China Dictatorship 中国独裁统治

No.

This is not a revenge of any kind.

I know I am harming you on the short term, and I don’t like myself for it.

But I believe that this harm is a necessary means to reach my real goal, which is to destroy the firewall, and the dictatorship.

Don’t you think it is worth a try? Destroying the firewall, would enormously benefit not only Chinese programmers, but every single other Chinese person too.

Once the firewall is destroyed, which may destroy the dictatorship, I want China to develop the best science and technology in the world, and [would-you-like-to-live-in-china].

And by the way, by contributing to open source, I am already helping China, and all underdeveloped countries become stronger.

See also: [your-profile-disturbs-me].

There is infinite debate about this out there, some examples:

• http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/05/can-poor-countries-afford-democracy-becker.html

• https://www.quora.com/Is-democracy-or-authoritarianism-better-for-developing-countries

For:

• dictatorships are more likely to start Why would democracy and freedom of speech make China less likely to start a war? or other crazy policies like the Great Leap Forward, which completely destroy the economy in one go

• society becomes richer when people know that they can do their startups, get rich, and stay in the country without fear of being persecuted unfairly and losing everything instead of migrating to Canada.

  Any criticism of the government, even if constructive, is taken as menace to power, and more likely to be shut down, which makes the government and just becomes less efficient since there is less feedback.

• governments are monopolies, and the more powerful they are, the worst it is for competition an efficiency in general. E.g.: the startup with better government ties wins, instead of the most efficient one.

• dictatorships need Censorship 审查 to survive, and they must control all information to make themselves always look good.

  As a result, knowledge of problems flows more slowly, and therefore they also take longer to solve.

  Maybe this hurts my argument, but Hillary agrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccGzOJHE1rw&feature=youtu.be&t=2110 "Secretary Clinton Speaks on Internet Freedom", U.S. Department of State, 2010-01-22 :-)

  But countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century

  Also mentioned at: Google versus China - VPRO documentary - 2011

  This is also well illustrated in the HBO 2019 miniseries "Chernobyl", which suggests that part of the reason why Chernobyl happened is because of the Soviet Union’s obsession to save face.

  Or if you prefer:

  The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

Against:

• presidents only care about the 4-8 year horizon, while dictators can make longer term decisions to maintain power forever, their power being limited only by "the people are happy enough to not start a revolution"

• dictatorships can make changes faster without the same amount of discussion that happens in democracies, where power is more spread out.

  Killing a million people will make us richer? No problem, let’s do it.

  That is great when they make good decisions, but it sucks when they make bad ones more likely.

I really like Posners' way of putting it:

While average rate of growth do not appear to differ much between democracies and authoritarian regimes, the variability in performance does differ more among authoritarian governments. China has had remarkable growth since the 1980s, but the prolonged devastation and hardship produced by China’s “great leap forward” (when millions of farmers starved to death) and its Cultural Revolution would unlikely have occurred in a democratic country like say India. Nor is it likely that say Cuba and many African nations would have suffered so long with such terrible economic policies if they had reasonably democratic institutions.

Maybe China was poor because of Mao’s crazy communist regime. Similar regimes also made [russia] poor. And yes, before that exploitation by the West may have been a factor.

Definitely, the current regime is better than Mao’s, but just imagine how rich China could be if it had more freedom and justice.

Imperial China lost the race for the Industrial Revolution. Will another dictatorship be able to stay on top of the next technological revolution?

This has been discussed to death:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Peace:_A_Philosophical_Sketch

Some arguments include:

• the people who will actually fight and die on the front can’t vote against it

• dictators have huge power, so if they put it in their heads that they want to start a war, it is much harder for sensible people to stop them

• dictators need to keep the people in fear all the time to keep their power, and a war is a great way to achieve that

This is a common strategy, but the West is not as evil as they say:

Once upon a time, there was a farmer with a farm.

One day, the animals in the farm started feeling a bit trapped, and started bumping against the fence to get out.

The farmer, however, was smart, and told the animals:

Careful! There is a wolf outside! If you go out, you will be eaten by the wolf!

The animals, were not that smart, and listened to the farmer, they were afraid!

From time to time, one of the animals would disappear (and without their knowledge, reappear on the farmer’s dinner table).

But the farmer kept giving the animals delicious food without them doing any effort, so they decided to believe the farmer’s explanation that that animal had escaped and been eaten by the wolf.

Maybe, there was actually a wolf outside. But if they had escaped, only some of the animals would have been eaten by that wolf.

But by staying in the farm, all the animals were, sooner or later, eaten one by one.

TODO source.

When will they be ready? Who decides? What if they think that they are ready now?

The keyword attack is basically an embargo.

There is already a lot of literature about this, specially in the cases of Cuba and North Korea. It is basically a libertarian vs conservative / Cato vs Heritage thing in the US:

• https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-embargo-harms-cubans-gives-castro-excuse-policy-failures-regime

• https://www.heritage.org/trade/report/why-the-cuban-trade-embargo-should-be-maintained

• http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_big_idea/2006/08/thanks_for_the_sanctions.html

The key dilemma is is:

• if we keep contact with the Dictatorship, maybe its people will see that democracy is better and start a liberating revolution

• if we keep giving technology to the Dictatorship and it does not become a democracy, we are making a Dictatorship more technologically advanced, and therefore dangerous

Some interesting aspects of the keyword attack embargo:

• it is immediately self enforcing: we don’t need politicians to decide and enforce the complex "if you do this, we punish you like that" question.

  By political and technological information is together, and this immediately puts the dictatorship in a bad spot, without us having to decide anything.

• by affecting programmers in particular through Stack Overflow and GitHub, we make them more likely to develop better Firewall climbing tools themselves

One point in favor of the embargo is that China has opened up since the 80’s 90’s, but did freedom improve at all? Under Xi Jinping, it may be argued that it did not, and maybe that we should just stop feeding them technology and accept that they won’t become free.

Trump’s 2019 China trade war, and in particular the Huawei ban, is an event that have brought this question to the spotlight once again.

1.3.1.1. Keyword attacks could be used by certain CCP political groups to justify blocking off the entire external Internet, and make the dictatorship even more pervasive

That is true with high probability, just like any other individual which tries to influence 1B people.

Every action is statistical: I just push the balance a little bit towards freedom.

This FAQ and any talk is useless. You and I are wasting our times here.

The possibility of blocking Stack Overflow and GitHub is 1000x more useful than any talk, but it is still useless.

However, potentially blocking those websites takes 0 of my time, I just leave the content there, so it is worth my time.

