Microblogs & Nuclear Explosions; Censorship is harder than you’d think.

If you’ve been following our blog, you might read my previous post on one of the China top micro blogging sites, fanfou.com, suddenly became inaccessible at the beginning of July.
Fanfou is still inaccessible out of no reason, and the situation seems to become worse and worse. Two more popular Chinese micro blogging sites – Digu.com and Jiwai.de – started to show “Under maintenance” page one after the other in July. So now, there are only two relatively popular ones left, which are zuosa.com and taotao.com.

So this morning, as usual, I tried to access my zuosa.com account. But instead of entering the micro blogging page directly, zuosa showed me an agreement, I can’t access my account unless I “read and agree to” this agreement.

Ok, as long as the site is still accessible (not like those “under maintenance” ones), I guess agreeing to an online agreement is not a big deal.

Generally, this agreement looks like to any other agreements you need to confirm before signing up for an online account, which covers standard privacy policy, copyrights, etc. However, as I scroll down the page, one orange highlighted part showed up.

Here is the English translation:

3.4.1 Users are not allowed to take advantage of the service or make zuosha.com a platform for creating, copying, uploading, posting or spreading information contains the following content:

1. against basic regulations of the Constitution;

2. threaten national security, leak national secret, subvert state political power, ruin national unity;

3. harm to national credits or interests;

4. incite hatred or discrimination among ethnic groups, ruin ethnic groups’ unity;

5. damage national religious policy, propagandize cult or feudal ideology and superstition;

6. spread rumors, disturb social order, damage social stability;

7. spread filth, porn, gamble, violence, murder, horror or conspiracy;

8. insult or defame others, harm others’ legitimate rights and interests;

9. incite illegal assembly, verein, procession, demonstration, actions of mobbing and disturbing social order;

10. hold activity in the name of illegal civil organization;

11. fake, harmful, threatening, violating others’ privacy, harassing, invading, slanderous, vulgar, smutty or others that cause moral disgust;

12. restricted or banned by laws, regulations, rules or anything that has legal effects of People’s Republic of China.

Ok, now I think not only me myself, you should have got what is the actual purpose of zuosa suddenly puts up this agreement. I have no idea why zuosa survives while so many micro blogging sites are down, but from this agreement, we can more or less sense the pressure it gets from the authority.

On the side, I also found some comment from zuosa users in response to this agreement:

coverdog
There is suddenly an extra agreement on zuosa, and those orange words saying anything threaten the national security is not allowed. And once anything bad happened, zuosa will just say goodbye to you. Haha, very homonous.

keven_lin
I am reading through this agreement, and finally found out the real purpose. These is one term “3.1 user profile has to be real” is pretty scary, you have to submit real identity, otherwise they will cancel your account!? keep reading…

It seems that zuosa became the king, and users because its minister. If the king wants you to die, you have to die. Regarding the excuse, please refer to current user agreement.

After reading this agreement, I finally understand what is thorough. I realize those software user agreement I wrote before are all elementary style.

wuyuruo
Zuosa upgraded its site, and it was such a chaos; I original thought that something bad would happen again. And finally they put up a user agreement. Is there anybody read through it? If so, can you tell me in general what does it talk about? I really don’t have the patient to read through it…

nihil_13
A user agreement showed up when I tried to login…Oct.1st (national day) is coming soon, will zuosa be under maintenance again?

THOUGHTS

Is it really a good way to shut people up by not allowing them to talk? This is a question I frequently think and try to figure out these days.

A news report on a major China TV channel last Sunday kind of answered this question for me.

Long story short. A operation accident happened in a small county called Qi Xian in Henan province, resulting in radioactive cobalt -60 stuck and could not return to normal wells in a safe place. However, all of these happened in a sealed room secured with concrete and two layers of stainless steel, which means and was proven that there was no danger to the residence at all.

But instead of letting people know what exactly was going on, the county governors tried to block the information.  Then, the entire county residence freak out over rumors. By guessing, they thought there would be big nuclear explosions or extreme dangerous radiation which would cause their life. Over one night, residence rushed out and the entire county became empty.

Below are news images show those people trying to escape from the county.

So, it seems blocking and controlling information doesn’t really work out, and as result, it leads to suspicions and rumors. Similarly, we can also sense users worry and doubt from those comment on Zuosa.com. And with the development of internet, the situation will only gets worse and worse.

I certainly hope those micro blogging sites can get through the “under maintenance” phase and come back again. But what will really happen…I will keep you posted!

Related articles from around the web.

• Chinese rights lawyer’s assistant missing (guardian.co.uk)
• Chinese Officials Deny Reports About Ethnic Rioting Trials (nytimes.com)
• President says China needs stability in restive west (ctv.ca)
• More Than 200 to Be Tried in China for Ethnic Rioting (nytimes.com)
• Letter from China: China’s Press: Still Not Free, but More Freewheeling (nytimes.com)
• China Might Appeal WTO Ruling on Film Import (abcnews.go.com)
• Pentagon official charged in plot to spy for China (cnn.com)
• Australia-China tie ‘challenging’ (news.bbc.co.uk)

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Tagged as: Asia, China, English language, Ethnic group, Law, National security, People's Republic of China, Political power, zuosa.com