China Quietly Unblocks Names of Its Leaders

hackingbear writes "One of the Chinese Web censorship's central features has long been blocking searches for the names of top leaders to maintain their public images. Sina Weibo, China's largest microblog service, unblocked searches for the names of many top political leaders in a possible sign of looser controls a month after new senior officials were named to head the ruling party, though a number of other senior leaders are still blocked on Weibo, including Premier Web Jiabao. That (President) Xi might be leading by example on softening Web censorship could be a promising sign for future reforms. It isn't on a major shift, but it could portend one."

Comments

Reasons for original takedown

[ihatewinXP]

Dear god people if you dont know anything about the topic dont post....

China blocked the names of a number of their leaders of late (on Weibo [twitter] and Sina [google]) for a few reasons:
1. There may have been an attempted coup - that accounts for a few names
2. There for sure was the downfall of a major regional leader (Bo Xilai) under very ugly circumstances (right hand man tried to defect to US embassy to avoid being murdered,wife poisoned a spy, etc.)
3. There was a huge NYT article calling out Hu Jintao that was straight propaganda - so much so that they disseminated a chinese language pdf of the article to the general web
4. The old leader Jiang Zhemin has been near death and rumors have swirled.
5. Some other guys kid wrecked a car and killed some people

THESE ARE THE REASONS WHY THOSE NAMES WERE CENSORED. This doesnt portend to any changes. Watch the next few years as freeing China becomes a constant narrative....

I could give the reasons why they have unblocked them now but id rather get out to a party. Try to RTFA and then RSMFAs before posting nonsense.

Re:Or they realized

[donscarletti]

It's true, although Chinese parents can select any one or two characters to name their child from the thousands of characters in common use and the tens of thousands out of common use, there are a few hundred characters that tend to be used disproportionately often.

As for surnames, the top 100 most common surnames make up more than 85% of the country's population and over 1/5 of Chinese are called either "Wang", "Li" or "Zhang".

People having the same name as a leader is quite common. I know at least two guys who cannot write their own name on Weibo because they are called "Li Peng", using the exact same two characters as the former premier (who's name IS still blocked and will be as long as he is still alive for reasons you can look up yourself).

As for Chaiman Xi, his surname is not particularly common and his given name is not common either, however they are all common words. You cannot ask someone "are you familiar with the nearby plain?" without writing his name for example.