To have an idea, in 2015 there are about:

• 20M developers in the world

• 2M in China : https://www.quora.com/Approximately-how-many-programmers-are-there-in-the-world http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/there-are-185-million-software-developers-in-the-world-but-which-country-has-the-most/

• 5M Stack Overflow users http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/227868/select-count-from-users

• TODO I wonder what percentage of GDP those programmers control. I’ll bet any programmer on Stack Overflow is at least 5x more powerful than the average Chinese.

And if we never start somewhere, nothing will ever happen.

Hitting the block button has of course no cost.

The cost of blocking Stack Overflow lies of course in the loss of information, and slower technological development, see also: Why are you attacking websites with censored keywords?

Remember that it is not possible for the Chinese government to block only certain pages of HTTPS websites due to encryption: either the entire IP / domain name is blocked, or nothing.

The 2019 996.ICU event however brought to my attention that Chinese (usually WebKit-based) browsers are already censoring HTTPS websites selectively of course, see e.g.: https://github.com/996browser/996.BROWSER/tree/77f28a36a862e3cc4d238dc47c19872156096bc4

But I doubt developers use those browsers right? The only way would be for China to forbid foreign browsers entirely.

GitHub has absolute transparency on Government takedowns, which is awesome: https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns/tree/master/China As of 2019 there have only been only 2 takedowns by China however, compared to dozens by [russia]. The Chinese commies are not big fans of transparency it seems.

The message GitHub shows is:

Repository unavailable in your location

This repository is currently disabled in your location. For more details please see the takedown notice.

Here are some examples of people reacting to it from China:

• https://github.com/programthink/books/issues/31

• https://www.zhihu.com/question/284445884/

• https://program-think.blogspot.com/2018/04/Zhao-at-GitHub.html?comment=1524671692761#1524671692761

To check China only takedowns such as this, we cannot use Great Fire Analyzer, which reports the page as accessible: the only tool I could find so far to capture a page from China a bit like Web Archive was: https://www.geoscreenshot.com which takes screenshots of the websites, but the free trial is very limited, and you can’t share the screenshots.

No, that is just a side effect.

If that were the case, I would definitely target more widely technologies, in particular Web and JavaScript, instead of obscure things like C and assembly in which I have spent tons of my time.

Also, as I’ve said elsewhere, my actions are very unlikely to have any actions. Much more likely to have any action, would be for me to become rich and powerful first, and the best way to do that is to invest in whatever I think is most useful.

Actually, it can even be argued that I’m somewhat irrational, since I would much more likely become rich and powerful by bowing down to the CCP and trying to get their money instead.

On the other hand, becoming rich and powerful is also highly unlikely, so maybe I’m just taking a low risk low reward path?

I have very little free time, and will never do something for political reasons, only things that interest me technically.

Finally, do you really think I’d be able to make such awesome projects if I had primarily political considerations in mind? XD

1.7.1.1. Are you making trivial edits on questions just to spam your name further?

I know, but isn’t it better to be annoyed than having war, being poor or put into jail unfairly?

If the truth is too much for you to bear, worry not, I have you covered with this cool browser extension to clean up Stack Overflow: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/32236-stackoverflow%E5%87%80%E5%8C%96%E5%99%A8 Installing it immediately gives you 10 Sesame Points.

See also: Do you want to harm the Chinese programmers?.

Everyone is "brainwashed" by their environment.

I don’t doubt that you know more about China than me.

But if you are Chinese, also consider that you have been brainwashed by the commies, so likely much more than me since you live in a dictatorship.

So, instead of saying that, why don’t you just actually prove your point by teaching me something interesting about China that I don’t know about? I love learning new things.

But please, link to reference material instead of just saying it, it will be much more convincing.

1.8.1.1. Can I contact you in Chinese?

1.8.1.2. You have a preconceived opinion about China that cannot be changed

No, only visited once.

And I don’t think it is a good idea for me to do that now :-)

But I know that if you don’t mind contributing to making WW3 deadlier and shut up and obey the CCP, China is already a fine place to live as much as any other developing country.

1.8.2.1. Would you like to live in China?

See: https://cirosantilli.com/#ciro-santilli

But my wife is.

As of 2019, oral enough for daily things, but not understand most natural casual dinner conversation or watch TV series, because they go too quickly into vocabulary subject areas that I don’t know.

When it matters, and with some patience, I can make myself understood though with some analogies (archive) and a dictionary.

From the HSK vocabulary list, I estimate definitely HSK 3, but not quite HSK 4. This would likely equate A2 / B1 in the European system.

Phonetics wise, I can’t distinguish or produce a few sounds, notably -ing vs -in and my off-tone rate is high, but it tends to not matter at all compared to the lack of vocabulary.

I read with Perapera, write with a mixture of Pleco, Google translate and Googling to see if Chinese actually say the sentences that way.

I haven’t tried to learn characters, too much effort, but I learnt the most common ones without trying.

I really wish I could learn more, but I have other more important endeavours at the moment :-(

I had learnt from book that come with audio recordings in the first 6-months to 1 year in 2010, but that got impossibly boring afterwards, so for now I’m just basically talking as much as possible non-important things to my wife in Chinese, and whenever I reach one that I don’t know that seems useful, I Pleco it up or just 怎么说 and then Pleco.

Spoken Chinese is in my opinion a relatively easy language to learn from scratch, because word formation is so often logical:, e.g.:

• volcano = fire + mountain: 火山(huo shan)

• train = fire + car: 火车 (huo che), a reference to old steam locomotives

and there is no useless crap like verb conjugation, Grammatical gender, plural variants, capitalization, etc.

I love this language.

Please just get rid of the Chinese characters and move to pinyin like the Korean and Vietnamese did, this will make your culture much easier to export. Characters are beautiful, but just take too much time for any sane adult to learn, it’s harder than C++!

I can understand that.

It must feel good to have absolute truth in the Cult of Xi, and let the black police get rid of weirdos for you.

A scene from the awesome mini-series Seventeen Moments of Script (1973) comes to mind.

In Episode 7, 34:46, the main character, Stierlitz, who is an undercover Soviet spy in Germany during WW2, travels on a train with a Nazi officer.

The war is almost over, and the desolate officer tells Stierlitz:

I told my children: I hate democracy!

No democracy in our Reich!

Any democracy in our country is doomed to end up with one thing: the dictatorship of small shopkeepers.

The more freedom we have, the more we want to be controlled by the SS again.

And then we want our secret police back, and concentration death camps again, and the universal fear everywhere!

Only then can we feel ourselves calm and secure.

No need to prove your point of view in defending the fate of the home land.

No responsibility.

Just raise your hand in the honor of him, who will take care of everything for you.

Just shout "Hail Hitler" and everything becomes understandable.

No more worries.

I find it amusing that a Soviet movie criticizes dictatorships.

