management according to laws and so on). The strange thing is that although Google does not hesitate to publicly turn its face (with the Chinese government), it does not specify what it says. It does not announce which censorship is unacceptable, and it never gives examples of which sensitive words have caused disputes.

Not only is this true for Google, but I had a hard time also digging around the Internet to find specifics about what other Internet companies censor, such as which words to filter, which articles to remove, and which sites to block. I am baffled. Is it possible to rely on verbal notification for such an important matter? But that's basically what happened. I found an article online, "The CCP's Clampdown on the Media Exposed - From Open to Hidden, from Macro to Micro", written by Cheng Yizhong, the former editor-in-chief of Southern Metropolis Daily. This article was originally published in the October 2012 issue of the "New Statesman" magazine. Some excerpts are as follows:

"One afternoon in May 2001, I received an unfamiliar phone call claiming to be from the Publicity Department of the CCP Guangdong Provincial Committee, asking me to withdraw a piece of article that would be published in the Southern Metropolis Daily the next day. As the editor-in-chief, I often receive similar calls from various organs of the CCP. But this time I am not familiar with the caller, and I wanted to take the opportunity to express my dissatisfaction, so I replied very rudely: "Sorry, I don't know you, so I can't be sure this is the instruction from the head of the Ministry; in order to prevent someone from posing as the head of the Publicity Department to issue orders to the newspaper, please fax the written document to the newspaper office, otherwise it will be difficult to implement without evidence.”

"During the latter part of Jiang Zemin's rule, the CCP Publicity Department under Ding Guangen's leadership tightened its control over the media. One significant change was that the department no longer solemnly issued documents or telegrams to give orders to the media and require editors-in-chief to carry them out; instead, it mainly used verbal communication by phone or SMS notification to directly instruct editors-in-chief or specific persons in charge. The reason is that bans are getting more and more frequent, and written documents need to be submitted for approval at various levels, which is too cumbersome and not quick enough to cope with emergency situations. With telephone communication and cell phone SMS notification, procedures are simplified, efficient and effective."

"Supposedly well aware of the injustice of its own actions and the facts of systemic crimes, the CCP's media control began to enter a state of underground secrecy during the Hu Jintao era. The remarkable change in this period was that the CCP Publicity Department officials who called the media to convey banns usually emphasized before hanging up that "no written records shall be made, no notes shall be left, no disclosure shall be made of what ban was issued, no disclosure of what department issued the ban, and no disclosure of the name of the leader who issued the ban." The banns of the CPC Publicity Department were thus implemented in secrecy."

Cheng Yizhong is currently the president of LeTV Sports Hong Kong

After reading this, you should understand why Google’s withdrawal from China has been sung very loudly, but it has not been specific, because Google may not have much written evidence. Is there a recording or record of the phone call? I'm not sure about this, and you have to ask someone from Google.

Although both Google and the Chinese government are playing dumb, there are ways to deduce what they are actually arguing about (what Internet content is being regulated). In general, there are three methods: the Wikipedia method, the "well-informed" method, and the comparative method. Let's look at them one by one.

A, the Wikipedia Method

Wikipedia claims to be the largest knowledge base on earth. If the answer to a question can't be found anywhere in Wikipedia, then the answer is probably out of this world. Therefore, if you want to know what regulated content and sensitive words are in China, the first way is to go to Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia entry "Internet Censorship Vocabulary of the People's Republic of China" lists a large number of sensitive words, ranging from single characters to compound words, such as: Hu, Liu, Li, Wu, Wen, Xi, He, Jia, Ling, Plan, Ferrari, Hu Jin, hujin, Yue yue niao, Ze min, Tai shang huang, Toad, Master Kong, 2.7 billion, Ministry of Truth, New York Times, Apollo News, the fall of the red sun, etc.

(notes: "hujin" means Hu Jintao, general secretary of the CCP Central Committee; "Yue yue niao" means Li Peng, former Premier of the State Council; "Tai shang huang" means His Majesty the Emperor Emeritus, referring to Jiang Zemin, dubbed Toad, former president of China and general secretary of the CCP Central Committee; "Master Kong" means Zhou Yongkang, former member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee; "Ling & Plan" means Ling Jihua, former Director of the General Office of the Central Committee of CCP)

These words above are as of early 2013. It should be noted that sensitive words are constantly changing and may be different for each province and region, and that sometimes yesterday's sensitive words are no longer sensitive today, such as Ling & Plan, Ferrari, and Master Kong etc., which are now freely searchable.

The list of sensitive terms is one of the main disagreements between the Chinese government and Google Search. Although the Chinese government never publishes the list, the existence of sensitive words is an indisputable fact, and they exist in our daily lives. When you post on forums or blogs, you often encounter prompts such as "The content contains inappropriate or illegal words, please return to edit", but there is no way to tell which words are problematic. This makes Internet users very crazy, so some people developed special sensitive word detection software, such as "Baidu Post Harmony Tester" and so on. This type of software is one of the oddities of China's unique Internet censorship environment.

Screenshot of sensitive word detection software, which contains 9,378 sensitive words

The amount of content filtered on the Internet in mainland China and the inexplicable changes in sensitive words have left Internet users at a loss. For example, it's barely understandable that you can't search for Hu+Wen (meaning President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao)at a certain time, but certain words with "Hu" are not allowed to be searched in Google, such as carrot, that makes people totally confused. Many people have a lot to say about this. Although I am not a fan of the writer Han Han, but one of his blog post in May 2010 has been widely disseminated, here is the quote:

"The truth is, I don't miss Google at all. Google is like a girl who one day came up to me and said I'm leaving you. I said, don't be like that honey. And the sad thing is that she ended up leaving anyway. But I found that I can still screw her whenever I want to. The only difference is that I used to be able to search for carrots from her when I screwed her, but now, when I ask her where the carrots are, she's gone in a whoosh."

Foreigners reading this paragraph may get bewildered. To understand this kind of text, one must have a deep understanding of the Internet censorship environment in mainland China, where "it is better to kill 3,000 by mistake than to spare one". (Note: Carrot in Chinese reads Hu Luobo, and Hu is the surname of Hu Jintao, the President of China)

To use Wikipedia to look up sensitive words, it should be noted that Wikipedia itself is often blocked in mainland China, and access is intermittent. If you want to ride on it, please climb the wall (using VPN) when needed. In August 2013, Wikipedia co-founder Wells told reporters that he would rather give up doing business in China than accept any form of Internet censorship from China. This is exactly the same as Google's approach. It seems that Wikipedia will be completely blocked sooner or later.

It is human nature to stay curious and gain knowledge. It is anti-human preventing people from accessing the world's largest knowledge base just because the interpretation of a few words is not in line with the government's. Stop eating just because there are a few grains of sand in the rice, and forcing the people of the whole country not to eat, this logic is astonishing. back to Contents

B, the "Well-informed" Method

This refers to information leaking by insiders, intentionally or unintentionally. The speech of Li Wei of the CCP Central Publicity Department quoted at the beginning of this article is an example. He revealed the situation of negotiations between Google and the Chinese government. The same is true for online censorship and sensitive words list. Although government officials remain silent, it is inevitable that some people in the know will reveal their words.

 
Among the information I found was a blogger named Zhang Jialong. He was a former editor of Tencent Finance and Economics Channel. He was later fired for "leaking confidential and sensitive information and commercial secrets". Zhang Jialong revealed control contents such as "Xitler", "Speech Spirit Research Center", "Who made us proletariat" and so on. (Note: Xitler is a compound word of Hitler and Xi Jinping, the supreme leader of China)

I tried it, and the information revealed by Zhang Jialong is basically accurate, with more than 10,000 Google search results for "Xitler", while Baidu is basically unable to search for the term (except for a few Hitler-related photos). (Note: Baidu is the largest search engine in mainland China)

Image above： screenshot of Baidu search results for Xitler, October 5, 2015
(1 results found)

Below image：screenshot of a simultaneous Google search (13,200 results found in 0.24 seconds)

C, the Comparative Method

The two charts above also basically illustrate what the comparative method is: nowadays Google is out of the control of the Chinese government, so if you suspect that a word is sensitive, use Google and Baidu to compare, and if the search results are very different, the word is nine times out of ten censored.

If words like Xitler are suspected of deceiving and offending the Emperor and should be blocked, some words are censored inexplicably. As an example, "Zhanggong District Internet Publicity Office", the following is the result of a Google search:

Screenshot: Google search "Zhanggong District Internet Publicity Office” (303,000 results found (in 0.27 seconds)), September 7, 2015

An office in Zhanggong district of Ganzhou, a small city in Jiangxi Province of China, has more than 300,000 search results. How can a small office be so popular? It turned out that in December 2014, a hacker cracked the work mailbox of the Zhanggong District Internet Publicity Office in Ganzhou City, and published the entire contents of the mailbox on the cloud disk. This file is very large, you can download it and read it slowly to experience the hardships of grassroots propaganda workers. In the Internet age, publicity management work is much more difficult than in the traditional printing era. The amount of information is huge and the speed of transmission is extremely fast. Overtime and 24-hour standby are often required.

As a comparison, let's use Baidu to search for the term below:

Screenshot: Baidu search "Zhanggong District Internet Publicity Office” (3,040 results found), September 7, 2015

The same search for "Zhanggong District Online Propaganda Office" yielded only 3,040 results on Baidu, which is less than 1% of Google's results. No matter how poor Baidu is, the big difference in the number of search results is incredible. Then look at its first page, the content is also completely different. The first page of Google search is all about Zhanggong District Internet Publicity Office, but the first page of Baidu search doesn’t even have a single item of this content. Search engines differ in terms of internal mechanism, such as Baidu's famous bidding ranking (pay more to be shown in the first page). There is another reason that everyone can guess: the term "Zhanggong District Online Propaganda Office" is censored in China, and Baidu filtered the search results according to official requirements. back to Contents

Zhanggong is a small place, but as long as it is in China, places, no matter how big or small, content control is omnipresent. For example, the first page of Baidu and Google search for Tiananmen, a big place that everyone knows, are as follows:

Screenshot: First page of Baidu search "Tiananmen” (2,720,000 results found), July 20, 2015. Most of the results are brief introductions and Tiananmen tourism.

As a comparison, here are the results of a Google search at the same time:

Searching for Tiananmen on Baidu and Google respectively, the results on the first pages are completely different, and the top three results (URLs) on Google cannot be found in Baidu at all （the documentary film "Tiananmen" ranked in the top three of Google search）. Apparently the word Tiananmen has been censored in Baidu, and certain URLs have been removed or blocked.

Seeing this, everyone should be clear why Google has to close down in China. That three-hour documentary "Tiananmen" (June 4, 1989) is an officially banned film, and Google Search does not comply with the ban, so can it be tolerated? By the way, this three-hour documentary (and similar videos about Chinese politics) is also one of the main reasons why YouTube, the world's largest video website, was banned from access.

