How a yellow duck failed to survive Chinese Censorship

Censorship on Weibo is an every day cat-and-mouse game between often over-sensitive censors and Chinese netizens ('internet citizens' meaning web users) who try to push the limits. Tracking down which status updates or pictures have been deleted often gives an interesting insight in which issues are currently embarrassing to the government. A great tool to monitor this is WeiboScope, set up by the university of Hong Kong, which monitors deleted posts in real-time.

This way we know for example that combining the sensitive issues of Beijing's air pollution with chairman Mao's portrait  is an obvious no-go.

Even more information can be found in knowing which words are currently blocked by Sina's search engine. Whenever a word is deemed 'dangerous' it will (temporary) show up with 0 results. Besides obvious things, these search terms can be very creative. For example during the Nobel Prize ceremony in October 2012 the search term: 空凳 (empty stool) was blocked, since it referred to the empty chair of Nobel prize winner Lu Xiaobo who was imprisoned and could therefore not attend.

Today is the annual most busy day for Chinese censors. June 4th marks the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, a day the government wants to forget but many netizens are eager to bring to the spotlight.

Besides the obvious search terms being blocked, suddenly the 'candle' item has disappeared from the emoticon section on Sina Weibo. Officially because of 'maintenance' but it's a bit too coincidental since this symbol is often used to mourn great disasters.

Of course, posting pictures of that dark day 24 years ago, is hardly worth trying. So Web-users have been creative in bringing the issue to light in unconventional forms with using the iconic picture of the 'Tank-man' as inspiration. As a result even the word 'Big Yellow Duck' will now turn up with 0 results:

The Big Yellow Duck is an art-project currently visible in Hong Kong's harbour and a big hype in Hong Kong and China. Before yesterday it had nothing to do with politics. Today this innocent chick suddenly found itself representing the Chinese Government

Angry birds version

and of course a Lego-version