That is definitely true.

Nothing is perfect in this world.

I just think that they are way better than dictatorships.

As Churchill once brilliantly put it:

Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

However, this is all obviously subjective, and believing that dictatorship is a better form of government is also a valid belief.

See also:

• Why would democracy and freedom of speech make China richer?

• You have a preconceived opinion about China that cannot be changed

• This repository is completely biased against the Chinese Government!

1.11.1.1. Western democracies have invaded other countries and crushed separatism

1.11.1.2. Western democracies also censor subjects such as child porn and hate speech

1.11.1.3. Snowden

1.11.1.4. Fake news

Russia is clearly the number 2 dictatorship in the world by population / GDP and the #1 nuclear arsenal, so here we go.

I’ve always been curious to how Russia can be both oppressive and a democracy, unlike China which doesn’t even try to pretend. This is what I gather:

• the government controls all major media. If any media says bad things against them, the government finds pretexts to create lawsuits or increase taxes against such companies. Therefore all people end up thinking that the government is good.

• just like China, they emphasise the threat of the foreign countries, especially the US, as a justification for having an oppressive power.

• the government puts pressure on any significant opposition candidate. One technique is to find some reason to put them in jail for 2 months, which by Russian law forbids them from participating in further elections. Only candidates that don’t really stand a chance are left as a fake opposition. is fine, but if you reach some prominence, you start taking the same risks as politicians, although you are more likely to face more brutal illegal gangster violence threats as you are less visible

While I’m at it, some interesting news:

• 2018-04 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43752337 Russia to block Telegram app over encryption

• 2017 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40635267 Russia Jehovah’s Witnesses banned after they lose appeal

• 2017 http://www.scmp.com/news/world/russia-central-asia/article/2085395/its-now-illegal-russia-share-image-putin-possibly-gay

• 2016 https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/kzgkv3/russians-now-need-a-passport-to-watch-pornhub

• 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putin_khuylo!

• 1995 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Listyev

The last straw was when in March 2015 my girlfriend’s mother was arbitrarily kept 15 days in jail for doing Falun Gong. I posted this at:

• https://twitter.com/cirosantilli/status/579270450984984576

• https://www.facebook.com/cirosantilli/posts/952661734753174

I then continued because I hate political censorship.

I am against violence. I love China.

1.12.1.1. Jail post

1.12.1.2. Further details about my mother-in-law’s persecution

I don’t consider myself a radical because of: You have a preconceived opinion about China that cannot be changed

I never get mad. Only a slightly sad or annoyed sometimes.

But maybe no radical ever considers himself radical? Hmmm…​

The Dark Knight - Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn. I worry sometimes.

The term evil does not make sense to me.

The best definition I can reach is a psychopath with zero empathy for anyone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy although I think that can be better characterized as a disease or extreme personality trait.

I believe that the huge majority of those politicians are just regular dudes with a knack for politics but brought up in a fucked up political situation.

Just like you, me and other politicians in any country.

No, just inefficient and dangerous.

To me, it’s just another non-democratic empire like the Qing Dynasty. 共产朝 as I call them. But alas, I’m not the inventor of the expression: http://web.archive.org/web/20161025220242/http://tieba.baidu.com/p/752094668

SJW: there is a seed of SJW in me.

One major difference between me and the stereotypical SJW is that I never engage in lengthy discussions.

I limit myself to listening as much as I can to learn new arguments.

So the rationale of my actions is not to convince anyone, but rather:

• increase the monetary cost of censorship by binding politics to tech

• group up like minded people who don’t like censorship

See also: You have a preconceived opinion about China that cannot be changed

On the contrary. China has my favorite:

• food

• language

• The best Chinese traditional instrumental music albums

• history and culture

• nature

in the world. And because of that: [would-you-like-to-live-in-china].

As Bjarne said:

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses

I only focus here on negative things to provide content that will activate the Great Firewall.

持华反党。

1.12.6.1. Why do you love China so much?

No, I am a selfless human being, only concerned with the greater well being of humankind.

More serious answer:

• I believe in this. As evidence, it has limiting effects on my technological career: [does-your-employer-support-this], and I don’t think I can / want to become a politician

• the more famous I am, the more impact I will have in the future

• the more famous I am, the more feedback I have that what I’ve been doing has been working

Keyword: attention whore.

Duplicate pool:

• https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/5

1.12.7.1. Are you doing this because it makes you feel important?

Not with my real name attached to it.

No, I’m agnostic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

Here are some things that I don’t like about Falun Gong for example: [things-i-personally-dislike-about-flg].

I think that FLG exercises and meditation are good for you, just like many other meditative practices such as Yoga, Buddhist meditation, Tai chi, deep Catholic prayer, etc.

However I find the metaphysics and obligations boring like for any other prophetic religion.

The absolute truth is already known by the prophet, although he does not want to give clear evidence for reasons. Or a Jesus put it:

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.

"If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written:

“'He will command his angels concerning you,

and they will lift you up in their hands,

so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"

Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

Ah good old prophets, their tricks haven’t changed a bit in 2 thousand years!

And you just repeat these truth over and over and over:

• FLG is good

• FLG is good

• FLG is good

• Aliens

• FLG is good

• You can support FLG by doing X and Y, why wouldn’t you since you are saving other people?

• FLG is good

• FLG is good

• Alternate dimensions

• FLG is good

• Maybe FLG will make you healthier, but no promises, but it will make you a better person, and that’s why you should do it, but if you really really believe, you get healthier

• FLG is good

• FLG is good

• Non-followers are like this, FLG people are like that. Although non-followers who do good things are actually doing FLG without knowing it. Note: FLG even has a specific terminology for non-believers, which is translated in English as "ordinary-people". Like other aspects of FLG however, this appears in other religions, e.g. my mother mentioned the funny term used by her Protestant’s group term but I forgot it, and you can see it in Harry Potter as well: The Muggles.

• FLG is good

• FLG is good

• FLG is good

• Final judgement

• FLG is good

I would really like to know if LHZ really believes in FLG, or is just a complete manipulating charlatan, but unfortunately we will never know that.

Just imagine if before he died he published a video saying: "it was a joke, gotcha!". Now that would be epic!

Since I’m good natured, it’s hard for me to believe that he doesn’t believe in anything, how can anyone be that evil? Maybe he believes in part of it, but made up some stuff to sell it better, maybe with good intentions that selling the fake part would also lead more people to see the good part?

Like any other prophetic religion, FLG gives tiny evidence that you can directly feel through meditation. The energies, which I believe are real feelings. And then using that entry point asks you to believe a whole lot more, that you can’t feel.

