An American friend wondered about Chinese reaction to Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize. So I sent a text message to four Chinese friends: “Did u know chinese dissident won nobel peace prize?”
Six hours later I hadn’t received any replies. I phoned one of them. She hadn’t received my message. I saw it hadn’t gone through: “Unable to send message”. I tried again. Failed again. Then I tried to send “did u know chinese dissident won prize?” Success. I tried the earlier message, with “nobel peace prize”. Fail. Tried the shorter message. Success.
Messages almost never fail, so it was clearly censorship. One of my friends said the same about messages in Chinese: “We can’t send email or text messages” about it. She had heard about the prize from her classmates. She didn’t know how they had learned about it. Another Chinese friend read it on a website. Later it was gone.
I thought of the boy who cried wolf. One day there was a wolf. But no one believed him.
I’ve always wondered about the relationship of your blog with censorship (do you have trouble accessing your site, do you go through a 3rd party, do you feel hesitant about blogging on certain subjects in fear of obstruction, is it all overblown).
No I don’t have trouble accessing this site, although I would if it were hosted by blogspot. I use a VPN to get to other people’s blogs in some cases. I use a VPN if I want to use Flickr or YouTube. I don’t worry about being censored.
I can get any site, but it is hard to watch videos. They come through so slowly.
Thanks for the response.
Although I’m for open, transparent societies, I certainly have sympathy for Chinese government officials who feel cautious about enacting such liberalizations too quickly.
It’s too easy for Americans to criticize such policies thousands of miles away without being fully knowledgeable about the situation.
Have you tried sending the message in an image if both phones are capable?
or using simple scrambling like writing backwards?
Just curious.
Anyway, I don´t think it is good to draw attention.