So the reason I wanted to write this essay is because I’ve seen a lot of people say lately that Chinese censorship seems to be failing rather hard these last three years. A lot of theories have been proposed as to why Chinese people are more and more brave when it comes to speaking out on the internet, and I’ve obviously got my own ideas. Before we can get into why traditional censorship methods are no longer working, though, first, I need to cover what traditional censorship methods are to begin with.
Jesus, Moly, that’s basically a State of the Nation address! This is a great piece of writing. Substack is still accessible in parts of mainland China, so I wonder if I should assign it to my middle school students to read…
I’ll just give an additional example of censorship: I was at an Alan Walker concert (electronic dance music) in Shenzhen a couple of weeks back, and the warm up act was a Cantonese rapper. Midway through the rapper’s set, someone pulled the plug, and the entire stage, set, and sound system just crashed off. He disappeared, and the main act went off without any more “technical hitches.” I don’t speak a word of Cantonese, so I’ve no idea what he was saying, but on an operational level, that’s how they censor artists.
Was just rereading this and was struck by the chu na thing. Isn't there concern that they're going to get robbed? If one was able to just hop on a car does that mean there aren't guards? I'd think someone carrying that much cash would be a very tempting target for thieves.
Interesting to get your perspective on this issue and some insight into your broader worldview. I've only been following you for a short time so I've been wondering how much your views aligned with the posts you translate haha
I completely agree with you that the language barrier plays a huge part is limiting people's access to information from outside China, and could well be of more significance than the great firewall. I remember there were a good few years when I could still access English language BBC News and Wikipedia long after the Chinese versions had been blocked. Even now I think UK Sky News is still available without a VPN. Although I don't know if we can ascribe poor English to deliberate policy, I think Japan isn't much better, is it? Or see how British school kids get on with French.
I wonder what you think about how transcending the language barrier can also lead people to standing more firmly with the government because they feel like China is being unfairly maligned.
( As an aside this reminds me of a quote from Hitchhiker's Guide: “Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”)
I still think the great firewall plays an important part in cutting Chinese people off from outside info (and vice versa). I get the impression that VPN use isn't that high outside of young professionals, and even paid ones can be unreliable. At the very least, it adds another layer of inconvenience. And even people who use VPNs to look at stuff they wouldn't be allowed to see on the Chinese internet are probably very wary about actually posting stuff, so it still constrains online behavior.
Perhaps you might do another post focused on censorship and its impact on artistic/creative input. Some seem to feel that its impact is overstated, but I feel like it must generate some barriers to creative imagination. Not due to "brainwashing" or anything like that, but simply because a lot of creativity arises from the act of trying to create something. But if you know that your creative work will likely never see the light of day, or could perhaps even get you in legal trouble you might not even bother to set off down the path that could end with you producing something interesting or beautiful.
This was really interesting, thanks for the writeup! One thing I'm curious about: when I was visiting Beijing last summer, a grad student I met there told me that you don't get in trouble for using VPNs for mundane things, but you *will* get in trouble if you use a VPN for seditious activity. But I thought using a VPN made your activity impossible to track... so is there any truth in that?
Don’t have an intelligent response at the moment, but this is so fascinating and hilarious, and I really really appreciate that you’re maintaining this project.
Something I've noticed: There's a weird sequence where some Chinese people go from: The US is awful. Wait, the government lies and says the US is the worst thing ever so the US must be the best thing ever. Wait, the US isn't perfect, the government was right! I almost wonder if extremity is safer for propaganda because it subtly trains people to think in extreme, non-complex terms.
出纳 seems like it means paymaster. It's still used in some old timey office titles but the position hasn't been common for over a century. The way it worked was that the paymaster would be they would go and get the money from the bank before payday. They'd physically bring it to the factory or wherever. Then they'd set up a table and you'd walk up, hand them some slip or document (often from your manager), and they'd disburse physical money. If it was a big enough operation they'd have people working under them who were called cashiers. These were lower ranked people who'd do the paperwork and physically hand out the cash on payday and the like. There weren't that many incidents of people just taking the money and running in the US. But that's because it happened a lot in the 16th/17th century in Britain so the US inherited Britain's security measures.
China's been deploying AI-like tools for censorship for like 20 years now. It's been getting steadily more advanced. But I doubt it's going to completely eliminate dissent. People are adaptive and you end up with euphemisms and, when those are discovered, new euphemisms. And so on and so forth. I also suspect that China's AI security state is somewhat overstated because there's no objective check.
Like, you hear the police have this fancy computer that can identify criminals with 100% accuracy. Okay. If the Chinese police arrest the wrong person... at what point do you find that out? Are they going to admit it or are they going to send a random person to jail to preserve the illusion? (Or maybe they make up some excuse and fine the person if they don't want to make too much trouble.) When it is tested outside China it tends to underperform and the official line there is that it's only trained on Chinese data so it has trouble identifying non-Chinese. Which maybe. But they're not going to let us look at the success rate in China itself.