This becomes especially strong when a critical mass of believers is reached, and then they start interpreting all sorts of events as miracles, and you start to believe other believers without questioning them, and a circle is formed.

This post by a former believer gives what I feel is a realistic account that matches my observations: https://medium.com/@Ben_D_Hurley/-10677166298b "Me and Li" by Ben Hurley published on October 23, 2017.

In any case, at least FLG got one thing right: the commies evil, and we have to get rid of them.

And yet, all those who love freedom, must oppose FLG ban, or be enslaved by tyrants themselves: Why do you say that democracy is a religion just like FLG?.

See also: [flg-is-fake].

1.12.9.1. How much do you know about Falun Gong’s claims?

1.12.9.2. What are the canonical Falun Gong texts?

wget -r -l inf --no-remove-listing --no-clobber --no-parent -w 2 https://en.falundafa.org/falun-dafa-books.html

My employer has nothing to do with this.

He doesn’t approve or disapprove of the Chinese government or of my private actions.

The only thing that my employer does believe in is that employees can have their own political opinions, and that this should not affect hiring decisions.

Obviously, this action limits my ability to lead high profile deals with China.

Also I’m quite curious if this would limit my ability to go to China for business, but I haven’t applied for a visa since I’ve started this. It likely wouldn’t be a good idea for me to go to China :-)

But my employer believes that inclusion and non-discrimination is more valuable.

I will always do my best to not let my personal opinions affect my professional decisions, as that would be unfair to my employer.

In 1989, a beautiful thing called the World Wide Web was invented.

The Internet gives everyone the magic power of writing something, and having million people read it for free!

This is how much time I spend on this to give you an idea:

• every week or two, someone sends me a message, I reply with "read the FAQ", and usually update

• I follow https://www.reddit.com/r/China amongst many other programming subs, and all major bad news show up there. See also: What are the best sources of anti-commie news?

• when something bad enough comes up, I go to https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/sensitive-words-series/ and update my keyword attack. I’ve only been updating it on Stack Overflow and GitHub these days.

• when I see a good new heavily anti-CCP Twitter accounts I add it to this list: https://twitter.com/cirosantilli/lists/china

Then I just contribute to programming websites exactly as I would if I weren’t making this campaign.

The current consensus is yes:

• https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/286082/does-the-be-nice-policy-require-se-users-to-be-nice-to-people-who-are-not-se-u

• https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/267368/are-political-avatars-and-profiles-ok

• https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/299882/can-a-username-be-considered-spam

• https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/299882/can-a-username-be-considered-spam

• https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/349131/users-political-display-name-triggering-government-action-against-users-who-vie

The Chinese law doesn’t I’m afraid :-( https://advox.globalvoices.org/2015/04/16/new-internet-rules-in-china-target-usernames-avatars-as-subversive-tools/

https://www.reddit.com/r/China

Catches all the important news

A large part of the posts is controversial material.

Has some noise of course as well, but less than other media I find.

Highly worth your feed.

Reddit was banned in China in August 2018: https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/965k4c/reddit_banned_in_china/

Tecent will invest 150 million on Reddit in 2019: https://gizmodo.com/reddit-banned-in-china-is-reportedly-set-to-land-150-1832375439 See also: [biased-media].

• https://chinadigitaltimes.net This is the best source I’ve seen so far. Extremely comprehensive and up-to-date.

  • https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/word-of-the-week/?view=all word of the week

  • https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/directives-from-the-ministry-of-truth/?view=all censorship directive reports

    • https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/category/%E6%9C%89%E5%85%B3%E9%83%A8%E9%97%A8/%E7%9C%9F%E7%90%86%E9%83%A8%E6%8C%87%E4%BB%A4/?view=all chinese version

  • https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Main_Page a wiki version of the censored word lists, the "Grass-mud horse index" (cao3n2ma3 草泥马), with a censored term of the week section.

  • https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/sensitive-words-series/?view=all sensitive words list

  • Fun 2015 ebook: https://github.com/cirosantilli/decoding-chinese-internet-pdf-download

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blacklisted_keywords_in_China | https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E8%8F%AF%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%9C%8B%E5%AF%A9%E6%9F%A5%E8%BE%AD%E5%BD%99%E5%88%97%E8%A1%A8

• https://github.com/jasonqng/chinese-keywords

• complete-gfw-rulebook-for-wikipedia-v3.0.pdf

• https://qz.com/698990/261-ways-to-refer-to-the-tiananmen-square-massacre-in-china/ 261 ways to refer to the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China

I haven’t counted, but the limit for Stack Overflow is quite low, and I’m always almost at the maximum, which is about "Ciro Santilli" + 3 3-4 Chinese character events with a separator.

These are some of my prioritization guidelines:

• recent cases receive a large prime over raw death toll, because older cases can always be attributed to other people.

  E.g., I’ve heard there is even some opening towards acknowledging the Great Famine, thus 烏坎事件 (and others from my previous profile names)

• words must refer to a precise event, and must be clearly summarizable in very few chars, for increased impact, and profile name length limitations.

  E.g. "High corruption rates, high pollution", although very serious, feel too generic.

• events that relate directly to freedom of speech receive a prime, since they can only happen in China and very few other countries.

  E.g.: Falun Gong, Tiananmen.

  Non e.g.: corruption and pollution. Those are hard to quantify, and there is always an immediate reply: china GDP per capita is low, same happens in India, Brazil, etc.

  Freedom of speech however, is immediately verifiable (e.g. "my Weibo was taken down"), and undeniably caused by the current central government.

• the more people affected, and the more deeply they have been affected, the more important obviously

I am currently trying to maintain in my Stack Overflow Location a ranking of events in a single string, so that it can be easily copy pasted around. The location appears on every page if you hover over my account name, so it is likely in the HTML at least.

If you think that this list can be improved, please open an issue explaining how and why.

Query to find them: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/312860/chinese-dissidents-by-keyword-aboutme-or-displayname

Notable ones only here (high rep or innovative criticism):

• "GNUSupporter 8964民主女神 地下教會"

  • Real name: Vincent Tam from social media links.

  • https://math.stackexchange.com/users/290189/gnusupporter-8964%E6%B0%91%E4%B8%BB%E5%A5%B3%E7%A5%9E-%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%8B%E6%95%99%E6%9C%83

  • https://web.archive.org/web/20180924203410/https://math.stackexchange.com/users/290189/gnusupporter-8964%E6%B0%91%E4%B8%BB%E5%A5%B3%E7%A5%9E-%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%8B%E6%95%99%E6%9C%83

  • Keyword attack inspired by me

• Yu Hao

  • http://stackoverflow.com/users/1009479/yu-hao

  • http://archive.is/76FCb

  • "GFW (Great Firewall of China) is one of the most notorious inventions in the history of Internet. Anyone working for it should be ashamed."