Of course, the best way to compare is to directly compare the results of Google searches (in regulated and unregulated situations). Here's an example I found online:

The above two images (screenshots) are a comparison of the image search results of Chinese Google and English Google. It can be seen that the word "Tiananmen" is indeed strictly controlled and filtered in China. The results of Google Search in English are full of Tiananmen massacre (June 4, 1989) and the famous Tank-man images, whereas Google Search results in simplified Chinese are full of Tiananmen tourism images. It showed Google's attitude: the word Tiananmen should not be regulated, but Google's simplified Chinese search had to follow the orders of the Chinese government at that time.  back to Contents

6, Instructions from the Ministry of Truth

Through the Wikipedia method, the comparative method, and the well-informed method, we have a general idea of how the Internet is regulated in China. But these are all indirect analyses. Is there any specific information on Internet control from official sources? This is indeed a bit difficult, as these are said to be state secrets. However, through Wikileaks I did find a relevant piece of information.

Below is a document released by Wikileaks from a provincial Internet Publicity Office (please note the Internet Publicity Office is not a government agency, but the Party agency). This document lists which public opinions on the Internet should be guided and how to guide them, with very detailed instructions, such as deleting, recommending, topping, sinking posts, moving to the backend and asking Internet official commentators to take actions, etc. The time limit is clearly defined, and the responsibility is assigned to the individual. This document is very long, and those who have time can search for the keyword "Ministry of Truth Instructions April-August 2008" and read it for themselves.

Screenshot of "Ministry of Truth Instructions April-August 2008" (Partial, in Chinese). Below is the translation:

Whether the Wikileaks information is true or not is not commented on here. My personal opinion is that such a super-long table with such detailed content is very difficult to fake. This table also shows us how meticulous the Internet content control efforts are. This is very similar to the scene depicted in Orwell's novel "1984". It tells us: Don't trust your eyes easily, because what you can see is determined by a "big brother". The same is true in the Internet age, blogs, forums, news portals, etc., are all under the control of "Big Brother". back to Contents

One final example. The Wenchuan earthquake left a lasting impression on the Chinese people. During the deadly earthquake, journalists from all fronts rushed in, giving the impression that the media were free to report, but according to this document revealed by Wikileaks, the Internet was just as tightly regulated during the earthquake, as seen in the following screenshot:

Above: screenshot, 2008 Sichuan Wenchuan earthquake Internet content control list (partial, in Chinese). Below is the translation:

The forms above are dizzying to read? One might ask: this is content control, right? This article talks about Google search, is there a similar summary table for search controls? Unfortunately, Wikileaks has no information on this. However, it is not difficult to derive a general picture of search controls based on content controls. If a piece of information is removed from the Internet, searches for related terms are often filtered as well, and the two usually go hand in hand. Please see the later case of the suspension of the magazine "Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese".

By this point we can roughly summarize the biggest feature of the Chinese government's Internet control, which is that it does not allow a large number of views that are inconsistent with the official one. This is not just my own personal spin; the Chinese government has been doing that for two decades, and has been saying so officially for a long time. Former CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin had the following conversation in an exclusive interview with CBS correspondent Mike Wallace in August 2000:

Wallace: "Mr. President, why are you blocking websites, including the BBC and the Washington Post, and what is the reason for that? Do you not trust people to get information and learn from the Internet?"

Jiang Zemin: "I hope people will learn many useful things from the Internet, but in any case, there are sometimes unhealthy things on the Internet, especially pornography on the Internet, which is very harmful to our young people."

Wallace: "There's no pornography on the BBC or Washington Post websites."

Jiang Zemin: "They are banned probably because of the reporting of some political news, and we need to be selective, and we want to limit as much as possible information that is not useful for China's development."

Jiang Zemin and Wallace's Beidaihe Interview

According to the information I found, this is the first time China's top leader has made a public statement about Internet censorship. The phrase "limiting information that is not useful for China's development" is quite abstract, and the reality is that what information is not useful for China's development is really up to the top (officials). As we will see later, China's Internet control is basically the rule of man, and it's hard to get in touch with the rule of law. The words of Li Wei, former Deputy Secretary-General of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of CCP , "I will block whatever I oppose," are in fact the same as those of General Secretary Jiang Zemin, only Li Wei said it more directly. back to Contents

7, Case Analysis of Internet Censorship

The reason this article goes to great lengths to talk about cases is that if things are not specific, we have no way to discern the legitimacy and legality of China's Internet censorship, and we cannot give basic judgments about the dispute between Google and the Chinese government.

In general, from Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao to today's Xi Jinping era, the Chinese government's control over the Internet has become increasingly stringent, with no sign of relaxation. The previously mentioned documentary June 4^th "Tiananmen" is a case in point. As long as this documentary is on YouTube, YouTube will surely not be accessible in mainland China. The same applies to Facebook and Twitter, which are not accessible in China as long as content that the Chinese government is unhappy with is circulating on them.

Let's look at a few recent cases. On October 21, 2014, the Chinese government suddenly blocked Fang Zhouzi's blog, Weibo (a Chinese equivalent of Twitter) and WeChat public account, and overnight Fang Zhouzi disappeared from the Internet (in mainland China). This time, the Chinese government blocked Fang Zhouzi, just as it did in the past to Guo Yuhua, a sociology professor at Tsinghua University, and Zhang Qianfan, a constitutional law professor at Peking University, all are done without notice or trial, but secretly, in a uniform and swift manner across the country.

Fang Zhouzi was suddenly blocked for a reason we all know, because he criticized an "internet writer" named Zhou Xiaoping. Zhou Xiaoping first wrote an article, "Dreams of the United States of America", listing many faults of the United States. The article has many flaws, and some evidence is purely fabricated. Fang Zhouzi, who studied PhD in the United States, could not stand it anymore, so he wrote a long article called "Internet Writer Sleepwalking the United States of America", pointing out Zhou Xiaoping's many mistakes.

We've seen a lot of polemics between literati, so why should the state apparatus get involved this time? The reason was just a few days before Fang Zhouzi was blocked, on October 15, 2014, President Xi Jinping hosted a symposium on literary and arts in Beijing and invited 72 celebrities from the literary and artistic circles to attend, with Zhou Xiaoping and Hua Qianfang participating as representatives of Internet writers. At the end of the symposium, President Xi also walked up to the two and said cordially, "I hope you create more works with positive energy."

Screenshot of TV news, Internet writers Zhou Xiaoping and Hua Qianfang （hand raised） at the symposium

Zhou Xiaoping is a model of online literature set by the Chinese government. Fang Zhouzi didn't know any better and wrote an article criticizing the official model writer, and as a result, his mouth was immediately sewn up. This time, it's not just a simple deletion of posts, but a full-scale account cancellation. This should be the most severe Internet content control method next only to arresting people.

Fang Zhouzi was completely blocked, which illustrates one of the major features of the Chinese government's Internet control, that is, it is OK to publish articles, but the views must not be different from the official, let alone widely disseminated. In the language of the propaganda department, that is, the whole country must "maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee", or face deletion or account cancellation. back to Contents

The documentary "Under the Dome" is also one of the latest cases. In the past few years, China has been constantly surrounded by haze and the public has been complaining about it. On February 28, 2015, a young female director named Chai Jing uploaded a documentary she made called "Under the Dome" about her own views on the haze. The film set a national record, with more than 100 million views within a week, and then there was no more. From the night of March 7, 2015, the documentary "Under the Dome" suddenly disappeared from all video sites in China. Now Chinese people can only go to foreign websites (like Youtube) to watch this film.

Above: documentary Under the Dome poster

As usual, the Chinese government has remained silent on this issue. My personal guess is that "Under the Dome" has raised public awareness of the haze, which is a good thing, but after the film is widely distributed, the public will naturally pursue the causes of the haze, one of which is the poor management of the government. The Chinese government is most afraid of being widely questioned, as this could weaken the foundations of its rule. The blocking of "Under the Dome" also illustrates one more thing: the lives and health of the people is not the most important thing to this government.

Of course, this does not mean that criticism of the government is not allowed in mainland China. It is okay to talk privately at the dinner table, but please be cautious in the public areas, and it is strictly forbidden to spread widely through the Internet, and relevant speeches will be immediately cut off or blocked, and relevant people will be dealt with in various ways. For recent cases, please search for the keywords "Bi Fujian out of job" and "German Lao Lei".

One thing to note is that no matter how strictly regulated the Internet is, some criticism of the government can still be found, and some of the criticisms are quite sharp. One of the reasons is because the content of the Internet is so vast that even with billions of government funds to control, it is impossible to manually review every page, so you can only select the important ones like major websites, big forums and mainstream social tools, such as blogs, Weibo and WeChat. As far as Weibo is concerned, the focus is on managing those big-V accounts (influencers) with at least tens of thousands of followers, as for those ordinary accounts with few followers, just let them go, they won't make any waves. That's why sometimes you can find some sharp word criticisms on ordinary Weibo accounts (and on the Internet), but not in the big Vs.

The social influence of ordinary accounts and big-V accounts is not at all the same level. Some articles exist well on ordinary accounts, and are immediately blocked as soon as they are forwarded by the big-V accounts. For example, my article "Talking to my college friends about my personal view of Chairman Mao" was fine on my Weibo for several years, but on January 11, 2015, Ren Zhiqiang, a big-V with 30 million followers, reposted this article to his Weibo, and it was retweeted more than 3,000 times in less than two hours, and then immediately blocked.

This is not to say, of course, that the Chinese government is completely laissez-faire about the speech of ordinary people. Other articles of my own are often blocked. "Egg Fried Rice and an Ingrate - Lao Yang on the Korean War ", "Lao Yang on the death of Xu Chunhe" and so on, these articles just cannot be sent out on Weibo or WeChat. With some sensitive words replaced it may at times get through, but the next day the articles disappeared once again, probably because of routine manual review. These articles are all my originals, neither involving drugs nor pornography, nor a single curse word. There is only one reason for being deleted, that is, my views are different from the official ones.

For Google, it is really hard to keep 100% in line with the Chinese government on Internet (content and search) censorship. The Google Transparency Report has a sentence that explains why Google sometimes does not comply with government requests for blocking: "-- some requests may not be clear enough, and we ask for more information. – at times we do not comply with requests because they are not made through the proper channels. The request must be made in writing and cannot be oral. Sometimes a written letter from a government agency is not sufficiently effective and a separate court order must be sought."

One-track minded as Google is, everything must be so formal, the request for deletion must be in writing, and may have to go through legal procedures, which is completely inconsistent with the Chinese government's way of doing things. As we will see in the latter case, the son of Ling Jihua died while driving a Ferrari to play threesome, the next day the Ferrari series of terms were unable to search online. No court has such an efficient decision, and the censorship could only be done through urgent phone call notifications. There are many other examples like this. It should be understandable that Google is not acclimatized in China, conflicting with the Chinese government constantly, and finally turned its face completely. back to Contents

8. What are the Differences? (The way of censorship)

Why Google died in China, we discussed the first reason above, there are disagreements in the content of the review. But there is one more important point: there is a difference in the way of review (how censorship is conducted): the Chinese government's Internet censorship is mostly secretive, while Google tends to be open and transparent.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei answers reporters' questions

In October 2014, a reporter asked why the BBC's website was blocked. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei replied as usual: the Chinese government manages the Internet according to law. Although the term “management by law” is often used by Chinese government officials, the reality is that none of the blocking of websites, the designating of sensitive words or the removal of articles is based on court rulings.

