China Blocks Foursquare; Too Many People Checking Into Tian’anmen

The Chinese censors are a sight to behold. As in how fast they react. It’s an open secret that while Twitter is probably chock-full of “the wrong people” (to the censors), the censors themselves are there, too.

Given that, well, are we surprised? China has blocked foursquare — apparently because we’ve seen too much of this…

…and because foursquare speaks to both Twitter and Facebook, some of us posted that onto — right… especially Twitter. The censors probably went, “Ah…” and boom — blocked the site outright.

Jeepers. This is the stuff that must have the censors soiling in their pants. Virtually hundreds of people checked into Tian’anmen Square, the place where “something baaad happened” 21 years ago. Of course, the square itself is “safe” (in the real world) today, with cops even in helmets, as well as SWAT forces, all reported in the vicinity of the world’s largest square.

In place of student demonstrators and their banners, we have people basically filing into foursquare and leaving “sensitive comments” as “tips”. Those checking in included folks outside Beijing; @isaac (Isaac Mao), @rejon (Jon Philips) and the rest just flocked to the square, even if they were based elsewhere. (You can do this, by the way, by going to the Foursquare mobile site or even the main site and change your location — although if you’re not actually there, that could be seen as cheating…)

Can we call this politicized cheating — or a way to remind ourselves that something baaad happened on this day?

Foursquare. Dead to China beginning in the afternoon hours of June 4, 2010. (Confirmed here in Beijing.) You’ll have to reroute to get in…

Late night update: We have updates that this is indeed a nationwide block. Here’s a list of other cities in which foursquare is invisible: Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou (thanks, @APE_kIng @EnjoyCHH @Marvinlou @warrenLOL for the updates).

Yet another update: Good news (if there’s any) for those who did check in: you automatically got the Swarm badge and the Player Please! badge. As they say, to every cloud there’s always a silver lining…

Why Turnips Are Sensitive in China

Go ahead, look up the Chinese word for turnip, 胡萝卜 (hu luo bo).

Chances are, unless you’ve ways around the Great Firewall, you can’t find it.

It’s not just because it has that sensitive word — Hu (as in Chinese President Hu Jintao) — in it, but because of… well, let’s take a look at this tweet by Chinese language tweep @geniusyrp:

Aha. Looks like carrots, or turnips, rather, aren’t just in the biz of being something to be fed to you. They have more “harmonious” tasks to do — stuff like to turn IPs. (That’s right: turnip = turn IP.) That would cause the censors to lose track of you.

Would the censors even think of approving this? (No way.)

PS: with today being the day it is, there are more polit tweets in Chinese than deemed healthy. Somehow, folks just have to let it vent…

When You Can’t Talk, Dodge

And pretend it didn’t happen.

Just look at the timestamp of this post to see what period of time we’re in. Propaganda briefings have dispensed with what happened decades ago and just made reference to the fact that “the sensitive time and period is nigh”. Of course, Twitter and Facebook continue to be invisible to the nation of 1.3 billion and counting unless you “reroute”, but even local equivalents like, say, Douban, are feeling the heat.

“Be sure to handle the situation correctly,” goes the superior directive. Instead of letting folks “remember”, they’ve decided to basically make sure tomorrow’s as silent as it goes. Every year around this time, folks are on edge. The “counter-revolutionary riots” 21 years ago, as the officialspeak describe it, is both invisible and visible. Visibility is extremely high on Twitter and sites outside China, where people won’t just let the day go by without muttering something about it. And yet, if you’re local, chances are your fellow locals are either too scared or too misinformed to know or talk anything about it.

When you can’t talk, dodge. Lest any kind of “e-uprising” or “e-remembrance” take place, sites in China are already in the business of silently limiting what you can do with your signature, avatar, or anything like it. Interestingly enough, they’re already shooting themselves in the foot. The misinformed (to whom what happened tomorrow years ago is supposedly unknown to them) will find out that using certain numbers, or even wearing certain colors, might land them in hot soup. And then they might know for once and for all what happened. The attempt at silencing things actually gives the game away: by being more silent, you’re making what you don’t want known all that more known.

Most likely than not, tomorrow will go by silently. Interactive sites will choose to do their yearly maintenance this time of year, which in itself is an euphemism of sorts.

Thing is, folks likely won’t forget. (At least those in the know.)

Real IDs Needed For Online Shops in China As Of July 1, 2010

Yet another case of the online world meeting offline red tape.

With effect from July 1, 2010, the Chinese State Administration for Industry and Commerce has decided that its Temporary Management Regulations on Internet Product Trade and Related Service Guidelines (《网络商品交易及有关服务行为管理暂行办法》) will kick into effect.