• iBug

  • https://stackoverflow.com/users/5958455/ibug

  • iBug http://web.archive.org/web/20190507140910/https://stackoverflow.com/users/5958455/ibug

  • "The Communist Party of China is a state criminal that is continuously committing state crime to ordinary Chinese citizens!" followed by an event list.

• gotqn

  • "Free Tibet From China Domination"

  • https://stackoverflow.com/users/1080354/gotqn

  • https://web.archive.org/web/20190821105901/https://stackoverflow.com/users/1080354/gotqn

• Scott 混合理论

  https://stackoverflow.com/users/1230329/scott-%E6%B7%B7%E5%90%88%E7%90%86%E8%AE%BA

  Same message as Yu Hao, I wonder if it is an external thing or direct copy of Yu, but no Google hits besides them.

• Terry Wang

  • http://stackoverflow.com/users/1801697/terry-wang

  • http://archive.is/V0aSK

  • Lego recreation of Tankman on profile picture.

Users who had GFW references but removed it:

• http://stackoverflow.com/users/4594532/gnimuc-key

  • http://web.archive.org/web/20170331144256/https://stackoverflow.com/users/4594532/gnimuc

• http://stackoverflow.com/users/651907/jclin

  • http://web.archive.org/web/20160516065151/https://stackoverflow.com/users/651907/jclin

Misc interesting stuff:

• <location>火车站酒店小姐 (about 20 accounts with that pattern)

  • https://stackoverflow.com/users/7040504/%E8%8E%86%E7%94%B0%E7%81%AB%E8%BD%A6%E7%AB%99%E9%85%92%E5%BA%97%E5%B0%8F%E5%A7%90

  • http://web.archive.org/web/20190428090348/https://stackoverflow.com/users/7040504/%E8%8E%86%E7%94%B0%E7%81%AB%E8%BD%A6%E7%AB%99%E9%85%92%E5%BA%97%E5%B0%8F%E5%A7%90

  • Interesting list of prostitution spam / sockpuppets? All have the exact same profile information.

  • Hitting query due to "审查", but the usage is unrelated to the Firewall.

Anti-dissident users:

• https://stackoverflow.com/users/815408

  • https://web.archive.org/web/20170602054631/https://stackoverflow.com/users/815408/%E8%AF%B7%E5%B0%81%E6%8E%89ciro-santilli-%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%85%B1%E4%BA%A7%E5%85%9A%E4%B8%87%E5%B2%81

  • username: "请封掉Ciro Santilli 中国共产党万岁"

  • profile: "中国万岁！ 中国共产党万岁！ 法轮功，民运，台独在中国共产党的铁蹄下不过是螳臂当车！"

• https://stackoverflow.com/users/9393161

  • http://web.archive.org/save/https://stackoverflow.com/users/9393161/ciro-santilli-%E7%9A%84%E9%80%A0%E8%B0%A3%E6%98%AF%E5%8F%AF%E8%80%BB%E8%A1%8C%E4%B8%BA

  • username: "Ciro Santilli 的造谣是可耻行为" http://web.archive.org/save/https://stackoverflow.com/users/9393161/ciro-santilli-%E7%9A%84%E9%80%A0%E8%B0%A3%E6%98%AF%E5%8F%AF%E8%80%BB%E8%A1%8C%E4%B8%BA

• https://stackoverflow.com/users/8454187

  • username: "Snowden Assange Wounded Knee"

  • profile: "燃(ri)烧(si)您(ni)的(de)梦(ma)，Ciro Santilli. StackOverflow上的一个用户. The Oliver Stone Experience"

  • explanation:

    • "燃烧您的梦": http://www.nq6.com/dj/1674.html

    • "Wounded Knee": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

Query to find them: http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/312863/mentioned-ciro-santilli-on-aboutme-or-displayname

I don’t consider Taiwan separatism.

Taiwan is a country split due to civil war, long ago.

The fact that most countries in the world does officially recognize Taiwan as a country is a joke, considering that the only thing keeping it afloat is the West’s military threat.

The West must not let China advance and take more territories. The more they take, the more they will want.

The West must protect China’s neighbouring countries with military support and assurance.

The West must recognize Taiwan for what it is: a separate country, under threat of invasion, and in need of support.

If China’s claim to Taiwan is valid, then Taiwan also has an equally valid claim on China.

If China’s claim to Taiwan is valid, then so will it’s claim to any other country.

If Taiwan is a part of China, why doesn’t China put the Chinese flag on all major Taiwanese government buildings?

Oh, I forgot, it is because they have absolutely no control over Taiwan. Just like the have absolutely no control over any other country.

China, if you want to claim that Taiwan is a part of you, just invade them already. Or just stop this joke.

Someone once told me:

Taiwan should not be considered a country by China, because then it would not join back to China when China becomes a democracy, and would be used by the USA to do evil things like they did in the Middle East

Reply: China claiming that Taiwan is a part of them only drives Taiwan closer to the West! Who wants to be part of a dictatorship unless you have been brainwashed by one?

Some interesting links:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy every country has private relations with Taiwan through some trade organizations, they just don’t call them embassies

• http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/62447/how-can-a-citizen-of-mainland-china-visit-taiwan/62466#comment178495_62466 hi, I want a "not VISA" to Taiwan. Thanks.

• https://youtu.be/6aZkM_ZLvjE?t=50 (zh) "【這就是科學｜柯文哲】EP3／從癌症治療看政治！除惡務盡→除惡「勿」盡？「與敵共存」才是生存之道！", 柯文哲, 2019-06-26. Ko Wen-je , the mayor of Taipei 台北 and a professor in medicine, applies the concept of isolation and mutation in evolution to Taiwan and China

In 2017 - 2018, details of internment camps are emerging.

It is still hard to get hard evidence, much like every other mass human rights violation, here go the best ones:

Xinjian 2018 re-education camps news:

• 2019-09-22 Drone footage of Xinjiang prisoner transfer uploaded to YouTube. TODO confirm location and that these are political prisoners rather than "normal criminals".