From the information I have reviewed, Internet censorship is a legal issue in most countries around the world, and deletion or blocking is mostly subject to court decisions in Europe and the United States, while Internet censorship in mainland China has nothing to do with the courts; they are decided by governments (and party committees) of various levels, and issued in the form of instructions from higher levels or even verbal notices, operating in a black box without any explanation.

This is the most important feature of China's Internet censorship approach: secret censorship and secret enforcement. The public has no way of knowing the procedure and basis of censorship, and no official announcement is ever made. Those small cases aside, in the case of Google, hundreds of millions of people are using Google's store, search, maps, and various services, so blocking such a giant as Google, even if there is no court trial or news broadcast, at least it should be published in the newspaper, right? The Chinese government killed Google secretly. This kind of behavior is like blowing up a bridge in the middle of the night without putting up a sign at the entrance, which is quite immoral.

The official term for sensitive word filtering in China is "Special Character Restriction," but there are a variety of other sayings. Take Microsoft’s Bing as an example. Sometimes there is a line of small words at the bottom of its search result page: “Some results are removed in response to a notice of local law requirement.” This line of small words is the secret to the survival of Microsoft's Bing Search (and all the search engines that do business in China, including Baidu, Sogou, Haosou and former Google). I'd love to see an example of the notice, but I searched the Internet and just couldn’t find one. Are they all state secrets?

Screenshot, a line of small Chinese words at the bottom of Bing search page

Here's how Microsoft explains the line of small words: "If a government agency contacts us with a request to remove displayed search results, we need proof of applicable law and rights from the government agency, as well as an official request for removal . . . then we can fulfill the request. If we are required to fulfill the request, we will do so on a limited basis."

Microsoft said euphemistically, "we will do so on a limited basis "? Can anyone give an example of when it refused a request from the Chinese government to remove a search results? Microsoft Bing search rejected the Chinese government's request and still works in China, did the Chinese government enforce different standards for Google and Microsoft?  back to Contents

9. Secret Law

Please note the phrase "in response to a notice of local law requirement", which at first glance sounds like those notices are a product of the law. However, it is important to recall that the law has one important feature: it must be public.

Openness is a natural attribute of the law. It has two meanings. One is that legal provisions must not be kept secret (this need not be stated at all), and the other is that legal procedures should be made public. Even though a few times a trial can be held in secret, under no circumstances should the sentence be pronounced in secret (as well as executed in secret).

If, in official parlance, Internet blocking and sensitive word filtering are regulated by law, then those "notices" can be seen as judgments after summary trials, but they are never made public.

The United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights stipulates that "The press and the public may be excluded from all or part of a trial for reasons of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, or when the interest of the private lives of the parties so requires, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice; but any judgment rendered in a criminal case or in a suit at law shall be made public..." This is also consistent with China's criminal procedure law, which provides that for cases tried in closed session, the reasons for not being disclosed should be announced in court. In all cases, whether or not the trial is open to the public, the verdict shall be publicly announced.

We can imagine that if trials are secret, and the executions are also secret, then people may suddenly disappear on the street, disappear from this world, for unknown reasons, and the country will become a country of terror where everyone is at risk. Therefore, although certain cases involving confidentiality can be tried in secret, such as the case of Zhou Yongkang, and the case of Gu Junshan, for which the military tribunal is responsible, etc., the results of the trials must all be made public.

Based on the above analysis, we can derive a logical syllogism as follows:

(1) Any judgment and execution that conforms to the law must be made public; conversely, any judgment and execution that is secret must not conform to the law.

(2) Internet censorship in China is never made public, which is equivalent to secret judgments and secret executions;

(3) Therefore, Internet censorship in China does not meet legal requirements.

It can be seen from this that the Foreign Ministry spokesperson's claim that "the Internet is managed according to the law" is actually a lie.

The current situation of China's Internet management is: most of the censored web pages and websites disappear suddenly and inexplicably, without a trial, without announcement, and do not conform to the basic characteristics of legal procedures. This is why the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can only prevaricate with big words such as "manage according to law"; they never tell you which law the blocked website specifically violates or which organization issued the notice （of censoring）. This is true of many things in China, and the officials dare not say specifics, because they may all be illegal if things are specifically examined. The officials are all under the guise of governing the country according to law.

There are too many such examples. On February 26, 2016, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued an announcement, shutting down a bunch of Weibo accounts in accordance with the law, including @actor Sun Haiying, @WangYajun Shanghai, @RongJian2001, @WenShanwa, @JiYun, @LuoYameng, and @DaPengviews and other big-V accounts.

I was stunned when I saw the announcement. The original text is as follows: "... a small number of Internet celebrities ignore social responsibilities, abuse their own influence, and publish on the Internet many times against the basic principles established by the Constitution, harming national honor and interests. . . "

The Cyberspace Administration of China has ruled that something is unconstitutional? This is shocking, because Article 67 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China clearly stipulates that the National People's Congress (NPC) is responsible for interpreting the Constitution and supervising its implementation. No person or institution other than the NPC (and its Standing Committee) has the authority to interpret constitutional cases. The CAC ruled that citizens were unconstitutional, and I was really shocked. Who is the real unconstitutional? The Constitution is the fundamental law of a country and must be taken seriously. In today's world, there is probably no other country except China where an office under the State Council can judge and announce constitutional cases.

Having said that, the CAC dared to stand up and make an announcement this time, which itself is an improvement. In most cases, their actions are kept secret, akin to assassination.  back to Contents

10, Censorship and Assassination

Regarding China's secret Internet censorship similar to assassination, I would like to add a recent case here. This is my own personal experience.

On the evening of July 18, 2016, I posted a Weibo （a mainland China equivalent of Twitter）, without a word, just shared a picture, but this Weibo was suspended by the administrator half an hour later (and then deleted). Then I was banned from posting, replying and following. By the evening of July 20th, my Weibo was still unavailable, so I sent a WeChat moments, the full text is as follows:

"Friends, my Weibo is banned from posting, replying and following. It claims that I have violated the Weibo community rules. I am negotiating with them to get my account back as soon as possible. I looked through it carefully; it was probably because of a picture in the last Weibo I posted. This picture is so sensitive, it’s beyond my expectation.”

I attached the picture on the WeChat moments. Strangely, two hours after posting, there was not a single like or comment. After communicating with several WeChat friends with screenshots, it was confirmed that my WeChat moments has been blocked by the administrator, and I could see it myself, and none of my friends could see it.

After repeated verification by friends, we finally confirmed: whether it is in WeChat or Weibo, as long as the content contains this picture, or contains the words "Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese suspended publication", it will be blocked or deleted.

You may ask what picture is so sensitive and is censored so strictly? Actually, it's not a big deal; it's the following one, the suspension statement of the magazine "Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese":

Above: a copy of the statement （in Chinese）, Suspension of Publication of Spring and Autumn Of Han Chinese magazine. Please note the magazine can also be called as Yan Huang Chun Qiu or Yan Huang Spring and Autumn in English. Below is the translation of the statement:

"Suspension of Publication of "Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese"

On July 12, 2016, the China Academy of Arts illegally and unilaterally tore up the "Agreement between the China Academy of Arts and Spring And Autumn of Han Chinese Magazine" signed by the Academy and Autumn of Han Chinese Magazine, announcing the reorganization of the leadership of our magazine, which seriously violated the freedom of the press granted to citizens under Article 35 of the Constitution, and violated the personnel, publishing and financial autonomy of our magazine as clearly stipulated in the agreement. On July 15, the China Academy of Art sent personnel to forcibly enter our office and steal and modify the password of the official website of Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese, resulting in the loss of our magazine's basic editorial and publishing abilities.

In view of this, the committee of Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese Magazine has discussed and unanimously decided that the magazine will cease publication with immediate effect. Thereafter, any publication issued in the name of "Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese" will have nothing to do with our magazine.

Hereby declare.

Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese Magazine

Legal Representative: Du Daozheng (signature)

July 17, 2016"

I feel that the severity of the news control of "Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese" incident is unprecedented and unsurpassed (might be surpassed later). The famous magazine was forced to suspend its publication, and its peers were supposed to be on the same boat and voice their concern, but all the Chinese media kept silent on this matter and did not report it at all. Social media tools such as Weibo and WeChat were also strictly censored, with even image recognition technology being used to block, cancel or ban anyone who posted relevant messages. Besides arresting people, this is probably the toughest way to control Internet content.

Unsurprisingly, in response to the Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese incident, the Chinese government has also imposed strict controls on search engines. Screenshot example:

Screenshot, Google search result (in Chinese) of "Suspension of Publication of Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese magazine", July 21, 2016 (129,000 results found in 0.31 seconds)

Google search has 129,000 results. It is not hard to see that while mainland China stayed silent domestically, the Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese incident has exploded in the overseas Chinese circle.

Screenshot, Baidu search result (in Chinese) of "Suspension of Publication of Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese magazine", July 21, 2016 (18 results found)

Compared to Google's more than 100,000 results, Baidu search had only 18 results in total, and none of them had anything to do with the magazine's suspension. This shows that for the sake of the interests of the small group, the Central Propaganda Department of CCP has put all its power into action. In terms of content control, even personal communication tools are not spared, and search engines are also choked to death.  back to Contents

It is usually not a big deal for a magazine to cease publication and put up with an announcement. Why was it treated by the government like a big enemy this time? In my humble opinion, there are two reasons. One is that the Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese magazine is a bit special. Since its inception 25 years ago, this magazine has been regarded as the most important ideological position of the reformists within the Chinese Communist Party, with nearly 200,000 subscribers and a national influence. The magazine once published articles digging deeper into the mistakes in the history of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as a series of articles acknowledging the contributions of former Premier Zhao Ziyang (a leading reformist figure in the Chinese Communist Party, stepped down for opposing the suppression of the June 4 Tiananmen student movement and was later placed under house arrest until his death).

Yang Jisheng, the former deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine, published a book called "Tombstone", giving detailed reports and in-depth demonstrations of the 1959-1961 starvation, which caused 30 million unnatural deaths nationwide. The book Tombstone was published in Hong Kong in 2008 and was then officially banned in mainland China. In 2015, Yang Jisheng also published an "Open Letter to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television", challenging the government's "Fifteen Rules" on the management of book and periodical publishing. It can be told that the stall of Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese magazine is like a thorn in the throat of those in power, and it must be eliminated swiftly.

The Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese magazine is certainly no slouch either. Its legal representative, Du Daozheng, is a deputy of the National People's Congress, former editor-in-chief of Guangming Daily, and former director of the Press and Publication Administration （under the then Premier Zhao Ziyang）. Xi Zhongxun, a revolutionary of the old generation and father of president Xi Jinping, once gave the magazine an inscription with eight big words: "Yan Huang Chun Qiu, Ban De Bu Cuo", meaning "Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese, well done". Despite this, the magazine was forced to cease publication. Thus, it seems that after the fierce struggle within the party line, the conservatives have won across the board. They can also use this to warn the media across the country: If you dare to disobey the command and talk nonsense again, not even the imperial sword will protect you.

Above: Du Daozheng, the legal representative of Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese magazine, with Xi zhongxun’s inscription in the background. This picture is sourced from the internet

Second, the magazine suddenly announced that it was forced to stop publication in a rather tragic way. It was commented by overseas media as "Better a glorious death than a shameful life." Some media also described the government's rogue method of forced entry (into the magazine office) as Tu Qiong Bi Xian, meaning "the real intention is revealed in the end." Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese announced its suspension of publication on July 17. On July 19, Du Daozheng said in a telephone interview with overseas media: "I protest, I am angry. As an old cadre and a member of the Communist Party, I really find it impossible to rationalize. So much like the Cultural Revolution, is our Communist Party starting the Cultural Revolution again?"

Du Daozheng said, “During the Cultural Revolution in 1966, when I was in my office, the rebels (Red Guards) came and announced that you were a capitalist roader, you were a counter-revolutionary, your power has been taken away by us, please leave this place... The entire newspaper office was then taken over by them. This time it gave me a bit of that flavor."

From my personal point of view, Du Daozheng was quite restrained in the interview. According to the method of the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guards occupied the newspaper office, they did it daringly and openly. This time, the Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese magazine was forcibly occupied, and then the news was strictly blocked, and the Internet content was tightly controlled. The nature of incident was surely an assassination. The term assassination means that I will kill you, but I will not let anyone know. The use of assassination means that their actions are illegal, and they dare not to make it public.

Assassination is an unconventional method, and no one will make such a move unless it is absolutely necessary. The reason is simple: you may lose everything once exposed. There are many such cases in the past and present. In other modern Chinese cases, in July 1946, Wen Yiduo was assassinated by Kuomintang (KMT) agents. Not long after, the Kuomintang was defeated in China and was forced to retreat to Taiwan. The lesson is profound. The message of the death of Spring and Autumn of Han Chinese magazine this time is: views that are inconsistent with the official should not be widely disseminated, regardless of in print or on the Internet.  back to Contents

11, Italian Cars and Panama Bananas

On October 30, 2014, at the press conference of the State Council, a reporter from TV Asahi asked: Some western websites, such as Facebook, cannot be accessed in China, why does China shut down these websites? Lu Wei, deputy director of the CCP Central Publicity Department, replied: "I have never used these websites. I don't know if they have been shut down, but I think such a situation certainly exists. I want to make it clear that our management is all in accordance with Chinese law and all our measures are to safeguard the security of the Internet in China and the rights and interests of Chinese consumers."

Lu Wei sings very loudly, but you will understand from the following cases that the main purpose of the Chinese government's stringent blocking of famous foreign websites is to protect the interests of the small groups and "veteran cadres", while the country's reputation and the interests of the people, as well as whether the filtering method is legal or not, they don't care about it for the time being.

China's Internet blocking, sometimes when there is a negative coverage for the "veteran cadre", the relevant news will be blocked urgently on the same day, and the implementation is swift and immediate. Law students know that if anything goes through legal procedures, the process is lengthy, and it is common for trials and appeals to last for months. This also determines that China's Internet blocking is unlikely to go through legal procedure. There is a short article in the appendix of this article, "The Censorship Machine, Understanding a Real Chinese Internet", which describes how the author, as the manager of a website, received a phone call in the middle of the night from the Hebei Provincial Information Office, requesting the immediate removal of a certain web page. This kind of verbal notification of urgent action is like a rooster crow in the midnight, many of my network administrator friends have similar experiences. Such actions occur frequently, the more famous one being the Ferrari incident in March 2012.

Italy produces a kind of very expensive car called Ferrari, which costs four or five million Yuan (USD700,000) per vehicle. The astronomic price dooms it to be just a toy for the rich, and the poor can only study online pictures for lust. On March 19, 2012, many Chinese netizens suddenly found that they could not search for words related to "Ferrari". Everyone was surprised. It wasn't until Ling Jihua, one of the former leaders of China, fall that one could understand what happened.

On March 18, 2012 at 4:00 a.m., a major traffic accident occurred on the North Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, where a black Ferrari slammed into a wall, killing the driver on the spot. The car basically fell apart, throwing out two "unclothed" women, one dead and one seriously injured, one said to be half naked and one completely naked.

A super luxury car, heavy casualties, one man with two girls, and half naked, these are of course good material for news. It was widely reported the next day by the Beijing Evening News, Beijing News and many other media outlets, and was getting spread on the Internet and social media platforms. It’s rumored that the two girls in the car were students of Central University of Nationalities, and one of them was the daughter of a Tibetan Living Buddha.

However, it all came to an abrupt end the next night, when all posts about the accident on the internet were deleted, news reports on websites were withdrawn, and Baidu blocked the "Ferrari incident" from searches. Weibo also blocked a number of keywords such as "Ferrari" and "Central University of Nationalities" at the same time. This is a typical case of internet content control and search control going in tandem.

Black Ferrari car crash scene (webpage screenshot)

More than two years later, in December 2014, with Ling Jihua, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (and former director of the CCP General Office) detained and placed under isolated examination, the Ferrari series words became searchable again. Now everyone knows that the driver of that black Ferrari was Ling Jihua's son Ling Gu.

The 24-year-old Linggu is a graduate student at Peking University, where did he get this Ferrari worth more than five million Yuan?  Ling Jihua would surely be implicated had the matter been traced back. Therefore, on the night of the car accident, Ling Jihua mobilized the Central Security Bureau to seal off the scene of the accident. The next day he used his authority to ban media reports and instructed the relevant departments to block the Internet, which immediately turned many words, including "Ferrari", into sensitive words.

Is this what the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs meant by "managing the Internet according to the law", when a senior Party cadre can order the media nationwide and ban the Internet contents and searches with a single phone call? Is this what Lu Wei, deputy director of the CCP Central Publicity Department, said about "safeguarding China's Internet security and the rights and interests of Chinese consumers"?  back to Contents

Here we look at a new case. On April 6, 2016, some Chinese netizens were again surprised to find that the series of Panama terms were suddenly unsearchable. Panama is a tiny country, except for the canal, the only thing it has to offer is bananas. Such a tiny country is being focused on by China's Internet authorities, all thanks to the Panama series of documents that were suddenly exposed by foreign media on April 3, 2016.

The real economy of Panama is basically only bananas, but this country also has a trump card that is famous all over the world, and that is, offshore financial services. It is a well-known tax haven in the world. Many rich people and large companies around the world come here to open accounts, because Panama keeps personal deposits and company information strictly confidential.

These rich people and big companies thought that their money would be safe in Panama, but something unexpected can always happen. An anonymous source provided 2.6 TB of data to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and several Western media outlets, the most valuable of which was the computer data of a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca. This firm specializes in assisting clients to set up shell companies and transfer funds through them. Its customer list has tens of thousands of people, including close friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister Cameron's father, the Icelandic Prime Minister's wife, etc., as well as relatives and friends of several current and former Chinese party and state leaders. According to Wikipedia, the list involves some famous Chinese figures:

Above: screenshot of Wikipedia entry Panama Papers (persons involved, Asia - China section, in Chinese). Below is the translation:

Asia

People’s Republic of China: Important figures involved in mainland China include the family members of three current Politburo Standing Committee members, including Deng Jiagui, brother-in-law of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, Jia Liqing, daughter-in-law of Liu Yunshan, and Li Shengpo, son-in-law of Zhang Gaoli, and Li Xiaolin, daughter of Premier Li Peng, Li Zidan, granddaughter of Jia Qinglin, former chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, former Politburo member Bo Xilai's wife's partner, Frenchman Patrick Devillers, etc. Among them, Deng Jiagui established two shell companies in the British Virgin Islands in 2009, and Deng Jiagui was the sole director and shareholder of the shell companies. But before Xi Jinping became the general secretary of the Communist Party of China (the de facto supreme leader) at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November 2012, the two companies were no longer in operation. Li Peng's daughter, Li Xiaolin, used her Hong Kong passport to avoid background checks by the law firm Mossack Fonseca and set up a fund company called "Fondation Silo" in Liechtenstein, a European country. When Li Zidan was studying for a bachelor's degree at Stanford University in the United States, she was the sole shareholder of a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. At least eight current or former members of the Politburo Standing Committee have been implicated, according to an AFP report.

According to media reports, the following specific persons involved can be sorted out:

Deng Jiagui: Brother-in-law of Xi Jinping, the current General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee and President of China, and husband of Xi's sister Qi Qiaoqiao.

Jia Liqing: Daughter-in-law of Liu Yunshan, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee and Secretary of the Central Secretariat, and daughter of Jia Chunwang, former Minister of Public Security.

Li Shengpo: Son-in-law of Zhang Gaoli, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council, and son of Li Xianyi, chairman of Hong Kong Xinyi Glass Holdings Co., Ltd.

Chen Dongsheng: The grandson-in-law of Mao Zedong, the core of the first-generation leadership collective of the CCP, and the husband of Kong Dongmei, Mao's granddaughter.

Hu Dehua: the third son of Hu Yaobang, the main figure of the second-generation leadership of the CCP and the former General Secretary of the Central Committee of CCP.

Li Xiaolin: Daughter of Li Peng, former Premier of the State Council of China, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the 13th, 14th, and 15th CCP Central Committees.

Tian Chenggang: Son of Tian Jiyun, former vice premier of the State Council of China, member of the Political Bureau of the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th CCP Central Committee, and secretary of the Central Secretariat.

Li Zidan: Granddaughter of Jia Qinglin, former chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the 16th and 17th CCP Central Committee, and daughter of Jia Qiang, Jia Qinglin's daughter.

Zeng Qinghuai: Brother of Zeng Qinghong, former vice president of China and member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the 16th CCP Central Committee.

Patrick Villiers: French citizen, business partner of Gu Kailai (also known as Bogu Kailai), wife of Bo Xilai, former secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee and member of the Political Bureau of the 17th CPC Central Committee.

Shen Guojun: Chairman of China Yintai Investment Co., Ltd., together with Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan, is a shareholder of Longmeng Co., Ltd., which was registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2008.

Zong Fuli: President of China Hongsheng Beverage Group, chairman and general manager of Hangzhou Wahaha Group of Companies, daughter of billionaire Zong Qinghou.