The incredibly long worded temporary bill will, in effect, link every online seller in China with an ID in the “real world”. This means that behind every seller will be an actual, living human being.

The new bill is seen as somewhat annoying but less of having a chilling impact (unless your scope of sales is illegal, whereupon the authorities will be more than pleased to “harmonize” you), but is seen as yet another case of red tape touching digital territory. If you sell things without a license, you’re in for a fine to the tune of CNY 10,000 — 30,000.

Still, here’s another thing to keep in mind: the new bill does not make business licenses mandatory. Nevertheless, that’s the only good news. The rest are more bureaucratese: you’ll need to keep sales records for at least two years, and in three years’ time, a full, national, interlinked commerce management system will be in place.

Han Han: You’ve Got To Be Careful When Blogging in China

Taiwan’s Central News Agency just has a report in today which mentions arguably China’s more popular Chinese-language bloggers, Han Han. Presently aged 27, the writer-turned-blogger-and-race-car-driver has been equated somewhat with the author of “Charter 08″ Liu Xiaobo in the sense that both are in sensitive territory. (Liu is now in prison on charges of subverting authority.) Han, this time, is quoted as saying that he’s walking a very thin wire and could probably end up arrested one day.

The article quotes a CNN interview with Han where Han is quoted as saying that blogging in China is like walking a tight rope. “You’ve got to be very careful, because there are no associated laws in telling you how you can write a ’safe’ or ‘dangerous’ article,” says Han. He’s also not for imprisonment due to what one writes, but admit he’s powerless if he’s captured.

Han has had clashes not only with other so-called public intellectuals, but more of note, with the censors. Quite a number of Han’s articles, published on Sina Blogs, have been either heavily modded down or altogether taken down. Han is Sina Blogs’ most popular blogger, but at a price: being hosted in the PRC, Sina Blogs benefits by not being “harmonized” by the Great Firewall, but also offers less First Amendment territory. In essence, publish anything taking those in power to task, and step a bit outside what’s acceptable — and you could be in trouble.

Taking blogs outside major portals and going overseas is one way out, but if there’s a number of articles that gets the censors’ goats, that’s it — you’re invisible in China. There’s a quote from this on the Chinese Wikipedia: “It goes without saying that if you’re blogging about democracy or politics and if it gets popular, that site is going to get hit by the Great Firewall.”

The Day That Twitter Was Supposed To Die

This post is a day ahead of what might have been an on-and-off, full year of Twitter becoming “invisible” or being “harmonized” in mainland China. By that, of course, we mean Twitter being blocked in China. The twentieth anniversary of what’s known as “some sensitive anniversary” got the authorities more than a bit upset — thereby granting it a license to basically shut down all major SNS sites outside China. For those of us still on SNS sites inside China, numerous limits were also placed. Censorship increased and appeared to go on and on.

That was June 2, 2009. @mranti (Michael Anti) warned tweeps that everyone’s favourite tweeting machine will “go under” — “soon” or “one of these days”. A year ago, that date finally “became true”. Along with Twitter, Facebook and flickr also died, and the then-new Bing also “went under”.

The funny thing is that although Twitter was supposed to be completely “dead” (the API block coming an hour or so after the initial twitter.com block), it wasn’t the case. We switched to other tools, such as iTweet, which were blocked months after the “sensitive anniversary”. We set up our own Twitter sites, such as Twitese, which also got blocked. For those of us with the tools, we did VPNs. There was always a way for us to tweet. When @thomascrampton came to town in August 2009, he was positively amazed that everyone heard of the tweetup — via Twitter, of all things. Before Twitter got blocked, we had only a couple hundred tweeps around early 2008. The 2010 stats now speak of over 150,000 tweeps, 100,000+ of these China-based.

The censors had wanted to stop Twitter. Instead, they did what’s known as a bang dao mang (帮倒忙); instead of nixing Twitter, they helped it spread like wildfire. It’s a fact of life that active Twitter users are tracked by the cyberpolice, who are also present on Twitter and have been known to follow “sensitive people” and harmonize, or censor, any third-party Twitter site being promoted like wildfire. There have been cases of people tweeting much-too-sensitive content and being called into the police office for interrogation, and to be ordered to stop blogging “all this negativity”.

Yet despite official disapproval, Twitter is not gone from China. Radio broadcasts make reference to Twitter and nobody gets fired. The printed media also makes the rare reference to Twitter at times — apparently without serious consequences. While much of the Chinese Web (”official” Web rather) may have gone onto Sina Microblogs, Twitter has managed to thrive. People know that because Twitter does not censor (once you can get into the service), Twitter comes closer “to the truth” than “eunuch-ized” local microblogs.

It’s that old adage at work, once again: when there’s a will, there’s a way.