  • Upload sources

    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGYoeJ5U7cQ

    • https://twitter.com/warcombatfear/status/1174031079432310785

  • News coverage

    • https://news.sky.com/story/chinas-detention-of-uighurs-video-of-blindfolded-and-shackled-prisoners-authentic-11815401 Drone footage, video sources:

  • Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/d78aog/chilling_video_of_chinese_police_transferring/

• 2019-07-31 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/world/asia/china-xinjiang.html "Doubt Greets China’s Claim That Muslims Have Been Released From Camps"

• 2019-07-19 https://www.france24.com/en/20190712-37-countries-defend-china-over-xinjiang-un-letter "37 countries defend China over Xinjiang in UN letter"

  

  Figure 1. Source

• 2019-07-04 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48825090 "China Muslims: Xinjiang schools used to separate children from families"

• 2019-05-07 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/07/revealed-new-evidence-of-chinas-mission-to-raze-the-mosques-of-xinjiang

• 2019-05-07 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULaJVWOr4ko CNN does a few Xinjiang interviews and sends reporter to visit some of the concentration camps

• 2019-02-24 http://fortune.com/2019/02/21/thermo-fisher-xinjiang-china-uighurs/

• 2019-02-17 https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2186547/china-data-leak-exposes-vast-hi-tech-surveillance-operation "China data leak exposes vast hi-tech surveillance operation in Xinjiang", leak by SenseNets Technology.

• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/world/asia/china-xinjiang.html

• 2019-03 https://shahit.biz/eng/ database of Xinjiang victims, with precise names, location, date of birth and ID card number of victims and testimonies

• 2018-12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=dsd1NkCKaNg In full: 'I begged them to kill me' - ex-Xinjiang detainee Mihrigul Tursun gives testimony in the US

• 2018-11 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45812419 Xinjiang legalises 're-education' camps

• 2018-08 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-un/u-n-says-it-has-credible-reports-that-china-holds-million-uighurs-in-secret-camps-idUSKBN1KV1SU

• 2018-07 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eak3WRtcdko Sairagul Sawytbai testifies to the existence of Chinese concentration camps in Xinjiang

• 2018-05 generic report https://jamestown.org/program/evidence-for-chinas-political-re-education-campaign-in-xinjiang/

• 2018-05 mapping interment camps with satelite imaging:

  • https://www.albawaba.com/news/mapping-china%E2%80%99s-internment-camps-its-ethnic-minorities-1136100

  • https://medium.com/@shawnwzhang/list-of-re-education-camps-in-xinjiang-%E6%96%B0%E7%96%86%E5%86%8D%E6%95%99%E8%82%B2%E9%9B%86%E4%B8%AD%E8%90%A5%E5%88%97%E8%A1%A8-99720372419c List of Re-education Camps in Xinjiang 新疆再教育集中营列表 Shawn Zhang https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/8mbhad/satellite_imagery_of_xinjiang_reeducation_camps/

• 2018-05 Omir Bekali’s account of Xinjiang education camps:

  • https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b

  • https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/former-inmates-of-chinas-muslim-re-education-camps-tell-of-brainwashing-torture/2018/05/16/32b330e8-5850-11e8-8b92-45fdd7aaef3c_story.html?utm_term=.df8ea170b18f

  • http://uk.businessinsider.com/what-is-life-like-in-xinjiang-reeducation-camps-china-2018-5

Western government should prevent companies from complying to Chinese censorship requests.

Citizens should boycott such companies.

https://github.com/caffeine-overload/bandinchina contains a "List of companies who have apologized to the Chinese government and implemented censorship requests". I don’t understand though why they won’t add GitHub to the list, but so be it: https://github.com/caffeine-overload/bandinchina/pull/56#issuecomment-541230090

I don’t support FLG specifically, only freedom of religion.

I use it in my usernames simply because it is the most banned and censored one in China today.

I believe that individuals should only be put in jail for what they do, not for what they believe.

I consider FLG a religion like any other, and I am against its ban, as I am for all other religions.

Also I believe that freedom of speech and democracy imply that FLG and other religions will exist. If you want freedom, you have to accept other people’s choices.

Otherwise, democracy and communism can also be considered as religions, and banned.

See also: FLG never makes any predictions that can be reasonably verified by non-believers.

Not consciously, I think I would likely support them even if I didn’t have family ties to FLG.

Likely I wouldn’t have started this campaign if I didn’t know them of course.

But of course, this is impossible to answer objectively.

But don’t you think that 70 Million people (6% of the total population in 2000!) getting completely squashed by the Party illustrates extremely well the dangers of the dictatorship?

With that in mind, I try my best to give FLG only the right level of exposure I think it deserves relative to other events, according to these guidelines: How do you choose keyword for the keyword attack?

If more recent events of mass human rights violation happen, especially affecting in the order of tens of million people, I will probably rank higher than Falun Gong, this was the case for Xinjiang in 2019 for example, even though it only affected a measly million.

1.24.2.1. How is it like to live with Falun Gong believers?

My bad here, the precise term is "jail". I’m not talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor Unfortunately I can’t edit a Tweet.

I believe that it has changed.

But isn’t that the case of every cultural religious movement that migrates to a completely new culture?

Main points which may have changed:

• It has become more organized.

  But why shouldn’t they organize to defend themselves now that they have the chance without being put into prison?

  The CCP is highly organized and has way more resources.

• Less emphasis is given to the religious / mystical aspect, and more to the corporal exercises, and health aspect.

  This may be because people in the "West" are:

  • are "scientific-educated" atheists who wouldn’t go for a "religion"

  • already have other religions, which would view FLG as a taboo

Also maybe only the richest and most educated believers managed to escape China, and thus the movement carried that bias outside China.

If you know more ways in which it may have changed, let me know.

But once again, we can know nothing for sure about the past in China because of censorship.

Even if you saw something yourself, how can you be sure that it is representative?

And if it has changed, now that it has changed, maybe China should unban it?

1.5M USD in 2010 for a FLG controlled internet freedom group http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8678760.stm

But well, if you are going to do something anyways, and someone offers you money, why wouldn’t you take it?

Taking the money does of course give a "bad impression" that someone is trying to buy influence, but does it in itself imply that you are doing something bad?

But do you really think that the US government paid that to buy influence in FLG? What would they force upon that FLG group that they didn’t already want to do? Isn’t it more likely that the US government wanted them to continue doing exactly what they were doing?

Every government funds groups it supports, it is an all out war I suppose. Compare that to the propaganda funds of the CCP.

What about the funding of political campaigns, which vastly outnumbers 1.5M USD every year?

This might be a bad law that should be changed.

It was perfectly legal for Nazis to kill Jews. Does it make that right?

The same can be argued about any other religion or political belief of type: it is better if we organize society in this or that way.

How can you disprove their belief, when as in any other religion, every affirmation made hinges on "miracles only happen around when true believers are around" or "only true believers can perceive evidence in their hearts / minds directly". He died of cancer? Not a true believer.

Conversely, do you understand the full sequence of experiments that imply quantum field theory? Have you seen videos of those experiments? Have you attended live demonstrations? Do you understand the construction of the experimentation apparatus? Yet, why do you believe it?

More importantly: what do you propose that should be done about it? Should we kill followers? Or is jail enough?

