Chinese web censors block terms related to "Occupy," to stamp out movement's spread in China

China Digital Times verifies a long list of banned keywords on Sina Weibo’s search function that combine “occupy” (占领) with a place name inside China: "provincial capitals, economically developed regions, and few symbolic local areas." Here are some of the keywords that contain the names of the capitals of Chinese provinces (in fact, all provincial capitals except Hefei of Anhui province and Guiyang of Guizhou province are on the list):

“Occupy Beijing”(占领北京), “Occupy Shanghai”(占领上海), “Occupy Guangzhou”(占领广州), “Occupy Xi’an”(占领西安), “Occupy Chongqin”(占领重庆), “Occupy Tianjin”(占领天津), “Occupy Urumqi”(占领乌鲁木齐), “Occupy Lhasa”(占领拉萨), “Occupy Changsha”(占领长沙), “Occupy Wuhan”(占领武汉), “Occupy Nanchang”(占领南昌), “Occupy Fuzhou”(占领福州), “Occupy Nanjing”(占领南京), “Occupy Dalian”(占领大连), “Occupy Hangzhou”(占领杭州), “Occupy Harbin”(占领哈尔滨), “Occupy Chengdu”(占领成都), “Occupy Kunming”(占领昆明), “Occupy Hohhot”(占领呼和浩特), “Occupy Haikou”(占领海口), “Occupy Zhengzhou”(占领郑州), “Occupy Changchun”(占领长春), “Occupy Shenyang”(占领沈阳), “Occupy Xining”(占领西宁), “Occupy Lanzhou”(占领兰州), “Occupy Taiyuan”(占领太原), “Occupy Yinchuan”(占领银川), “Occupy Shijiazhuang”(占领石家庄), “Occupy Jinan”(占领济南), “Occupy Nanning”(占领南宁).

Keywords containing non-capital cities:

“Occupy Jiling”(占领吉林), “Occupy Shenzhen”(占领深圳), “Occupy Wenzhou”(占领温州), “Occupy Qingdao”(占领青岛).

(via Isaac Mao)

• [dagfooyo]

  Hopefully this is a sign that the Occupy movement is taking root in China – how freaking cool!  If anywhere in the world could use more economic equality, not to mention, you know, civil liberties, human rights etc., it’s China.

• [gnomemaker]

  How about dis-occupy Tibet?

  • [truffle]

    Occupy Lhasa and Urumqi could get really interesting…

    In a way, this kind of protest feels more suited to China than NYC.

• [Cowicide]

  How will the conservatives manage to distort this into a negative for OWS, I wonder?  This surely proves once and for all OWS is in league with the Nazi party somehow.

  …or, they’ll just hide their head in the sand and pretend this never happened, I suppose…

• [James]

  Well time to use l33t speak I guess.

  Fuck China. What a bunch of douche bags that government is. Surely Paul Ryan would feel right at home there.

• [Heleen Mees]

  Perhaps my Chinese is not good enough, but I get tons of hits when I type 占据北京, 占用北京 or 占有北京 (three different versions of Occupy Beijing) here in Beijing using Chinese Google. Moreover, the coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests has been extensive in The China Daily, with an early editorial even suggesting that the United States was censoring news reporting on OWS.

• [Heleen Mees]

  Also, I signed up for Sino Weibo, typed three different versions of Occupy Beijing and my messages have not been blocked as of yet: http://weibo.com/2423664321

• [Thebes]

  Once again China is copying American businesses.
  The first few days of the #occupywallstreet YAHOO was censoring emails. Corporations are always quicker than governments.

  Of course, China admits that they are intentionally subverting Free Speech. Yahoo issued a bullshit excuse that the corporate media pretended to believe.

• [benher]

  When protest videos leak to the rest of their populace, their porky officials will just blame Japan or Taiwan or the US or Tibet or Falun gong or Martians…

  PS: Stay classy Yahoo!

• [Heleen Mees]

  By now I have two Chinese ‘fans’ (followers) on Sina Weibo who respond to my  ’Occupy Beijing!’ so my comments are definitely not blocked:http://weibo.com/2423664321/fans

• [Steve Nordquist]

  I guess if it’s Sina Weibo it’s just a SEO knockout; I’m not really sure loused offers for housing loans from banking, traders, brokerage and some aspect of the unified PRC compliance processes (well…Tuesdays it is, for sure) are relevant in the same way, so it is hard to believe that someone is missing the opportunity to general discontent with catering from Nobu.

• [Josh Jasper]

  “We feel that there are issues here that are worth pondering,” said Liu Weimin, a foreign ministry spokesman during a regular briefing in Beijing.

  “We have also noticed that in the media there has been a lot of commentary, discussion and reflection. But we think that all of these reflections should be conducive to maintaining the sound and steady development of the world economy,”

  Liu Weimin, Chinese Foreign Minister in the US. 

  So, clearly, the proletariat rebelling is awesome as long as it does not happen inside China, because in China, everything is perfect, and any criticism is counter-revolutionary.

  Cue the paid PRC flac-bots to tell us Americans (and Canadians and Brits) all off in 5… 4… 3… 2…