The rise in online censorship has been labelled by online commentators in China as the 'new literary inquisition'.
This statement was originally published on pen-international.org on 24 October 2024.
‘The Chinese government’s latest effort to control online discourse by constraining the creative use of language and wordplay undermines freedom of expression and threatens China’s linguistic culture. As Orwell warns in his cautionary tale ‘1984’, efforts to diminish language for greater control threatens our ability to express or even conceive new ideas. At a time when the development and exchange of ideas is vitally needed to tackle challenges such as climate change and artificial intelligence, restricting the creative use of language could have far-reaching and unpredictable consequences for Chinese society’, said Urtzi Urrutikoetxea, Chair of PEN International’s Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee.
PEN International is concerned by reports that China’s state internet regulator plans to mount a new campaign to ‘standardise the use of online language’, further restricting online expression through increased state censorship of words and phrases. The organisation calls on the Chinese government to respect citizens’ constitutional right to freedom of expression and to end the practice of online censorship to silence dissent.
On 11 October, China’s online regulator and state censor, announced a new ‘special action’ focused on the use of ‘non-standard and uncivilized language and writing’, as part of its latest campaign to regulate online expression.
According to the notice, authorities from China’s Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, plan to crack down on the use of ‘non-standard and uncivilized language and writing’, a reference to the widespread use of euphemisms, puns and codewords by internet users to circumvent the government’s censorship apparatus. The initiative forms part of the CAC’s periodic ‘Clear and Bright’ (清朗) campaign intended to address ‘prominent issues and chaos on the internet’, which resembles similar campaigns in recent years that have targeted the use of puns in advertisements and state broadcast media.
Since the implementation of China’s internet censorship regime, commonly referred to as the ‘Great Firewall’, internet users in China have been forced to engage in a protracted game of cat and mouse with the government censors, who prohibit the use of specific keywords online that are considered politically sensitive. Some keywords are censored on a time-limited basis, such as during significant political events, or when seemingly benign words become popular references to a politically sensitive topic or individual. In previous years, censored keywords have included names of human rights activists such as writer Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) following his death in custody, and social media references to ‘Winnie the Pooh’ (维尼熊) in 2013 and 2017 after the fictional character gained popularity online as a subversive reference to President Xi Jinping.
In response to increasing levels of censorship online, internet users in China have resorted to ever more inventive and elaborate forms of language and wordplay, a long-established Chinese cultural tradition. This often involves the creative use of homophonic puns to evade censors by replacing characters within a prohibited word or phrase with different characters that share the same or similar pronunciation.
One of the most high-profile examples of the use of homophones in this context is the use of the word ‘River Crab’ (河蟹/ héxiè) as a veiled reference to online censorship. While the characters are different, they share a similar pronunciation to the word ‘harmony’ (和谐/ héxié), which in itself is a reference to ‘harmonious society’ (和谐社会), a propaganda slogan first promoted by the CCP in 2004 as part of its political strategy to address rising social discontent. In the time since, the slogan has become synonymous with the suppression of dissident views under the auspices of maintaining social order and ‘guiding public opinion’, giving rise to the use of phrases such as being ‘harmonised’ (被和谐了) or ‘River Crabbed’ (被河蟹了) when discussing the issue of censorship.
The reliance on such wordplay online reflects internet users’ desire to exercise their right to freedom of expression, while also illustrating the limits of that right under China’s expansive censorship apparatus. The rise in online censorship under Xi Jinping has been labelled by online commentators in China as the ‘new literary inquisition’ (新文字狱), a reference to the persecution of intellectuals by China’s autocratic rulers as a means to silence dissent and assert ideological control (referred to as ‘literary inquisition’, or 文字狱).
Background:
Wordplay and homophonic puns are part of China’s rich cultural and linguistic heritage. Puns play a key role in Crosstalk (相声), a comedic dialogue-based performance that can be traced back to the late Qing Dynasty, and in Lunar New Year celebrations, where specific foods, like fish [鱼/ yú], are served for their homophonic resemblance with words that represent luck, prosperity and abundance [余/ yú]).
