How to avoid Chinese censors

An image by Tenzing Gaychey (à½–à½¦à¾Ÿà½ºà½“à¼‹à½ à½‡à½²à¼¹à½“à¼‹ à½‘à½‚à½ºà¼‹à½†à½ºà¼‹), a Toronto-based graphic designer originally from Kathmandu, Nepal (thanks, Kalaya'an Mendoza).

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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0xdeadbeef

Buck Fush!
Chrs

In other news, I get annoyed every time I see that damn silhouette of a tree. If you see a silhouette of a tree online, somewhere around half the time it will be this one exactly.

Where did it come from? Who originally made it? The world may never know.
- neurolux
  
  Apparently it’s a rubber tree.
  
  http://www.fibet.co.uk/
Anonymous

pointing out there are more english speaking in China then England LOL (how many people live in England? How many people live in China? The law of large numbers is a bitch…)
Teslanaut

As the Internet would say:

“Oh, I see what you did thar”
Ernunnos

Wo
it
non’t.

Freedom doesn’t come from clever posters and cell phones and facebook and Twitter. The pen is only mightier than the sword to the extent that it can bring people with swords to your side. How’s that revolution in Iran going? Nobody with a sword is coming to the aid of the Iranian people, and nobody will come to the aid of the Tibetans.

Ironically, the main failing of the Chinese is the same failing as the free Tibet movement. Neither one realizes just how ineffective propaganda is. And since the propaganda is irrelevant, so is the censorship.
- theawesomerobot
  
  Never underestimate the power of propaganda.
  - Ernunnos
    
    It would be difficult indeed to underestimate a tactic that hasn’t worked for half a century.
- Anonymous
  
  Hm. Propaganda ineffective? How about… North Korea, for example?
- tp1024
  
  Ironically, the people who claim to have the freest press are also the people who are most ignorant of foreign press and thus constantly fall prey to their domestic propaganda.
Anonymous

If you’re traveling in China, set up an SSH tunnel to an American host running SSHd and use this as a SOCKS proxy for HTTP and DNS. This will allow you to encrypt all of your traffic and route it through a host out of the country. It might sound difficult, but it’s very simple. Otherwise, you will not be able to visit Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, and whatever other sites the government is blocking at the time.

This site has a quick tutorial:
http://embraceubuntu.com/2006/12/08/ssh-tunnel-socks-proxy-forwarding-secure-browsing/
IamInnocent

Neither one realizes just how ineffective propaganda is.

Indeed, you’ll need to be a much better propagandist to convince me of that! ;)
wfpman

A friend of mine swears by the tactics of the non – violence movement and touts Gene Sharp often.

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Struggle-Politics-Nonviolent-Action/dp/087558070X

He says this book and it’s second part have set a lot of people free.

When I read Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinksy however he felt that epitomy of the non-violence movement in Ghandi would have used force if he had it at his disposal however. When I told my friend of what Mr. Alinksy had said he found it hard to believe that would have been the case.

Alinksy used as an example once in power Nehru using the military and Ghandi supporting that. That I would need to verify however though I’m sure one of the readers of this blog may be well versed in the history of India to comment.

Alinksy was a tactic man and used what tactics and tools he had available. If you didn’t have force on your side then you had to use other things.

Didn’t the ANC in South Africa use force? As for what I feel personally I’m not sure. Force or Non Violence ….

Maybe I’m more like Alinksy and say use what you have to get you free :)
- anansi133
  
  I don’t like using the word ‘force’ as if it’s the opposite of nonviolence. Nonviolent activists have and will force their agenda against violence.
  
  For that matter, I like ‘harm reduction’ and ‘less-violent’ tactics better than nonviolent ones. If one person loses their temper, or an agent provocateur trolls the cops, people can point to that and say it’s no longer a nonviolent protest.
  
  For a less-violent agenda to prevail, you just have to succeed less violently than the status quo.
  