On April 5, 2016, at the press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, foreign journalists asked what they thought about the Panama Papers. Spokesman Hong Lei said, " We do not comment on such hearsay." On the same day, the Global Times also published an editorial titled "Those who stole or compiled the "Panama Papers" are no ordinary people", accusing Western media of consistently smearing China. Global Times is a newspaper sponsored by the People's Daily, a unit directly under the CCP Central Committee.

Screenshot of the Global Times editorial, "Those who stole or compiled the "Panama Papers" are no ordinary people"

The matter might have passed, but on the night of April 5, the Prime Minister of Iceland suddenly announced his resignation because of the suspicion of concealing overseas assets. This clearly means that the Panama Papers is basically true. The Global Times was slapped in the face on the spot, and the article was immediately withdrawn. The Chinese Internet authorities also acted urgently. Just like blocking the Ferrari series in 2012, the Panama series of terms became unsearchable from April 6, 2016. Weibo was more bizarre, with even "Iceland's prime minister resigns" unsearchable.

Screenshot, Baidu search results for "Panama Papers" on April 6, 2016， zero results found. The last line of the Chinese text is: "The search results may not comply with relevant laws, regulations and policies, and are not displayed."

Screenshot, Microsoft Bing search results for "Panama Papers" on April 6, 2016， with zero results found. The last line of the Chinese text is: "Search results are not displayed in response to notices in compliance with local legal requirements."

Screenshot, Google search results for "Panama Papers" on April 6, 2016， 962,000 results found in 0.21 second. The top three on the first page of Google's search results are Wikipedia, the New York Times and the BBC's report on the Panama Papers.

According to the Foreign Ministry spokesman, China's Internet management (including content removal and search filtering) is governed by law, so can any of you tell me which law the blocking of the Ferrari and Panama series terms is based on?

The fact is obvious that there are senior civil servants (veteran cadres) who use their authority to block the Internet and negative events related to themselves for their own selfish interests. If Google's simplified Chinese search was still running in China, it would be unacceptable for Google to block Ferrari and Panama Papers as a matter of urgency, as is its usual practice.  back to Contents

12, Who are the "Veteran Cadres"?

Speaking of this, let's go back to that quote from Li Wei, former Deputy Secretary General of the CCP Central Publicity Department, who emphasized two principles of Internet censorship in China: "…first, we must express our attitude. I will block whatever I oppose. This is an ideological statement; the second is to show the veteran cadres, to show that we have not forgotten our roots, we are maintaining the reputation."

Who are the so-called "veteran cadres" quoted by Li Wei? Ling Jihua is certainly one of them, and Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, Xu Caihou and others are apparently among them. It has been said that the root of China's corruption problem lies in the first three rows of the rostrum, and this is not an exaggeration, especially when it comes to Internet management, because only the senior officials sitting on the rostrum have the power to block the Internet.

(note: Bo Xilai was a former member of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee and secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee; Zhou Yongkang was a former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee and secretary of the Central Political and Legal Committee; Xu Caihou was a former member of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee, director of the General Political Department of the PLA, and a General in the army. All three were later arrested and prosecuted for corruption.)

The question now is: how many "veteran cadres" like Ling Jihua and Zhou Yongkang have used their power to block the Internet? According to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Ministry of Supervision, corrupt officials are in the minority, but I personally think they should be in the majority, especially senior officials. Former President Hu Jintao once said that China's corruption problem has become so serious that it will end the Party and the country.

Human nature is evil, and when it comes to corruption, communists are no better than the average person, and the level of corruption in the Chinese government run by communists is among the highest on earth. According to the "Global Corruption Perception Index 2014" published by Transparency International, Denmark is the cleanest country in the world (with a score of 92 out of 100), while China ranks 100th with a score of 36, which is far from passing.

Screenshot, Global Corruption Perception Index 2014, China ranks 100th with a score of 36

The Chinese government did not recognize such a poor ranking. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a press conference on December 3, 2014 that China's anti-corruption work has achieved remarkable results, which can be evaluated fairly and objectively by the people, and will not be based on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.

The Chinese government shouts every day about fighting corruption, but never admits that there is structural corruption, and if anyone dares to say that there is widespread corruption in China, the government will silence it. As of today (April 12, 2016), Transparency International's website www.transparency.org remains inaccessible in mainland China.

There are no immortals in this world, everyone has flaws and does wrong things, whether he is an ordinary citizen or a senior civil servant, or a party or state leader. But the Chinese political arena has a large number of immortals who have no negative news at all. In China, you may find some negative news on the Internet about county level cadres, while provincial department level cadres generally have no negative news coverage, not to mention those at the vice-provincial level or central committee member level and above, all of them are supreme and perfect. This situation is very abnormal. Liu Qiangdong, the boss of JD.com, once said at the 2015 Boao Forum for Asia: "If a person has no negativity at all on the Internet, he must be a liar."

Before Su Rong, Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, Xu Caihou and other party and state leaders were investigated and prosecuted, they were like Ling Jihua, and there was no negative news about them on the Internet. Although they were consistently corrupt and living a rotten life, their image on the stage was always brilliant and glorious, without any shortcomings.

Undoubtedly, Chinese officials block negative news about the "veteran cadres". Domestic online media dare not disobey orders, but foreign websites are beyond the reach of the Chinese government. The only thing they can do is to block these websites. Of course, this kind of censoring can only be carried out secretly, otherwise where will the faces of the veteran cadres be put? Such examples abound. For example, the New York Times was blocked because it published a report analyzing the family property of Wen Jiabao, the former Chinese premier. I won't go into detail here because of space limitations, so please do your own search for David Barboza and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for journalism. I'll have a separate article on the New York Times incident.

It is impossible for a person to effectively supervise himself, and so is a political party or government. Therefore, the supervision by the news media is a necessary condition for a clean government. The Chinese government's approach is just the opposite, blocking anyone who dares to report negatively about senior government officials. Without the effective supervision of the news media and Internet social media, China's "veteran cadres" can do whatever they want.

As I said before, some content on the Internet is the public enemy of humanity, such as terrorism, racial discrimination, child pornography, drug trafficking, etc. The Chinese government would not have a problem blocking these contents publicly, but because of "veteran cadres" like Ling Jihua and Zhou Yongkang, who have been blocking their own scandals in the Internet management, China's Internet management has all been forced to carry out in secret. No organization dares to come forward to publish the list of blocked websites or the list of filtered sensitive terms.

In order to protect the interests of a small number of "veteran cadres", the Chinese government uses black-box operations to control the Internet, which damages the reputation of the law, interferes with people's lives, blocks the dissemination of information, damages the production of enterprises, and seriously affects China's national reputation.

The starting point for a government to manage the Internet is not the national economy and the people's livelihood, but to maintain the reputation of "veteran cadres". They abuse their authority to control Internet public opinion, prohibit reporting on their scandals, filter sensitive words on search engines, and block relevant foreign websites. As for the impact of doing so on the lives of ordinary people and the operation of enterprises, it is not within the scope of their consideration.

Not only that, but they also use judicial power to severely crack down on ordinary people who make disrespectful remarks. Sometimes even speaking in private can lead to jail time. In May 2011, Fang Hong, an employee of the Forestry Bureau of Fuling District, Chongqing, was sentenced to one year of forced labor, just because he posted a Weibo saying that the Lizhuang case was a piece of shit, insinuating Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai (a then member of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee).

This situation is completely opposite in many Western countries. In Japan, many websites and newspapers specialize in exposing bureaucrats at all levels to attract attention. If you can get the exclusive scandal of the prime minister, the newspaper may make a fortune. In the UK, the media even conducted phishing interviews with members of Congress in order to obtain materials. In the US, you are free to curse the president or any official (except not with death threats). Moreover, the higher the level of officials you scold, the greater the freedom of speech.

For example, in February 2009, The New York Post published a cartoon in which a chimpanzee satirized the African-American President Barack Obama. The White House only condemned it for engaging in racial discrimination. The newspaper was not blocked or shut down for rectification. We all know that if you call an ordinary black American a chimpanzee, you will probably be taken to court and lose your money and possibly go to jail, because racial discrimination could be a serious offense in the United States.

Google, as a typical Western company, may think that supervising government officials, especially senior government officials, is the basic duty of the press, the business community, and even any citizen, and is a universal principle that can be applied to everywhere on earth. How does it know that the Chinese government does not accept that at all?  back to Contents

13. Don't be evil

In September 2014, nearly five years after withdrawing from China, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt published a book, How Google Works, with a chapter reviewing the decision-making process in those days when Google pulled out of China.

Schmidt was the initial driving force behind Google's entry into China, but one of Google's founders, Sergey Brin, was not in favor of the company's move. As an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, he always disliked the communist totalitarian state. But Google's other founder, Larry Page, was on Schmidt's side at the time, so Google began to expand its business in China and officially launched Google.cn in 2006.

Google agreed to comply with search censorship in mainland China, only to find out later that it was hard to know what specific regulation or rules were violated for certain filtered content, such as some terms that popped up online that said the China Central Television (CCTV) building looked like big underpants, and Google had to filter the search results for big underpants.

In December 2009, Google discovered that it had been hacked by a different kind of hacker. In addition to trying to access Google's intranet code, the hackers also tried to check certain Gmail mailboxes (these users were mainly Chinese dissidents). Page had previously sided with Schmidt, but the hacking incident made Page feel that it was "evil" and sided with Brin instead. Schmidt insisted that staying in China would be beneficial, but he was powerless in the face of opposition from the two founders.

By 4pm on January 10, 2010, Google’s technical analysis of the hacker attack confirmed that it came from China. Google immediately began to discuss countermeasures (including whether to withdraw from China). At Google headquarters, many people sided with Brin and Page. Schmidt finally suggested a vote.

The results of the vote at 9pm that night are now known to everyone. The next day, Google issued an official announcement "A New Approach to China". After the announcement, Google's Beijing office received several phone calls from Chinese officials, asking if Google's announcement was a joke. No other company had done this before, and they would leave quietly.

Google is a business company, but it's not all about money. It has a famous "Don't be evil" principle, derived from a letter issued by the company's two co-founders, Page and Brin, during their initial public offering in 2004, which became known as the Don't Be Evil Manifesto: "Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."

Therefore, Google's decision to abandon its business in China, losing billions of dollars in annual revenue and being unable to return to the Chinese market for a long time to come (as long as the current Chinese government is still in power), should partly stem from its "Don't be evil" company culture.  back to Contents

14, Really don't do evil?

Google's principle of "doing no evil" has been praised by all parties for many years. In early 2010, it publicly turned against the Chinese government and was praised by many Western media. However, in June 2013, a 29-year-old American programmer named Edward Snowden nearly capsized Google and many other famous companies in the gutter.

According to the information provided by Snowden, on June 6, 2013, the British newspaper Guardian exposed a surveillance project named PRISM by the US National Security Agency (NSA). The title of the Guardian article is: NSA Prism program taps into user data of Apple, Google and others. The next day, the Washington Post also published a breaking news article titled "U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program."