Also do let me know when you have achieved irrefutable proof that democracy / freedom of speech are the optimal ways to organize the government: Why do you say that democracy is a religion just like FLG?.

See also: FLG downplays the fact that it is a religion

1.24.7.1. FLG never makes any predictions that can be reasonably verified by non-believers

1.24.7.2. FLG is a very new religion and therefore fake

I know that, and that supporting FLG is "bad" for my public image with most Chinese, including those that are against censorship.

But without censorship, there will be democracy, and with democracy FLG followers will have voting rights, and FLG will become legal.

I think the situation is very similar to Scientology in the USA today: most people dislike it, but believe that you can believe whatever you want.

Democracy and Communism can also be considered as religions and persecuted.

Isn’t it convenient when a dictatorship gets rid of those weirdos for you? But not so much when suddenly you or your family is the weirdo…​

If you are not ready to accept the beliefs of others, dictatorship is the only choice for you.

See also: Do you support FLG just because your wife and mother-in-law do it?

1.24.8.1. Why do you say that democracy is a religion just like FLG?

1.24.8.2. Falung Gong had to be banned because it was a threat to the stability of the country

Heard this a few times, and I believe it has happened.

But I don’t see how this is relevant at all to this discussion:

• if they are not really FLG believers, they should be prosecuted, but this says nothing about the real FLG believers,

• if they are, then why wouldn’t they seek a VISA, since they are in constant threat of going to jail or worse in China, and the USA law gives them that right?

Sample news:

• https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/09/28/652218318/thousands-could-be-deported-as-government-targets-asylum-mills-clients

Either direct suicide or dying because of not taking medication.

First, I’m not saying I don’t believe you, and I’m sorry about what happened.

But your testimony is worthless unless you give the following:

• clear unique personal identification

  This is because the CCP has thousands of wumaos who could make fake reports.

  There are basically two ways to do that:

  1. your testimony is done in video form on YouTube clearly showing your face as you make it

  2. links between a notable social media presence that is hard to achieve, e.g. Twitter with many followers, Stack overflow with a lot of rep, and the account

     Either of those must contain / link to information that uniquely identifies you. Generally, full name, city and date of birth is enough.

• a precise testimony that states exactly what you saw happen with your own eyes, or heard from people that are very close to you.

  The testimony must include:

  • when the events happened

  • where they happened, in which city at the very least

  • the full names of who did what

  This is to:

  • make it easier to verify the truth of the event

  • uniquely identify the event so we don’t count a single event multiple times

If you do provide all of the above, I add your report to a list of reports that I will maintain. This list does not exist yet because there were no valid reports yet.

Next consider this:

• are you sure that Falun Gong made the person do the bad thing, and that the person wouldn’t have done it anyways?

  Did someone from Falun Gong told the person to do it?

  I bet that if you look into patients of psychiatrists, you will find more suicides than average. So should we ban psychiatry?

• are you sure that the order came from LHZ, and that it was not just some disgruntled local leader using Falun Gong for his personal madness and doing things he did not approve?

  Branch Davidians were inspired by Christianism. So should we ban Christianity? What about the majority of Christians who have never done anything bad?

• only statistics has any meaning, and it would require a very large number of reports to make up statistics, so you will likely be wasting your time. I will do my part and maintain a list however.

• if ask for FLG believers to compile a list of horrors they have suffered, which they have already been doing since the start of the persecution, I bet that their list will be much longer than yours, because they are so well organized

How much proof do you think they would be able to get when there is no freedom of press?

Do you think that forbidding a 70 million person religion could have gone smoothly?

Do you think the thousands of personal of accounts of human rights violations that exist are all fake, and don’t indicate that many, many more have taken place but fallen under censorship?

Conversely, there is no reliable proof that FLG is bad as claimed by CCP that has been verified by international media.

By this logic, everyone should go to jail. The law should only punish individuals.

The communist party, which has had continuous power since 1949, killed millions during the cultural revolution. Surely they must be banned, no?

But the CCP has changed so much since those days, I hear you say.

I agree. And so has FLG.

1.24.12.1. Movement X tells people to do something bad, therefore the movement should be banned

For every desire of the masses, there will be amoral representatives that will step to use that power.

Still, those representatives cannot gain power if there is no backing desire from the society.

The only advantage of democracy, is that those representatives have to pretend harder to do things for that group to retain their power.

Possibly true, but which reports are you talking about specifically?

All that I care about is:

• it is censored today

• if you do it you go to jail

• there were tens of millions of followers at the time of the ban

which I think are undeniable.

The only question that matters is: should it be banned or not?

In short: I believe that it has happened to many people.

Long version:

It is obviously very hard to prove and quantify it definitely, much like it was hard to prove the Holocaust: bodies were cremated, and bribes were paid.

Even if we had a video showing the whole process, showing the whole money flow from donor to prison guard, it would still be hard to quantify it, so I do have some room for doubt in this opinion.

But consider the following, which is based on what I heard.

Even Chinese officials have admitted that in the past, if the body of the executed person is not claimed by family, then the organs can be extracted even without the consent of the prisoner:

• https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/07/china-still-using-executed-prisoners-organs-transplants-vatican

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-the-face-of-criticism-china-has-been-cleaning-up-its-organ-transplant-industry/2017/09/14/d689444e-e1a2-11e6-a419-eefe8eff0835_story.html

Perhaps now that they claim that there is a large voluntary organ donor database, then this has stopped or been reduced, but let’s focus on that period when the extractions were widely done.

From this, even though China does not publish execution statistics, we can imagine that a large part of the organs come from prisoners sentenced to death.

Then, consider that a 70 MILLION person religion was banned, leading to a HUGE influx of prisoners from that religion.

FLG followers are just de-facto criminals like any other, and so extracting their organs is also de-facto legal.

Also, people from that religion don’t drink alcohol, smoke or take drugs, and their organs are of good quality.

Furthermore, FLG prisoners continue to not bow down to the government even in prison, e.g. by doing their Falun Gong meditation, which makes them clearly identifiable and dangerous to the system.

Finally, add to that mix the huge level of corruption found in dictatorships.

Don’t you think, then, that it is extremely likely that it has happened many times that such people have been selected to be executed earlier than others on average, due to the monetary value of their organs?

Bibliography:

• The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, by Ehtan Gutmann, 2014

  • https://www.amazon.com/Slaughter-Killings-Harvesting-Solution-Dissident/dp/161614940X

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Gutmann#The_Slaughter:_Mass_Killings,_Organ_Harvesting,_and_China’s_Secret_Solution_to_Its_Dissident_Problem

1.24.15.1. 2018 China Tribunal

1.24.15.2. Falun Gong is not important to be worth discussing

Some possibly neutral overviews.

