
China banned letter N from internet after people used it to attack Xi Jinping - SirLJ
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-censors-letter-n-in-crackdown-on-presidential-term-limit-discussion-2018-2
======
mabbo
The really scary part of that article is the screenshot of Weibo with every
message censored automatically with "content is illegal".

If you think this sort of thing could never happen in the west, I think you're
underestimating how quickly it could happen. The constitutions and bills of
rights of any country are not laws of nature that can't be broken- they're
words on paper that governments or populist movements can easily ignore.

Consider any politician you disagree with deeply and ask yourself: if they
could ban dissent from their views, wouldn't they?

~~~
tuxracer
> they're words on paper that governments or populist movements can easily
> ignore

For example, China's constitution also contains "Article 35. Citizens of the
People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly,
of association, of procession and of demonstration."

However various words and phrases to even mention Article 35 itself are banned
in some chat apps, etc... in China even though the full text of the
constitution is available anyways.

~~~
dictum
They can do it without any cognitive dissonance by either classifying certain
persons as non-citizens (hence not granted those rights) or by raising some
unclear limit to these rights (so those who break national unity, "harmony" or
some such aren't covered).

An example outside of China: Venezuela's Maduro, paying attention to
international sensibilities, now classifies opposition to him and his
government as "hate speech".

[https://hosted.ap.org/article/8b39037f0c71478784778e4dcc8bb4...](https://hosted.ap.org/article/8b39037f0c71478784778e4dcc8bb434/venezuela-
president-orders-2-bishops-probed-hate-crimes)

~~~
tarken
like censorship doesn't happen in the usa. remember all that media coverage
sanders got when he was packing stadiums while Clinton could barely fill a
highschool auditorium? me neither.

how many mass shootings china had last year? oh wait

how about all those bombs dropped daily in the middle east? ah ooos sorry,
america again.

USA USA USA

~~~
codezero
That’s not censorship. Censorship is when the government restricts speech. The
government doesn’t control American news media.

With that said I have no disagreement about the hypocrisy of USA bombing
foreign countries.

As for shooting, how would we know if this happened in China since the
government does control the media there. They could suppress anything they
reflected negatively.

------
olympus
Government censorship is no fun, but the best part about this article for me
was learning that Xi Jinping is sometimes compared to Winnie the Pooh. The
comparison picture is dead on.

[https://twitter.com/vinayak_jain/status/899886641157783553](https://twitter.com/vinayak_jain/status/899886641157783553)

~~~
netsharc
This one's so much better:
[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/07/17/15/426A9E150000057...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/07/17/15/426A9E1500000578-4702522-And_in_2015_a_picture_of_Xi_standing_up_through_the_roof_of_a_pa-a-4_1500300034377.jpg)

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brlewis
Headline should be: Chia baed letter from iteret after people used it to
attack Xi Jipig

~~~
dep_b
It should be called a "headlie" as well, which could be a more fitting word
for it anyway depending on which news outlet you visit.

------
donquichotte
It is funny, just yesterday I read Victor Mair's reasoning why "n" might have
been banned [1]:

"This is probably out of fear on the part of the government that "N" = "n
terms in office", where possibly n > 2; as in "liánrèn n jiè 连任n届" ("n
successive terms in office"), which would be forbidden anyway because of the
liánrèn 连任 ("continue in office") part."

I don't know any Mandarin or Cantonese, but this seems like a very strange
explanation to me. Are there any native speakers with more insight on this?

[1]
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=36939](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=36939)

~~~
paradite
Native speaker here. My guess is that the censor is not "directly" banning
letter "N", but rather, this was a result of some machine learning algorithm
that recognizes "N" as part of phrases or sentences that have a high
probability of containing other banned words. It is like query expansion in
NLP, but in this case it has accidentally banned a word that is widely used in
other context.

Edit: This looks like a more reasonable explanation:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483061](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483061),
N is the 14th letter in the alphabet, referring to the 14th item in the
proposed changes [1] (the change that removes term limit).

[1] (Chinese)
[http://www.xinhuanet.com/2018-02/25/c_1122451187.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/2018-02/25/c_1122451187.htm)

~~~
wscott
This is the only believable explanation I have seen on this bizarre result. I
kept looking to see if the article was from the Onion.

------
blfr
I remember Steam mods removing posts containing and even banning people for
posting "WE" because it was part of a "WE WUZ KANGZ" meme phrase.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/6wocla/assassins_cre...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/6wocla/assassins_creed_origins_steam_forums_completely/)

There's something about censorship that always makes it turn ridiculous in the
end.

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nimbius
This kind of chicanery shows up at every point in monarchical rule...one would
have anticipated it to be a bit more delayed in this case given how recent the
abolition of the term limit has been

Term limits are a check-and-balance against this sort of silliness. The divine
inspiration cited by George W Bush for example to invade the middle east was
no guarantee that the US would continue the practice of seeking holy
affirmation to invade a country. Abolition of the term limit disrupts
international confidence in a parties ability to advance domestic and foreign
policy as now, you've pinned yourself to a single dependency in the
government.

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pjc50
I'm reminded of
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ab5y7/did_g...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ab5y7/did_greece_really_ban_the_letter_z/)

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estomagordo
I get it, freedom of speech is important yadda-yadda, but this is hilarious.

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mnw21cam
Web site claims I have an ad blocker, and refuses to show content.

~~~
pirocks
That's interesting, because I have an adblocker(ublock origin) and it works
fine.

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zoltaan
What a _o_se_se!

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jlebrech
graffiti artists are now even less likely to get caught.

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nkkollaw
So, hold on--they can't write "China"..?

~~~
NullPrefix
中國

~~~
nkkollaw
What's that