  Violence as a force multiplier is on its way out. It depends on deception to work long term, and white propaganda spreads better than grey or black.
Anonymous

I’d love to see this as a T-shirt. Talk about a conversation-starter.
Anonymous

I still believe that nothing is more powerful than Human Will. Someone just needs to cut through the general apathy surrounding us to motivate change. This poster is a step in the right direction and any step forward is better than nothing.
gmoke

Such visual puns seem to be a common way of avoiding Chinese censorship or so I learned from a lecture by Rebecca MacKinnon of the Univ of HK at a 2009 lecture to Harvard’s Berkman Center:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheons/2009/02/mackinnon

This example is a little primitive compared to some that MacKinnon described but it just might work.
- tp1024
  
  Watch that video at about 36:00 – I mean the alpaca sheep video.
  
  Isn’t it strange, that there is a grown-up American, telling you tales about Chinese censorship and how this video is a kind of critique against censorship etc. whatever.
  
  But then goes on and translates the pun of the video, saying that if you mispronounce “alpaca sheep” in Chinese, it means “F… your mother” instead of going all the (uncensored) way and say “FUCK your mother.”
  
  Freedom of speech? What the fuck.
  
  Am I gonna get censored now?
Anonymous

Whoa amazing job, G. Got to this site randomly through tumblr!! Very creative.
Xenu

And how many people in China speak English?
Nater

Propaganda works because people are so fucking stupid, they’ll believe anything that has a cute/neat/sexy logo attached to it.

Which is why N(amebrand) shoes are so much better than running shoes without the swooooosh.
Which is why that G(italiandesigner) handbag carries yr makeup and cellphone so much better than the leather bag from K(deptstorethatsellsbasicitems).

Of course, we’re all to smart for that crap to fool us right?

posted using my iphone. (hahaha kidding.)
WaylonWillie

Anyone who has spent time in Tibet and China knows how effective propaganda is. If something is all over the news all the time, then it is news, and that can be reinforced by propaganda. If something is not in the news, then it is not news, and is not widely known about.
Christovir

And how many people in China speak English?

China has more English-speakers than England.
- Xenu
  
  Well sure, but how many of them speak it well enough to understand the point of this?
  
  Understanding a few words in a language is one thing, getting a joke in another language is a much further milestone.
  - Chrs
    
    “Tibet” and “free” are not exactly complicated. There’s also a picture of a “tree”. We’re talking about an Introduction to Beginning English-level pun here.
- Astragali
  
  According to the statistics shown on Wikipedia, China is 18th on the list of countries by English-speaking population, either by first or second language (10 million). Even if you add in Hong Kong, that only brings it up to joint 15th with Spain. The USA, India and Nigeria rank ahead of the United Kingdom.
  
  At this point, I’m aware that Christovir said only “England”, not the UK, but even if you took England alone, it wouldn’t bring the figure under the China+Hong Kong figure. As Wikipedia states, “The oft-cited figure of 300 million is for ‘learners.’”
  
  Statistics are given at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
GraemeM

Anon #3, if a country has a county wide firewall then it could easily flag encrypted traffic and target its source. This only works if a significant number use it and the majority use it without braking the rules to make it uneconomical for those enforcing it. However when those enforcing it might drive a tank over your house with you in it would you?

I also suspect that the sites hosting this material can also easily be targeted. There is only one answer, joint those monitoring the web and browse at your leisure without reprise.
Anonymous

I think you underestimate the degree in which jingoistic national egotism motivates the majority of Han Chinese in China. It’s hard to do anything about this kind of mentality – it’s like Palin followers in the US. The net effect in China is to encourage Han Chinese imperialism, xenophobia, and hostility towards minorities that seek to assert their right to equality in China. Chinese government / CCP propaganda wavers between encouraging this attitude, and occasionally dampening it, fearing that it will get out of hand and destroy trade relationships with other countries or even lead to war with other countries.
ybfelix

Not gonna work. If your site is popular enough, Chinese web censors inspect it MANUALLY.

Right Boing Boing’s RSS feed URL conversion is blocked, so I can’t click the title in Google reader to read original. Annoying.
Anonymous

@Ernunnos: Try living here in Vietnam for a year and then telling us all again how ‘ineffective’ propaganda is. The residents of this country eat up every bit of disinformation their government feeds them with a spoon and asks for more. Unthinking cattle, because that’s just how the Party elite cultivate them — with propaganda.
- Anonymous
  
  Blatantly untrue. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I’ve lived in Vietnam for three years, and have come across plenty of criticism of the government and its policies (though people obviously tend not to take it public). Certainly there’s not a huge amount of government trust around here.