Jesus, Moly, that’s basically a State of the Nation address! This is a great piece of writing. Substack is still accessible in parts of mainland China, so I wonder if I should assign it to my middle school students to read…
I’ll just give an additional example of censorship: I was at an Alan Walker concert (electronic dance music) in Shenzhen a couple of weeks back, and the warm up act was a Cantonese rapper. Midway through the rapper’s set, someone pulled the plug, and the entire stage, set, and sound system just crashed off. He disappeared, and the main act went off without any more “technical hitches.” I don’t speak a word of Cantonese, so I’ve no idea what he was saying, but on an operational level, that’s how they censor artists.
Was just rereading this and was struck by the chu na thing. Isn't there concern that they're going to get robbed? If one was able to just hop on a car does that mean there aren't guards? I'd think someone carrying that much cash would be a very tempting target for thieves.
Interesting to get your perspective on this issue and some insight into your broader worldview. I've only been following you for a short time so I've been wondering how much your views aligned with the posts you translate haha
I completely agree with you that the language barrier plays a huge part is limiting people's access to information from outside China, and could well be of more significance than the great firewall. I remember there were a good few years when I could still access English language BBC News and Wikipedia long after the Chinese versions had been blocked. Even now I think UK Sky News is still available without a VPN. Although I don't know if we can ascribe poor English to deliberate policy, I think Japan isn't much better, is it? Or see how British school kids get on with French.
I wonder what you think about how transcending the language barrier can also lead people to standing more firmly with the government because they feel like China is being unfairly maligned.
( As an aside this reminds me of a quote from Hitchhiker's Guide: “Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”)
I still think the great firewall plays an important part in cutting Chinese people off from outside info (and vice versa). I get the impression that VPN use isn't that high outside of young professionals, and even paid ones can be unreliable. At the very least, it adds another layer of inconvenience. And even people who use VPNs to look at stuff they wouldn't be allowed to see on the Chinese internet are probably very wary about actually posting stuff, so it still constrains online behavior.
Perhaps you might do another post focused on censorship and its impact on artistic/creative input. Some seem to feel that its impact is overstated, but I feel like it must generate some barriers to creative imagination. Not due to "brainwashing" or anything like that, but simply because a lot of creativity arises from the act of trying to create something. But if you know that your creative work will likely never see the light of day, or could perhaps even get you in legal trouble you might not even bother to set off down the path that could end with you producing something interesting or beautiful.
This was really interesting, thanks for the writeup! One thing I'm curious about: when I was visiting Beijing last summer, a grad student I met there told me that you don't get in trouble for using VPNs for mundane things, but you *will* get in trouble if you use a VPN for seditious activity. But I thought using a VPN made your activity impossible to track... so is there any truth in that?
Don’t have an intelligent response at the moment, but this is so fascinating and hilarious, and I really really appreciate that you’re maintaining this project.
Something I've noticed: There's a weird sequence where some Chinese people go from: The US is awful. Wait, the government lies and says the US is the worst thing ever so the US must be the best thing ever. Wait, the US isn't perfect, the government was right! I almost wonder if extremity is safer for propaganda because it subtly trains people to think in extreme, non-complex terms.
出纳 seems like it means paymaster. It's still used in some old timey office titles but the position hasn't been common for over a century. The way it worked was that the paymaster would be they would go and get the money from the bank before payday. They'd physically bring it to the factory or wherever. Then they'd set up a table and you'd walk up, hand them some slip or document (often from your manager), and they'd disburse physical money. If it was a big enough operation they'd have people working under them who were called cashiers. These were lower ranked people who'd do the paperwork and physically hand out the cash on payday and the like. There weren't that many incidents of people just taking the money and running in the US. But that's because it happened a lot in the 16th/17th century in Britain so the US inherited Britain's security measures.
China's been deploying AI-like tools for censorship for like 20 years now. It's been getting steadily more advanced. But I doubt it's going to completely eliminate dissent. People are adaptive and you end up with euphemisms and, when those are discovered, new euphemisms. And so on and so forth. I also suspect that China's AI security state is somewhat overstated because there's no objective check.
Like, you hear the police have this fancy computer that can identify criminals with 100% accuracy. Okay. If the Chinese police arrest the wrong person... at what point do you find that out? Are they going to admit it or are they going to send a random person to jail to preserve the illusion? (Or maybe they make up some excuse and fine the person if they don't want to make too much trouble.) When it is tested outside China it tends to underperform and the official line there is that it's only trained on Chinese data so it has trouble identifying non-Chinese. Which maybe. But they're not going to let us look at the success rate in China itself.