5 strange phrases that China wants to remove from the Internet


    A message on the Sina Weibo microblogging service

    On the Chinese Internet, strange things are happening that are rather difficult to understand when viewed from the side. Especially on social networks. YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have been blocked there for a long time, and people communicate on local sites like Sina Weibo (microblogging, an analogue of Twitter).

    The audience of these sites is large: the same Sina Weibo has an active audience of more than 130 million people , of which about 10 million generate original content, and the rest repost or just read tweets.

    Chinese censorship is closely monitoring what is happening and trying to control activity on social networks. For example, since 2012 there is a fairly large list of keywordsthat are blocked in Sina Weibo for various reasons. For example, it includes words such as “meow” (mimi), which in Chinese is equivalent to the word “boobs”.

    The hashtag "rich woman" (fu nu) is also prohibited, because this hashtag often refers to the lives of wives, lovers and daughters of Chinese party functionaries.



    This week, the Cyberspace Administration of China has unveiled a fresh list of 25 words that it seeks to eradicate from the Internet.

    Here are a few phrases that appeared in it for the first time:

    • "Your mom"
    • "Green tea b ** tch"
    • Green eggs
    • "F ***"
    • "Howling monster"


    The administration declares the goal of "cleaning the Internet from dirty vocabulary." In particular, the phrase "your mother" is often used in offensive and obscene terms.

    The phrase “green eggs” is another euphemism that refers to profanity.

    The list of “bad words” is part of the government’s overall initiative to “clean up” social networks. The government takes care that the new generation of Chinese people does not face the "poisonous and corrupting" influence of social media slang.

    It is possible that the caring activities of the Chinese government will become a model for similar measures in Russia, where the authorities also seek to protect their citizens from the corrupting influence of Western culture.

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