Edward Snowden

Snowden, a man who never graduated from high school, served a short military service and later worked for several U.S. intelligence agencies. The classified documents he provided show that hundreds of U.S. companies were involved in the Prism program, including well-known companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple. Through the program, the National Security Agency (NSA) had access to user data from these companies, analyzing information such as audio, video, photos, emails, files and connection logs to track users' every move.

Project Prism tracks not only the phone and Internet information of ordinary people, but also prominent figures, including foreign leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. EU leaders are furious, accusing the Americans of treachery, not even sparing their allies. A little programmer has plunged the United States into a diplomatic crisis.

The predecessor of Project Prism was the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which was approved by President Bush Jr. after 911 incident and carried forward by President Obama. Prism officially began in 2007, with the following major companies participating in the program and when they joined: Microsoft (2007), Yahoo (2008), Google (2009), Facebook (2009), Paltalk (2009), YouTube (2010), Skype (2011), America Online (2011), and Apple (2012). It is worth noting that Twitter, the famous social media platform, is not included in this list.

In the face of overwhelming accusations, on June 9, 2013, President Barack Obama gave a speech defending his position by saying, "You can't have 100 percent security and still have 100 percent privacy and 100 percent convenience." Obama made a good point, but he couldn't cite how many terrorists the Prism program actually helped the U.S. to catch. The American people have lost their privacy, but the counterterrorism situation remains dire in the United States.

The Guardian photo, Prism project code name "US-984XN"

The question of whether Snowden is a traitor or a hero is a matter of opinion. If you think personal privacy is important, then he's a hero. If you think counter-terrorism is important, then he's a traitor. Personally, I'm surprised that the reaction to the Prism revelations has been so great. The U.S. spies on Germany and China, and China and France spy on the U.S. The world powers are spying on each other, and this has been going on since the beginning of time. Some politicians seem too pretentious to blame each other for this. Intelligence agencies spy on individuals and companies, that's their job.

Personally, I think Snowden's greatest credit is not for exposing the work of intelligence agencies, but for revealing a secret of the U.S. legal system, which is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

FISC is not really a secret, at least on the surface it is open and legal. 1978, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, under which FISC was created. The Act requires U.S. intelligence agencies to submit an application to FISC before they can conduct surveillance. In practice, however, from 1979 to 2004, the FISC approved 18,761 surveillance authorizations and denied only 5. The FISC has effectively become a rubber stamp, allowing U.S. intelligence agencies to do almost anything they want, and to wiretap whomever they want. In particular, the FISC operates independently, and the U.S. Supreme Court has no control over it. This is simply extra-legal.

Unsurprisingly, the major internet companies named by Snowden all said they were wronged. Yahoo issued a statement saying that Yahoo did not want to cooperate with the U.S. government, but the U.S. intelligence agencies threatened that if they did not cooperate, they would be fined by the FISC, and the fine could be as high as $250,000 per day. Yahoo had to obey. Google's chief legal counsel Drummond also immediately issued an open letter, emphasizing that no government department can directly access Google's servers, and Google does not always comply with the requirements of the US government.

That's basically the case, according to Google's semi-annual Transparency Report. In the second half of 2012, the U.S. government made 8,438 data requests to Google, involving 14,791 accounts, and 88% of the requests were executed, ranking first in both the number of requests and the number of executions. The number of requests from the Chinese government is 0. Need to say why?

Above: screenshot of Google Transparency Report, July-December 2012, in Chinese. Below table is a partial translation:

A number of angry Chinese youths have gone online to scold Google for its high-profile refusal to cooperate with the Chinese government, but then it turned around and cooperated with the U.S. government, enforcing double standards, and it’s like being a whore while claiming virginity. Internet writer Zhou Xiaoping was a representative of China's angry youth. He wrote an article titled "Please Don't Let Down Everything Today." Here is an excerpt:

"No country has suffered more injustice than China today. Most of the voices online in China today are bad-mouthing China, yet they still say that there is no freedom of speech in China, and the freedom exists only in the United States. But don't you know that Snowden is wanted for exposing online that the U.S. is monitoring users worldwide through Google? Don't you know that Assange of WikiLeaks is wanted for exposing some insider information of the United States? Do you still remember the excitement of those naive and confused people who believed in Google when the company was promoting "Don’t be evil" in China? But the reality is that according to the declassified information, Google not only allows the proliferation of fraudulent information about fake drugs, but also installs backdoors to monitor Chinese netizens' online account passwords and credit card information."

Zhou Xiaoping's words are quite shocking. Accusing Google of selling fake drugs? When it comes to condoning the sale of fake drugs, is there any Internet company on earth that can beat Baidu? Zhou Xiaoping lacks a basic understanding of Google's withdrawal from China. As we analyzed more than 10,000 words earlier, Google and the Chinese government turned against each other mainly because of disputes over Internet censorship and other issues, including website blocking, search filtering, and sensitive word censorship. Google's cooperation with the U.S. government is mainly to provide user data for anti-terrorism purposes. These are two completely different things. If Google had blocked documentaries that were inconsistent with the U.S. government's position, such as Fahrenheit 911, or if Google had blocked scandals involving U.S. presidents or senators, as the Chinese government blocked Ling Jihua and Ferrari, it would prove that Google is a whore while claiming virginity. The content of the Prism program clearly does not prove this.

In fact, on the grounds of anti-terrorism, the Chinese government has violated personal privacy more severely than the US government did. Article 18 of the "Anti-Terrorism Law of the People's Republic of China" passed in December 2015 reads as follows: "Telecommunications business operators and Internet service providers shall provide technical interfaces for public security organs and state security organs with decryption and other technical support and assistance to prevent and investigate terrorist activities in accordance with the law."

Many people don't realize the significance of Article 18, which in effect directly authorizes the public security authorities to enter the mainframes and servers of any telecom and Internet companies in the name of anti-terrorism and without court approval. The subtext is: every surveillance and censorship decision by the government is correct. The U.S. government at least has a fig leaf of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), while the Chinese government is now running around naked. Some people may say, hasn't the Chinese public security department been doing so for decades? Indeed it is. But nowadays the emphasis is on ruling the country by law, so the Anti-Terrorism Law is purposely enacted. Would you say this is a good thing or a bad thing?  back to Contents

15. An analysis of Blocked Google Products

The following figure shows the specific Google products being blocked in these four countries (screenshot of Google Transparency Report, in Chinese):

The following table is the translation of the above figure: 

This figure shows that China ranks first in the world in terms of blocking Google, and almost all Google products and services are unavailable (except Google Translate and the web version of Google Maps). There is only one country on earth that simultaneously blocks Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail, and that is mainland China.

Why should Google be completely blocked? The Chinese government has not given an answer. Let me talk about my personal views by product.

A, Google Search. This does not need to say much, we have already spent more than 10,000 words discussing this issue. Google Search is blocked mainly for two reasons. One is that the censored content cannot be agreed upon, and the other is that the (Chinese) censorship method is unacceptable to Google.

B, Google Scholar, a global research paper hub, is a must-have tool for researchers, university faculty and students to search for information and write papers. Many people do not understand why a tool for academic research is blocked. I think it is almost the same reason why Google Search is blocked. There are many topics in academia that involve politics. Whenever a chosen topic involves politics, there may be content that is inconsistent with the Chinese government's position, especially in humanities and social science research.

For example, Dr. Wang Youqin, who teaches at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Chicago, has been engaged in the study of the Cultural Revolution for a long time. In 2004, she published the book "Victims of the Cultural Revolution", which is the result of her years of research.

Dr. Wang Youqin is also the founder of the website "Memorial for Victims of the Chinese Cultural Revolution", which was blocked by the Chinese government as early as March 2002.

Screenshot，website Memorial For Victims Of The Chinese Cultural Revolution
　

According to Article 18 of the "100 Items of Publishing Censorship in China", the selection of topics related to the Cultural Revolution must first be reviewed and filed. Obviously, Wang Youqin's research work in the United States has not been officially registered in China.

Regarding the issue of the Cultural Revolution, Comrade Deng Xiaoping (the then Supreme leader of China) once gave an important instruction that "it should be rough and not detailed". It is acknowledged by everyone that millions of people died unjustly during the Cultural Revolution, but official research is not allowed to be too detailed (nor is private mourning of specific people, even online mourning is not allowed). Wang Youqin's research is specific to the people and the detailed time and place of their death, which is obviously not in line with the official instructions.

The blocking of academic research is not limited to the topic of modern Chinese history. Professor Guo Yuhua of sociology at Tsinghua University, and Zhang Qianfan, professor of constitutional law at Peking University, and other scholars, many of their research results are also banned in mainland China. The Weibo accounts of Guo Yuhua and Zhang Qianfan have been canceled.

In a word, the Chinese government requires the academic community to obey the official instructions 100%, otherwise the relevant research results will be blocked, no matter online or offline. For Google, if Google Scholar does not delete the research results of Wang Youqin, Guo Yuhua, Zhang Qianfan and others, it cannot operate in China.

However, political-related research accounts for only a small fraction of all academic selections, especially sensitive political selections, which should account for less than 1% of all academic material, right? For this 1%, we have to block the remaining 99%? Isn't this a trap for all researchers in the country? All those researchers in physics, chemistry, medicine, computer science, etc., are all blinded along with them?

This is indeed the case, the Chinese government has a proclivity for political purity, and would rather kill 3,000 by mistake than let one go. As for the impact of blocking Google Scholar on Chinese scientific research, it is far less important than the political direction.

C, Google Mail Gmail. The mailbox business was the trigger that caused the Chinese government and Google to turn against each other in early 2010. The Chinese government wanted to check the mailboxes of certain dissidents, but Google refused to do so, so the Chinese government organized hackers to attack Google's mailbox servers to force the check. We all know the story thereafter.

The question of whether government agencies can check citizens' emails and letters at any time was not explicitly stated when Google pulled out of China in 2010, so Google and the government got into a fight. Now there is a clear answer to this question. According to the Anti-Terrorism Law of the People's Republic of China, which was just passed in December 2015, all companies doing online business in China are required to leave a back door to the relevant government departments (public security, state security, etc.). The official saying is "provide technical interfaces”.

In short, in today's China, any Internet mailbox must be unconditionally open to government inspection. If Google's Gmail does not do that, it can't operate in mainland China.

For the issue of inability to access Google, there were legal actions taken by rash fellows in China. In September 2014, Wang Long, a Shenzhen resident, sued China Unicom on the grounds that his broadband and mobile phones could not access Google Search, Gmail and other websites. This case is called "the world's first case of blocking Google". On September 28, 2014, Wang Long was criminally detained by the police on suspicion of picking quarrels and provoking trouble.

D, Google Store (Google Play)

Regarding the inaccessibility of Google Play, I just want to state one fact: it is very difficult to find VPN software in all legal mobile app stores in China, including the Apple App Store in mainland China, but the Apple App store in Hong Kong has all kinds of VPN software, including ArkVPN and VPNexpress, etc. These apps are all censored by the government in mainland China.

