In the last year or two I read of the Chinese government setting up a large censoring infrastructure for the Internet; among other measures seeking to automatically block/filter the use of certain terms.
Other reports mentioned that terms like Taiwanese independence were censored.
What does not seem to be plausible to me is: Like other Communist countries China does insist (at least what I read, of course second or third hand and in translation) that its system is democratic. Its armed forces are called the People’s Liberation Army, too. So they also profess freedom to be a good thing.
I’d suppose the Chinese government would want Chinese to express sentiments on Internet fora like
One possible explanation would be that there are separate Chinese language terms for
democracy-in-the-Western-sense vs democracy-as-purportedly-existing-in-China
freedom-in-the-Western-sense vs freedom-as-purportedly-existing-in-China
Taiwanese-independence-as-a-good-thing vs Taiwanese-independence-as-a-bad-thing
etc.
which, in translation to English or other languages, get folded into the same term.
The other explanation that I can think of would be that the reports referred to above are wrong.
I don’t know the Straight Dope on this, but I venture a WAG:
The Chinese government doesn’t want its citizens to express those sentiments online. Instead, it regards the internet as a non-political zone and relies on traditional propaganda (press agencies, newspapers, radio, TV) to communicate its messages.
And regarding freedom as a good thing, tyrannies have always found ways to “justify” censorship on the grounds of un-national or un-communist, but always inimical activities and forcing threatening the freedom of the people, against which, unfortunately, authoritative counter-measures must be taken.
I don’t get the question. Are you asking about what Chinese buzzwords are used as the analog of those terms you mentioned? As in, GWB uses the term “freedom” a lot, so what do the Chinese talk about?
The Chinese government comes up with plenty of slogans to talk about why the form of the Chinese government is good for Chinese people. I’m struggling with the slogans now (it’s been a while since I’ve used my Chinese) but they are along the lines of “The Five Rightousnesses,” which would describe five ways in which Chinese people are leading a better lifestyle than anyone else in the world. (That’s just a made-up term by me, but the slogans are along those lines.)
As far as how the Chinese use the term “freedom,” it was closely tied to the democracy movement, at least when I was there, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise. The average Chinese person didn’t talk too much about freedom and liberty as political goals, most Chinese were far more interested in talking about economic development and stability.
Basically, the Chinese government does not want things going on outside of their monitoring/control. For example, bibles are printed in China in Chinese by the millions, but bibles smuggled in are contraband.
The government is happy for the chinese to talk about democracy and freedom within the framework of the communist party. The government is not happy for such discussions to question the right of the communist party to lead democracy.
It’s not a question of democracy having different words and connotations in chinese. Of course it’s not 100% equivalent in Chinese. that said, the government would block all the related words as well.
Generally speaking, I don’t notice any censorship. Geocities is blocked because there are anti- communist party sites. Google got blocked for about a week by the government, although google search masquerading as yahoo worked fine. There are proxy sites that can be used as well. Frankly, I haven’t noticed censorship to where I would figure out a current proxy site.
I think you are conflating the concept of freedom with the concept of western democracy. Of course the Chinese believe in freedom; and I highly doubt any government source ever said that the words freedom and democracy are dangerous. Its just that not everyone believes freedom=western democracy. The Chinese leadership, for example, seem to believe that western-style demoracy would lead to chaos (and they are probably right, at least in the short-term). Which is not to say that the Chinese people aren’t less free than Americans or that they ought not have the right to vote – just that the concepts of freedom and democracy do not necessarily connote western democracy.
As to the search censorship, I know that sometimes english words are censored differently than Chinese words. The last time I was in China (two years ago), if you google the english ‘Chinese democracy’ you might get blocked, whereas if you typed the most common Chinese word for democracy, ‘minzhu’, you wouldn’t get blocked. This is probably because the english word is more likely to lead to anti-PRC materials than the Chinese version. But this may have changed.
In short, my guess is that the search censorship is more nuanced than the article you cited lets on.