China’s ‘Great Wall of Porn’ Blocks News of Protests

It’s hard to imagine that the Chinese authorities are going to tolerate any free flow of reports to the vast majority of Chinese about mounting protests against the Communist Party boss, President Xi.While police surrounded demonstrators at the capital and the industrial city of Shanghai, ordering people to delete images of protests from their mobile phones, China’s cyber experts were busy working to block the news from spreading via Twitter.No, they didn’t have to ban the Chinese version of Twitter entirely. All the authorities had to do was flood it with data from all the dating and quasi-porn sites they could find, making it virtually impossible to associate these cities with mass protests.Go ahead and try it: #上海 – Twitter Search / Twitter. That’ll get you images advertising hundreds of dating sites and contacts at Shanghai. Or punch in: #北京 – Twitter Search / Twitter, and you’ll get just about the same images for Beijing.The Western press is describing the blockade as a “great wall of porn,” but the images are hardly “pornographic” as reported. The Chinese are not going to put out shots of naked women. Aside from images to do with gambling, which the Chinese love, virtually all feature scantily clad women, often beneath enticing little hearts. With numbers to call.What you won’t see is anything to do with the great cities whose names you might want to learn more about — and you certainly won’t see a thing to do with the demonstrations.To learn more about what’s going on, you have to use the names of Shanghai, Beijing, and other cities in English. That’s fine for the world beyond China, but you can’t get English-language Twitter inside China. That’s nothing new. China also bans a whole lot that’s on the internet. For years now it’s not been possible to communicate via Gmail.Another source you might forget about is the Chinese media. Hsinhua, the New China News Agency, is carrying not a word on the protests, which spring from objections to the clampdowns to counter Covid. Global Times, the English-language offshoot of People’s Daily, the paper of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, carried stories about the great things done to combat Covid, but no news about what the masses think of them.The Chinese are reported to be easing Covid restrictions, which have shut down entire offices, markets, and neighborhoods, but they’re still intent on making everyone follow the rules. State TV reports on World Cup matches are obliterating images of fans who are not wearing masks.In Shanghai, a BBC correspondent, Ed Lawrence, was handcuffed, punched, and held by Chinese police as they cleared away demonstrators. A spokesman in Beijing said he had not shown “proper identification.” He was released several hours later, well away from the scene.

China’s ‘Great Wall of Porn’ Blocks News of Protests

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