Of course, it is not ruled out that there are few fish slipping through the net, but as the number of downloads increases, these apps will soon be taken down at the request of the Chinese government.

When you open Google Play, all kinds of wall apps abound, and many of them are free. If everyone in China allows access to Google Play, and everyone knows how to bypass the Great Firewall, what is the point of blocking the Internet?

E, Google Books

The reason why Google Books is blocked is simple in my opinion. It includes some books published without the consent of the mainland Chinese government and has views that differ from those of the government. back to Contents

F, YouTube

YouTube, the world's largest video network and a Google-owned website (Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2008), was first blocked in China around mid-2007, and access has been intermittent since then. It has been completely inaccessible since 2009 and has not been unblocked ever since.

The reason why YouTube is blocked is also very simple in my opinion. It features videos that the mainland Chinese government insists should be removed. For example, the aforementioned "Under the Dome" by Chai Jing, the American documentary "Tiananmen June 4", and so on.

In China, even videos posted by individuals are tightly regulated, not to mention medium and large productions. In 2014, a German guy (with a Chinese name of Lao Lei), used his mobile phone to take some personal review videos, which were then blocked by major websites because some of them involved current affairs in China. Lao Lei's Weibo account has also been canceled. The documentary "Lao Yang's Sichuan-Tibet Highway" I filmed was also blocked by Youku (a major Chinese video site) because I made some gossip about Tibetan Buddhism. In the end, I had to edit it again and made two versions.

Dual-version is also a means for many film and television companies to deal with Chinese government censorship. Therefore, even if some western films can be seen in China, don't feel happy too early, because the Chinese version may be very different from the original one.

One day in 2009, I saw that A Year In Tibet, a documentary film directed by Shu Yun, was about to be broadcast on CCTV (China Central Television), and I was surprised because when the film was premiered on BBC, it was blocked tightly in China, and I had a hard time going through VPN to find foreign resources. Later, when I watched "One Year in Tibet" on CCTV channel, it was indeed a special Mainland China version, and many impressive classic scenes and commentary were missing.

The Chinese government's management of video and film and television resources is stricter than other media. For example, Lou Ye's movie "Summer Palace", which I personally like very much, cannot be found on video websites in mainland China. The Chinese government not only strictly manages film and television itself, but also film and television reviews. For a while, even the famous movie database IMDB (Internet Movie Database) could not be accessed. IMDB is in English, and very few people can read it in China. I never figured out why IMDB was blocked until I found some user comments on IMDB for the movie "Beginning of the Great Revival" (The Founding of the Party). One of the comments reads:

“Ironically, from the movie we know that before the CCP, Chinese students could protest in Tiananmen Square without being massacred, and before CCP the Chinese people had the rights to form a party without being banned and persecuted. When watching this so-called “Beginning of the Great Revival”, I believe most of the Chinese audience would like to see “The End” of it.”

IMDB is now accessible again. Of course, this comment (and many others like it) is no longer available on IMDB. However, IMDB still left more than 20 comments. On Douban, a Chinese film review website, "Beginning of the Great Revival" is the only movie that cannot be commented on, and more than 70,000 comments have been deleted.

This article is about Google’s video products. Talking so much about movies seems a bit off topic, but I would like to let people understand the Chinese government’s attitude towards all videos (and related products) through this movie. The attitude is very clear: no content inconsistent with the official viewpoint allowed, nor any substantive questioning of the Party and government, otherwise the posts will be deleted and the Internet will be blocked.

With this attitude, it is natural that YouTube is tightly blocked in China, as there are many videos on it that the Chinese government does not want people to watch. Having said that, although there are many dissident videos, they are not too many in general. By the end of last year, in total there were more than 50 million videos on YouTube. I personally estimate that the Chinese government is not happy with 5,000 videos or so. I'm not from the CCP Publicity Department, so it's hard to estimate that exact number, but at most, there won’t be more than 50,000 controversial videos, which is less than 0.1 percent of the total number of YouTube videos. For this 0.1%, you have to block the remaining 99.9%?

It is a pity that this is indeed the status quo of Internet management in China. The Chinese government's attitude towards dissenting content is: it is better to kill three thousand by mistake than letting one slip through the net. This is how YouTube died in China. Just because of the existence of few political dissenting videos, all other video resources such as film, music, technology, entertainment, biography, and animal world are all inaccessible. As a photography enthusiast for many years, I can't watch foreign equipment video reviews; as a classical music enthusiast, I also can't watch the world's most complete piano and symphony videos. It should be said that blocking YouTube has caused a lot of trouble to my personal work and life, which makes me want to curse sometimes.

It should be noted that the discontent with YouTube is not limited to the Chinese government. Due to content issues on YouTube, the site has once been blocked in at least a dozen countries around the world, including Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates, but most countries have later unblocked it. In Thailand, someone is said to have uploaded the video bashing the King, which is illegal in Thailand. Videos disrespecting Allah are also illegal in some Islamic countries.

There is no absolute freedom of speech in this world, and Google itself is censoring content. Since 2009, Google has released the "Transparency Report" twice a year, announcing the situation of governments and courts requesting to block and remove some content. According to the report, in the second half of 2013, governments around the world asked Google to remove 2,199 items from YouTube. Google then removed 973 of them - 735 for violating (local) laws and 238 for violating YouTube Community Guidelines.

But in China, as we all know, none of the authorities' Internet censorship orders come from court decisions, and many are not written notices; they sometimes call in the middle of the night asking you to filter or remove certain content. What's more, these censorship orders have to be enforced 100%, completely and immediately, or your site will be shut down.

So here comes the question. In the vast majority of countries in the world, Google does not fully implement the orders of governments and courts. Why is Google not blocked there? These countries include developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, as well as backward Africa and the vast majority of Muslim countries. Why can they seek common ground while reserving differences with Google, while China cannot?

I don't know how to answer this question. Imagine a country where most of the residents use Google YouTube to watch videos, most of the residents use Google to search the Internet, most of the residents use Google Maps to navigate their cars, and if the government forcibly blocks Google, then that government (and the Party) probably does not want to win the next term.

But in China, there seems to be no such problem at present?  back to Contents

16. Returning to China?

Since Google's exit from China in 2010, reports of its return to China have become a monthly post, with new rumors popping up every month or even every week. The news is not entirely groundless. While Google is unhappy with China's Internet censorship and has publicly flipped out with the Chinese government, it still has room to maneuver. For example, Google has not yet announced which sensitive words it was arguing with the Chinese government over. This is supposed to save face for the Chinese government as well. Google is not completely without concrete evidence.

From the Chinese government's side, although it is angry with Google, it has not become a complete enemy. Some Google products, such as Google Translate, are still available in China. In December 2014, the China-U.S. Internet Forum was held in Washington. Lu Wei, vice minister of the CCP Publicity Department and director of the State Internet Information Office, also visited several U.S. high-tech companies. What is striking is that Lu Wei actually went to visit the Google headquarters. Accompanied by CEO Schmidt, Lu Wei took a test ride in Google's proud self-driving car and became the first Chinese official to ride in a Google car.

Lu Wei Test-Driving a Google Car in the United States

It can be seen that the communication channel between Google and the Chinese government has not been broken. It is not a fantasy for Google to return to China. Everything is possible. However, why has Google's return to China been thundering but not raining for several years? I think the reason is twofold.

First, Google doesn't have a strong desire to return to China. This company is not short of money at all. As one of the companies with the largest market capitalization in the world, it has inexhaustible cash, and it doesn’t care burning tens of billions dollars every year on all kinds of incredible sci-fi projects; secondly, because of Google’s unique corporate culture, it's a bit idealistic, and "Don't be evil" is one of its principles.

The Chinese government is also not in a hurry, and it will sit there with a peace of mind whether or not Google comes back. With a gun in hand, there is no need to panic.

Cai Mingzhao, the former deputy director of the CCP Central Publicity Department, said in April 2010, "This matter (referring to Google's exit from China) seems to be very big, but it is not very big. It (referring to Google) does not have a large business volume in China; the level involved is mainly part of the intellectual class. These people, no matter what you do, they will disagree and curse, so let them alone...As for us, let me emphasize again that Internet regulation is a political issue, and it is a procedure for us to express our ideology. We are not afraid of being told that we are not free. We just want to show that we are ideologically and in principle opposed to these things, so we have to block them... This is the principle and basic point, and it can be made public. This is also the original point of the comrades' work; if you don't understand this, don't engage in propaganda work."

Although the Chinese government is not afraid of being told not free, the situation is changing. In 2010, there were a dozen countries that blocked Google. Later, as Vietnam and Myanmar unblocked Google and Facebook, and Cuba will soon unblock them in 2016, etc., now there are only four countries blocking Google in the world, and three of them are small and insignificant countries. Among the major countries in the world, apart from China, not a single one blocks Google. The taste of being alone should not be pleasant. If North Korea is not counted in, will one day China be the only country in the world that blocks Google?

Let's explore the possibility of Google's return to China in detail. The logic is: since Google’s withdrawal from China was due to a quarrel with the government, as long as one party is willing to make concessions, the matter will be resolved?

Let's see if there is a possible change on the part of the Chinese government. From my personal point of view, the current Internet censorship policy in China shows no signs of relaxation. The overall trend is that it is getting stricter. Not only political content, but now even entertainment content is strictly controlled.

However, just because it cannot be changed now does not mean it will never change. Back then in Taiwan, President Chiang Ching-kuo, who had always been a dictator, suddenly ordered the lifting of the ban on newspapers and political parties, allowing Taiwan to move towards democracy. Of course, some people say that Chiang Ching-kuo was not out of sudden kindness, but was forced by the situation to do so. Nowadays the public opinion in mainland China is fierce, and the government is busy deleting posts and banning comments everywhere. The situation is even more dangerous than that in Taiwan at that time, and maybe one day it will be forced to change by the situation.

The former Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, just a few months before its end of life, it seemed so strong, and who would have thought it would die suddenly after only a month or two. The former Soviet Union had long adopted an oppressive policy of strictly regulating the media and suppressing the voice of the people. Although it appeared to be an indestructible steel pressure cooker, it could finally explode at any time as the internal pressure rose. Of course, that "anytime" could be as soon as next month, or as long as decades.

The current Chinese government is unlikely to change, but Google itself is up for change. In August 2015, Google announced the reorganization of the company and the establishment of the Alphabet Group. Google became a subsidiary, and its leadership has also undergone major changes. Sundar Pichai became the new CEO of Google.

Google's restructured corporate structure diagram

Pichai, who is of Indian origin, is a pragmatic techie. Since he took office, there have been significantly more rumors about Google's return to China, with even screenshots of the mainland China version of Google Play being released. Google China also started to recruit new staff. The question now is not whether Google will return to China, but when, and in what way.

Unless the current Chinese government also dies suddenly like the former Soviet Union did in 1991, it is impossible for Google products to return to China across the board. That doesn't seem likely at this point. Google's products died in China one by one, and they can only return to China one by one.

