Chinese Government Censoring Words Related To COVID-19 Can't Stop People From Discussing It

As COVID-19 broke out and spread quickly in China last year and early this year, the Chinese government has been criticized for the way it handled the epidemic. In response, the government banned words as well as word combinations such as ‘Wuhan,’ ‘Crisis + Beijing,’ and ‘Red Cross’ from widely used social media platforms.

However, social media users in the country have found a workaround, replacing the censored words with less common abbreviations or phrasing to avoid censorship while being able to discuss topics deemed taboo by the government. The incident was spotted by Amnesty International.

Specifically, they made up a new language or speak in code, which is not new for social media users here. There is a long list of topics that the government has censored in mainland China, most notably everything related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Besides that, the Chinese government blocks all popular sites from internet searches like Google, Twitch, Reddit, and even individuals like Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights activist. And now, with COVID-19 listed for censored, the internet code has once again arisen in China.

There are different workarounds, simple and complex, according to Amnesty International. For places like Hubei and Wuhan, instead of writing the full name, social media users type ‘hb’ and ‘wb.’ They also use images of pandas to represent the domestic security bureau. Meanwhile, Red Cross is now mentioned as ‘red ten,’ and they use ‘F4’ to represent the 4 regional politicians blamed for the COVID-19 outbreak. F4 includes the party secretary of Wuhan, the mayor of Wuhan, the secretary of the Communist Party Committee of Hubei, and the governor of Hubei province.

Sometimes, netizens can go further, they even code an entire sentence. For example, “I cannot and do not understand,” is derived from a leaked statement by Dr. Li Wenliang to the police. This is one of the first doctors that warned people about COVID-19 way before the official news.

Social media users started posting a short conversation between Dr. Wenliang and the police as a complete sentence, but the government got that fast and removed the posts. Then they replaced it with the sentence quoted above. This sentence means they will keep talking about the epidemic and will not be silenced by the government.

Searching those terms on Weibo or other popular social platforms in China, you will see the coded language. And posting those posts in Google translate, you will find accusations related to the Wenzhou Charity Federation, such as staff stealing masks, or calls for Hubei’s governor to step down, or government people using the Red Cross for their own profit. However, the Chinese government changes the list quickly so any word can be banned at any time.

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