Revealing:"THE LIST of 1041 Words" China Bans Online by Joyce Schwarz, Blog founder, Hollywood2020:
CNN, AP, WIRED and other mainstream news outlets are raging about new censorship online in China. USA TODAY tackles the subject in a strongly worded editorial that US firms help China censor fr**dom, d*mocr*cy. Their opinion piece maintains "What is a shock is that several huge U.S. companies are helping China muzzle free expression." and chastises not only Microsoft, but also Yahoo and Google for "helping a repressive regime censor such ideas".
SHHHHHH, forbidden to write:
So are you wondering what's on the list of 'forbidden words'? Well, I was, and it took almost 30 minutes of searching online to get some insight into how extensive the list of censored words may be. Finally at "China Digital Times" link I find an excellent article that not only lists the 1041 words but also gives a Translation of the Filtered Key Words in Chinese Cyberspace ... Author is Xaio Qiang, Director of the Berkeley China Internet Project at the Journalism Grad School, UC Berkeley.
The list of 1041 words in the China Digital Times article is reportedly gathered from three different sources including Chinese Internet company Tenent and a Chinese ICP (Internet Content Provider) not named and an unnamed Chinese ISP (Internet Service Provider). According to the author there are some variations (less than 2%) of the banned list, but the majority are the same. Qang the China Digital Times says it will be interesting to test this list on the Chinese version of MSN SPACE link . Note, since I can't read it and despite 8 weeks of private Mandarin tutoring speak only few words, I'm going to leave that test to my readers. Here is a screengrab of that site:
Click on thumnail to see MSN SPACE China home page. Go ahead and test words to see what terms are being banned online according to news reports by CNN, USA TODAY, AP, WIRED etc.
Analysis of Banned Word List:
According to the "China Daily Times" the list can be divided into 7 categories including: Rough analysis: Falungong related ~ 20%; Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan ~ 15%; names of Chinese leaders and their relatives ~ 15%; democracy, corruption, politics ~ 15%; social unrest, police ~ 10%; names of dissident writers, political exiles ~ 10%; porn related ~ 15% . Check ou the complete list now in English courtesy of a student translation, Cached - Did you notice that the words "night club" are on the list --unless there is a sexual connotation there I'm not sure why that made the list?
Wikipedia: Falungong Info
Okay what's Falungong? According to Wikipedia.com which lists it as Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual practice, with some beliefs outwardly similar to those found in Buddhism and Taoism, purporting to improve the mind, body, and spirit.
One Picture Worth 1000 Words, One Video Worth 1 million words? : The list of banned words at 1041 is just 41 words more than the famous saying, "One Picture worth 1000 Words" which is increasingly being upgraded to the phrase "one video worth 1 million words". So I did a quick google search for "China blogs" and quickly came up with this link videoconf_ from a blog by Chris Enway, a Rhode Island resident pursuing a PhD. Enway's blog ironically themed " my journal; not very interesting lately" So here's the screengrab of his videoconference with his pal Michael (I dug deeper and found Michael was an intern to Tom Brokaw at NBC on September 11, 2001)who appears to have had no problem going into a Beijing web-cam equipped cybercafe to videoconference with USA on February 3, 2005. Thanks to both Michael and Chris for helping me make my point that nothing can ban the next-generation of communication for 93 Billion people forever.
videoconf with michael in beijing (courtesy link to Chris Enway's blog)
my friend 
michael's in china, just having recently arrived in beijing en route to teaching english in crazy-desert western china (xinjiang). i've been keeping odd hours lately, and by chance caught him online in a webcam-equipped beijing cybercafe, producing this neat screenshot of videoconferencing with michael in beijing!
Thanks to both Michael and Chris for helping me make my point that nothing can ban the next-generation of communication anywhere forever.
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