In my personal view, Google Search is unlikely to return to China at present. Asking Google to comply with the Chinese government's lawless search censorship again would be a slap in its face. Even if Google's new CEO Pichai is willing, his bosses Schmidt and Brin will not agree. These two are the real helmsman of Google and the decision maker of Google's withdrawal from China in early 2010.

If Google Search doesn't change, it's unlikely that other products like Google Scholar, Gmail, and YouTube will change either. I think if Google wants to make a return to China, the breakthrough should be Google Play, the Android mobile app store. It has no historical burden. When Google was considering withdrawing from China at the end of 2009, the Android mobile phone system had just been born for a year or so. No one thought that this bug-ridden thing would sweep the global mobile phone market within a few years.

Google Play, one of Google's big moneymakers, was only officially launched in March 2012. Google Play is blocked by the Chinese government, mainly because of those VPN apps. It is not a big deal to remove some of them from the shelves. Apple’s App Store in China has been doing so for years.

Google Play taking down a few mobile apps in exchange for a breakthrough seems to be the most likely way for Google to return to China at this point. As for the re-entry of traditional products like Google Search and YouTube into China, we still have to be patient and wait for the environment to change slowly or explode suddenly. back to Contents

17. Four Suggestions

This article has dragged on too long. Here is a final summary. The current Internet regulation in mainland China has the following four characteristics:

A, Speeches that are inconsistent with the official (high-level) must not be widely disseminated on the Internet.

B. From social networks to public media, it is completely forbidden to report negative news about senior officials, especially the Party and state leaders.

C. The government insists on secret censorship and secret enforcement, and does not publish sensitive words list or removal orders, and the public has no way to know which specific law the blocked websites and web pages violate.

D, Although the government has always claimed the Internet is regulated by law, none of the blocking or censorship orders have come from court decisions, and most of the time there are not even written notices, only phone calls and verbal orders.

Each of these four points conflicts with Google's tradition and company culture. Google insists that the government's removal request must be a written notice, and if not, it will have to go through legal procedures (suits and appeals). Google insists that it has the right to reject the government's request, but the Chinese government requires Internet companies to unconditionally enforce all censorship orders, whether it is content removal or search filtering.

Traditional Western values believe that monitoring government officials, especially senior government officials, is the basic duty of the press, business community and any citizen, and it is a universal principle that applies everywhere. Blocking scandals of high-ranking corrupt officials also violates Google's "don't be evil" principle. But the Chinese government doesn't accept this, and it blocks anyone who dares to expose the scandals, by secret means.

In response to the increasing number of Internet blocking requests, since 2009, Google has been releasing the Transparency Report every six months, making public the number of requests it receives from various countries and some examples. This is also completely contrary to the secret censorship practice of the Chinese government. All in all, Google's withdrawal from China appears to be a result of a hacker attack, but in fact it is because of serious conflicts with the Chinese government over Internet regulation, from the content of the censorship to the way it was conducted.

Anything that is tried in secret and executed in secret is not a legal act. The Chinese government's claim that the Internet is regulated by law is a lie. There are no court trials and no enforcement notices, and they are completely black-box operations. This opaque and secret management of the Internet facilitates the "veteran cadres" (senior officials) to use their power to block unfavorable information for personal gain, such as the sudden blocking of the Ling + Ferrari in March 2012 and the Panama Papers in April 2016, etc. Their nature is the same; they use public power to serve themselves under the guise of serving the people.

As mentioned earlier, some content on the Internet is a public enemy of humanity, such as terrorism, racial discrimination, child pornography, drug trafficking, etc. The Chinese government would have no problem publicly blocking these contents and sites, but because of the "veteran cadres" who slip in personal interest in Internet management, all of China's Internet management is forced to be done in secret. The practice damages the reputation of the law, interferes with people's lives, hinders the production of enterprises, and seriously affects China's national reputation.

The openness and transparency of national administration and judiciary is a world trend. The tide of history is mighty. Those who follow it will prosper, while those who go against it will perish. We need to establish an Internet that is truly governed by law. It must not only effectively filter out illegal information and protect citizens’ right to access information, but also prevent a small number of "veteran cadres" from using public power for personal gain and harming the interests of the majority.

To do this, we must abandon the secret control mechanism and ensure the openness and transparency of Internet management. In this regard, I personally have the following four suggestions:

A. Establish that only courts and relevant government agencies have the authority to conduct Internet censorship. Any individual or mass organization (including political parties and their affiliated institutions) has no right to conduct Internet censorship.

B. All official Internet censorship, including sensitive words list, search filtering, blocking websites and deleting web pages (including social platform accounts), must not be verbally notified. Internet management must be strictly based on court judgments and government administrative documents.

C. Court judgments should be made public, and administrative documents of government agencies should be made public.

D. To block websites that have a major impact on the national economy, people's lives, and the country's reputation, such as Google and Facebook, extensive hearings should be held, and must be voted on by the National People's Congress.  back to Contents

18. Epilogue: Block the Internet for the People?

Legend has it that in the desert, ostriches bury their heads in the sand when they encounter enemies, thinking that others won't be able to see them. In my opinion, the Chinese government's blocking of world-renowned websites such as Google is a kind of ostrich behavior. We all know the "touching stories" of corrupt officials are blocked in China, but foreigners see them as they are. Now that the international exchange is so frequent, so many people travel abroad, plus there are millions of people in China using VPN everyday, as the saying goes, Bad news has wings, those blocked content is instantly spread in seconds.

There is also a Chinese saying: Poor lies reveal the truth. The more you block, the more suspicion you get. I don't know what the decision makers of the Central Publicity Department think, but mass blocking is the worst thing to do. You may cheat once or twice, but you can never cheat forever. There will always be a day when things will be faced openly. To completely control Internet public opinion, the only way is to cut off submarine optical cables and ban people from traveling overseas. If this cannot be done, blocking famous websites such as Google is tantamount to bring about one's own destruction. The mills of God grind slowly.

When discussing Internet control policies with Chinese characteristics, the phrase, "I have no way to change you, but I have the right to choose friends," is often quoted. This quote comes from Lu Wei, deputy director of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of CCP and director of the State Internet Information Office, who has been described by foreign media as China's great Internet steward. He said that China welcomes any Internet company to enter the Chinese market, but it must meet two bottom lines: first, it must not harm China's national interests, and second, it must not harm Chinese consumers' rights.

According to Mr. Lu Wei, the Chinese government blocks Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bloomberg, YouTube, Wikipedia, and thousands of other websites for "consumer rights" and "national interests". But as we know from the analysis above, this is not entirely true. The reason why China's Internet has become the world's largest Intranet is largely due to the "veteran cadres" slipping in private goods in the Internet management work, and blocking world-renowned websites for the benefit of small groups and personal interests.

According to Mr. Lu Wei, these blocked websites are not friends of the Chinese people, so they are not welcome in China. The implication of Mr. Lu's words is that he represents the Chinese people. I don't know who the people Mr. Lu represents are, but from my own experience, I have hundreds of friends and students, and most of them are complaining about the blocking of Google, especially colleagues who are engaged in research work in universities, and everyone is cursing. Without Google Scholar, it is really hard to write a paper.

Another thing that Mr. Lu Wei may not know is that Fang Binxing, the "father of firewall technology" in China and the president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, sent a New Year greeting in Weibo on New Year's Eve in 2013, and received more than 20,000 " Get out of here!" comments in just two days. It became a major event on Weibo. In the end, President Fang had to close the Weibo comment. I wonder if these 20,000 Weibo users were also represented by Mr. Lu Wei?

Screenshot, President Fang's New Year greeting post and 20,000 "Get Out" comments (in Chinese)

It is a dangerous thing to call oneself a representative of the people. The December 2011 issue of Literature and History Reference published an article by Zuo Fengrong, a professor at Party School of the Central Committee of the CCP, titled "The Soviet Union Collapsed as the People Did Not Become the Master of the State". Zuo Fengrong's point is that the Soviet Communist Party thought that what they did was what the people needed, and thought and decided everything on behalf of the people. The Soviet Communist Party was so arrogant and self-righteous that it called itself the truth, harming the Russian people hard and eventually getting itself buried.

There was no Internet at the time of the Soviet Union's fall, but the lessons of secret censorship are the same. If a political party or government cannot tolerate different voices, and enforce a policy of "those who obey me will prosper and those who disobey will perish", then the party itself will not be far from destruction.

"I have no way to change you, but I have the right to choose friends", Mr. Lu Wei said well, but ordinary Chinese people can say the same thing. Water can carry the boat and also can overturn the boat. The ordinary Chinese people can not change you, but they will eventually have the right to choose who their representative is.

This is the end of the Google chapter. It’s written in a hurry, so please correct me for any mistakes or omissions.

Yang Fei，

Feb 2015, First draft in Singapore

Aug 2016, Revised in Changsha, China

back to Contents

Selected references:

1，Harvard Law School paper, Localized Google search result exclusions, Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/google/
2, Google Censorship - How It Works http://www.sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-censorship.php
3, Google Transparency Report, http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/?hl=zh-CN
4，Censorship Machine - Understanding a Real Chinese Internet https://kenengba.com/post/2812.html
5，A Comparison of Internet Censorship in China and the United States, http://www.geekpark.net/zhuanti/wtf/
6，The Truth I Know About Google's Exit from China, Lan Xi http://lanxi.blog.techweb.com.cn/archives/235
7，Google's withdrawal from mainland China, Wikipedia
8，A New Approach to China, Google's official blog statement
9，The CCP's Clampdown on the Media Exposed - From Open to Hidden, from Macro to Micro, Cheng Yizhong
10，The Soviet Union Collapsed as the People Did Not Become the Master of the State, Zuo Fengrong

All the images in this article are from web screenshots or Google image search, and it’s difficult to find the author at the present, please contact me if there is any copyright issue. Thank you.

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I did this English translation myself. It is basically a direct translation of the Chinese version, except for a very few obvious errors and omissions in the original text.

The long article was completed in mid-2016. Today is May 21, 2023, nearly eight years have passed, has the situation changed? Yes, but unfortunately, things are getting worse. When I was writing this article in 2016, a few Google products such as Google Translate and the web version of Google Maps were sometimes available in China, now they are all gone, and all Google products are completely blocked in China.

Some people used to say that using a VPN would be fine. But now China has passed a new law that makes it a crime to use a VPN to browse foreign websites without official permission. In other words, if you are reading this article from China, you are actually a criminal. What else can I say?

In July last year, I finally made up my mind and sent my son to Singapore to study. He is now not yet eight years old and cannot understand such a long writing, but I would like to dedicate this article to him, hoping he can swim in the ocean of information freedom and grow up healthy and happy in the future.

Yang Fei,
May 21, 2023, Changsha Addendum

I insist on independent writing, do not do commercial advertising, do not accept conditional sponsorship, and do not join official literary organizations. But writers also need to make a living. If you like my work, you can buy me a coffee through Wechat@yangfei789288, Alipay@13974850714, and PayPal@feiyang17. Thanks for your support.

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