Confounding Censorship

Nov 12, 2022 21:56

Here in the US, "getting crap past the radar" usually means finding ways to get somewhat off-color jokes past Standards and Practices -- often by giving the Moral Guardians something even more obvious to object to, so they'll feel like they've done their job when you take the bait out.

In China, the stakes are much higher. The Chinese government is trying to silence any whiff of dissent on social media, especially as related to their zero-COVID policy that locks down whole cities when a case or two are detected. However, many people from southern China are using Cantonese, often called a "dialect" but in effect a different language, to criticize and satirize the government in ways that would get them instantly shut down if written in Mandarin (the prestige form of Chinese). To further confound the censors, some writers spell out the sounds in the Roman alphabet, which makes it even harder to detect political content.

language, china, society, politics

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