More bricks in the great firewall of China

By Toby Manhire In The Internaut

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12th June, 2012 Leave a Comment

Last week’s anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre prompted some reinforcement in the list of banned online search terms in China.

On June 4 itself, “1989” generated no results, according to reports. Neither did “today”.

Details of China’s most popular stock index, meanwhile, became temporarily inaccessible online when it fell 64.89 points, because of an automatic block on references to the infamous date.

GreatFire.org, a site devoted to “Bringing Transparency To The Great Firewall Of China”, keeps a running tally of Google keywords banned in China.

Among the taboo searches in English (it’s even more draconian in Chinese) are these: “memo”, “falun”, “facebook”, “boobs”, “freedom”, “blood is on the square”, and, naturally enough, “Chinese people eating babies”.

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