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China Censors Online Discussion About Panama Papers (bbc.com) 109

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: China appears to be censoring social media posts on the Panama Papers document leak which has named several members of China's elite, including President Xi Jinping's brother-in-law. Hundreds of posts on networks such as Sina Weibo and Wechat on the topic have been deleted since Monday morning. According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the Panama Papers show that Mr. Deng acquired two offshore companies in 2009, at a time when Mr. Xi was rising in politics. State media appeared to black out the news. But many on microblogging network Sina Weibo and mobile chat network Wechat were discussing the topic on Monday morning, sharing Chinese translations of details of the story, including information on Mr. Deng. A hashtag created on the topic quickly trended. Checks by the BBC found that by the end of the day many of those posts had disappeared, with at least 481 discussions deleted from the hashtag's Weibo topic page, and other posts shared on Wechat also deleted. The website Freeweibo.com, which actively tracks censorship on Weibo, listed "Panama" as the second-most censored term on the network.
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China Censors Online Discussion About Panama Papers

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Weibo is heavily censored, but there are alternative search engines for weibo which are outside of China's jurisdiction

    One example is https://freeweibo.com/

    For example, in the 'Panama Papers' case, (if you know Mandarin), you do not enter the "Pa Na Ma" in pu tong hua as they are, but using alternative words to search

    Despite the hundreds of thousands of censors from China, there are still a lot of conversations taking place, even inside weibo, regarding the "Panama Papers"

    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @04:08AM (#51843955)

      Upon further digging, I found out that weibo might be censored, but the "Panama Papers" has proven to be too hot to contain

      http://www.jianshu.com/p/463d19e7f47a?from=timeline&isappinstalled=0

      The above link is an example - it is a link from the Jian Shu province of China, and the author of the comment has dished out quite a lot of details, including the photocopy of the passport of the daughter of a former Chinese premier

      I do not know how long the above link will remain valid - but the existence of the above link is a proof that the "Panama Papers" has spread throughout the Chinese online world

    • For example, in the 'Panama Papers' case, (if you know Mandarin), you do not enter the "Pa Na Ma"

      That's a species of grass mud horse I'm not familiar with.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @04:25AM (#51844005)

    As an EU citizen, I'm appalled that Chinese citizens don't have free access to information and don't have free speech. This is wrong and goes against everything we believe in. It is our duty to spread our freedom to the world and demand that non-free countries become free. If necessary, we should use force. I'm advocating going to war with China and the United States for the good of the people in those countries. It's unacceptable for leaders to censor information that might make them look bad. We're free to speak out against our governments, spread any ideas we desire, and read or hear any information that might be available. That includes things that are damaging to our leaders. This freedom is a human right. We have a duty to demand human rights for all. If China doesn't allow free access to information, we should go to war with them. If the United States doesn't allow free access to information, we need to go to war with them, as well. Freedom is more important than even political and military alliances.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You do understand that using violence to impose freedom defeats the values protected by the very freedom?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Wooooooooooosh.

  • This is a big deal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by piojo ( 995934 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @04:37AM (#51844043)

    From what I've heard about China, this is a big deal. Living in or near China, people generally say they're allowed to talk online, even criticizing the government, so long as they don't plan to meet. As soon as the talk turns toward actions, it becomes verboten. (Someone living in China, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

    So this must be quite a big deal. It'll be interesting to see whether there's aftermath to the censorship.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      It's rather more like "you are allowed some smalltalk so that the veneer of existence of some speech can be held up, but whatever and whoever threatens the rule of the party and its stability will be mercilessly crushed, be it by action or by speech."

    • by Dr.Saeuerlich ( 27313 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @08:21AM (#51844837) Homepage

      been living in China for 7 years now. I general it used to be like this. Around 2011 it really looked like the government relaxed its grip on censorship a bit.

      However, in the last year things got worse. Xi has a much lower tolerance for people letting steam off, and he seems to be particularly concerned with his own image. Things are now censored far quicker than before and the regime seems to have lost most scruples as it realized how toothless the West is. Expect more show trials and confessions on TV and more sudden disappearances of people, regardless which passport they hold.

  • China's political party turns back from the sea, into the desert. They speak of corruption, but in reality, when faced with it, in their families, they do nothing. So much for 'communism'. Really, they are oligarchs.
    • They speak of corruption, but in reality, when faced with it, in their families, they do nothing

      How do you know? It is still very early days - only a few names have been reported in the press so far, out of several million documents. Right now they are probably busy trying to assess any damage and figure out how to handle it, which I suggest anybody in a similar situation would be sensible to do, whether they are individuals, institutions or governments. I hope these revelations will result in a major clean-up of corruption everywhere. Perhaps I'm too naive, but one can hope.

      • by Maritz ( 1829006 )
        They don't care about corruption, they care about image. Ideally they want the image to be fixed while the corruption remains as is.
      • The one thing that is going to happen is action against tax shelters. This is a big deal in Britain, because some of the most often used tax shelters are British overseas dependencies (colonies). Britain has long resisted forcing reforms because for these dependencies, their financial status is a significant part of their economy. But now, I think, reform will become inevitable. Probably not enough to completely eliminate tax shelters, but, as with Swiss bank reforms, it is steadily narrowing the means by w

  • by Anonymous Coward

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Consortium_of_Investigative_Journalists
    just see who funds the icij then talk about china censoring results.
    Hint: it's the us gov plus many big interests groups.
    Shocking!

    • by Maritz ( 1829006 )

      I had a look at your link. I guess you didn't want people to do that, hence you didn't (or can't) make it an actual link with an anchor tag. But yeah. I looked at your link and you're lying.

      For anyone who cares, this [publicintegrity.org] is the list of donors.

  • "To get rich is glorious." remember?
  • The Icelandic president [theguardian.com] has just gone. Who next?

He who has but four and spends five has no need for a wallet.

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