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What Not to Say on the Phone in China

Heard the one about the guy who said "protest" on the phone in China? Not from us.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." As a Bejing entrepreneur joked with his fiancé after she frowned upon his restaurant choice for that evening, he found his call strangely dropped after the second time he said the word "protest." He lives in China. And he was speaking English. The next week, someone else uttered the exact same line, this time in Chinese, only to have their call immediately dropped as well.

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The New York Times reports that as the protests of Northern Africa and the Middle East have increased in fervor, Chinese authorities are tightening their firm grip on everything form text messaging to e-mails to cell phone calls, in the hope to tamp down any effort to organize any anti-government protest.

China has more Internet users than any other country in the world: Over 380 million. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have been banned since 2008, in a move what once perceived as just temporary. The Chinese government has set up its own similar government-run social networking sites, which are becoming widely used, but also very closely watched. Google searches are also strictly monitored, as well. For the past six months, the word "freedom," spelled in English, has been blocked from all Google searches, as well.

Now, if a citizen wants to set up a new website in China, they must meet with regulators, and show them ID cards and photos before they can register their site. Operators of VPLs (or "Virtual Private Network Services"), which were designed specifically to be on-line platforms to evade such government censorship, are also being afflicted with what's become known as the "Great Firewall," which redirects searches and prompts users to more government-approved and friendly, on-line material. These sites are popular with the expat community, as well as among researchers, scholars and entrepreneurs, who seek to roam and search the Internet freely. But as recent events show, the authorities still hold vast powers of censorship over most citizens, and aren’t afraid to use them.

“The hard-liners have won the field, and now we are seeing exactly how they want to run the place," said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing analyst of China's leadership. "I think the gloves are coming off."

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Image Credit: jeffschuler via Flickr/CC BY