Egypt Comments Slip Past China's Web Police .

[Joanne98]

Source: WSJ

BEIJING—The Chinese government maintained a tight grip on news and discussion of the Egyptian president's dramatic downfall—an event that could send a subversive message to its own population—but some Internet users managed to evade censors to celebrate.

"A victory for democracy!" wrote one anonymous Internet user from Henan in an online forum. "The trend of democracy is unstoppable! There is no exception for China!"

On Sina Weibo and other Chinese Twitter-like microblogging services, discussions of massive protests that brought down Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were partly hidden, with searches for "Egypt" returning messages saying results couldn't be found, or couldn't be displayed, a mechanism commonly used by Chinese websites to comply with censorship orders.

"Almost all microblogging services/social networking sites have set their filtering criteria" to blocking results for "Egypt" or "Mubarak," in Chinese, from their search functions, said Isaac Mao, director of the Social brain Foundation, a Shanghai-based Internet and new-media research group. Mr. Mao said Chinese censors appear to be sensitive to discussions of any type of revolution.



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657104576141921095552608.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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A Chinese revolution would be frigging AWESOME!

[dotymed]

1. "A Chinese revolution would be frigging AWESOME!"

So would a peaceful revolution in America.

[chimpymustgo]

2. Ditto. K&R.