For:

• http://www.icsahome.com/articles/the-prc-and-falun-gong-langone

Against:

• http://www.culteducation.com/group/1254-falun-gong.html

Interesting:

• http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cult_q0.html

But also as explaining why I don’t think it justifies the ban.

This section also gives me more credibility as a balanced critic >:-)

1.24.17.1. FLG downplays the fact that it is a religion

1.24.17.2. FLG downplays the fact that it is highly organized

1.24.17.3. FLG dislikes several other groups like homosexuals and some other religions

1.24.17.4. FLG believers are less likely to take necessary medication

1.24.17.5. FLG is dangerous because LHZ has too much power over followers

1.24.17.6. Some FLG people make phone telemarketing

I was banned from Zhihu on 2018-06-25 for "politically sensitive" content.

As a result, since that time I will be answering Zhihu questions as issues in this repo with the label zhihu.

I have however never posted anything politically sensitive on Zhihu, unless my name and profile picture have reached that distinction, and therefore the ban is clearly an unfair per-person ban.

But of course, all is fair in love and war, and politics.

Posting any sensitive content on Chinese websites is a waste of time, since it only means that they will be removed and you will waste time creating a new account, I will never do that.

The only significant content I ever posted on Zhihu is the answer to: https://www.zhihu.com/question/46957710/answer/122827944 which is purely technical, and trivial replies on threads that other people have started about me. Have those people been blocked like me?

My posts are still up and it does not appear to be possible for people to see that I have been banned, but whenever I try to take any action on the website a popup appears saying:

由于严重违反 知乎社区管理规定 ，该帐号已被永久禁言

This includes liking, commenting, answering, asking or trying to update my profile to say that I have been blocked.

This message also shows on my public page for everyone to see: https://www.zhihu.com/people/cirosantilli/activities but they use some JavaScript scheme complicated enough that archive.is cannot capture it.

I still get notifications however, but I am unable to reply to them, specially given that all Chinese accounts, unlike mine, have no personal identifiable information due to the understandable fear Chinese citizens have of their own government (even though such accounts might be illegal in theory to my understanding).

The only action that I can take now is to report abusive comments people make to me.

Obviously, the only effect of such ban is that I will create an anonymous account under Tor with a second cell phone if I wish to contribute in the future, and China will have less information about my political interests than before.

The private messages the website sends while banning you are:

知乎管理员 ：您好，根据用户举报，您的帐号发布了「政治敏感」内容，帐号已根据知乎社区规范被永久禁言。处理详情可查看社区服务中心。具体规范请查看知乎社区管理规定。 6月25日 16:37 回复 | 删除

知乎管理员 ：您好，根据用户举报，您的部分个人信息由于不符合知乎用户信息管理规范已被重置。用户名可以在设置页面中修改，修改后会自动进入审核等待通过；其他个人信息可以在个人主页中编辑。感谢您对知乎社区的理解和支持。 6月25日 16:37 回复 | 删除

Those messages contain links to: https://www.zhihu.com/terms2 | http://archive.is/wdXSz and https://www.zhihu.com/question/19551824 | http://archive.is/BrgV2

The ban came soon after I posted a link to my GitHub repo as a comment at: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/ice-employee-list-github-linkedin/ maybe they are related.

1.25.1.1. Who reported me on Zhihu

https://www.quora.com/profile/Ciro-Santilli

• 2016 blocked Chinese keywords on both my username and credentials. Justification: non-English.

• 2017 created on in English: Cook Tiananmen Square Noodle Shop.

  Added my Noodle shop to maps: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Tiananmen+Square+Noodle+Shop/@60.6132538,15.6687509,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x94603408e3c63fb3!8m2!3d60.6132538!4d15.6687509

  Leaches that picked it up: http://kvalster.se/Falu/Uthyres/Lagenheter/Gammelvagen_49_1417351

• 包子露宪 https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/03/phrase-week-steamed-bun-betrays-constitution

• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-term-limit-explainer.html

• 1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6 Tiananmen Square protests 六四事件:

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_of_Democracy https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/中国国际广播电台

  • AP footage is pretty good, just do a search on the archive:

    • http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/China-Student-Demonstrations/5d1cd01250c9e5e9397f20ef9f1327df

    • http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/China-Student-Demonstrations/cfc6890746010c73f9414e20906268aa

  • Zhang Shijun is the most notable soldier who spoke up it seems:

    • https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/03/china-detains-writer-of-critical-web-letter-to-hu/

    • https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/flashbacks-06042018133558.html

    • https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/20/tiananmen-square-china-zhang-shijun

• http://www.ursulagauthier.fr/tiananmen-15-minutes-dapocalypse/ a few gory photos

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Tang_Dynasty_Television

  • https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%96%B0%E5%94%90%E4%BA%BA%E9%9B%BB%E8%A6%96%E5%8F%B0

  • https://www.youtube.com/user/Laowaikanzhongguo Laowai kan Zhongguo

  • https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgFP46yVT-GG4o1TgXn-04Q China Uncensored

  • https://www.youtube.com/user/NTDOffTheGreatWall Off the Great Wall

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times

  • https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E7%BA%AA%E5%85%83%E6%97%B6%E6%8A%A5

• http://en.minghui.org/

  • http://falundafa.org/ links to it

  • http://www.clearwisdom.net/

• http://www.secretchina.com/

• http://fofg.org/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_of_Hope

  • http://www.soundofhope.org/

  • http://www.bayvoice.net/gb/

• http://lotus-sacre.com/

• https://en.tuidang.org/

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuidang_movement

• http://dongtaiwang.com

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freegate

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America

  • http://www.voa.com/

  • http://www.voachinese.com/

  • http://www.voacantonese.com/

I don’t think this is below the USA, but:

• without censorship, you would be much richer and stronger, and more able to defend yourselves

• why does China also censor its own people in addition to foreign propaganda?

• maybe this fear is greatly emphasised by the Chinese government beyond truth just to help them keep control of the country by fear and maintain their own power. Can the Americans really have that much influence in your country?

• maybe the regions that want to split from China feel like China is not giving them anything back, and they are themselves looking for allies outside of China to help them split. With democracy, people are more likely to get what they want, and there will be split parties and votes.

• the same argument can be used to justify any action, no matter how bad. E.g.: we must put all who criticize the government in jail, or else they will make China less united and weaker against the USA!

Projects that atttempt to understand how the Great Firewall works and what it blocks:

• http://greatfire.org/

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreatFire

  • https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%87%AA%E7%94%B1%E5%BE%AE%E5%8D%9A

  • https://freeweibo.com/ related project by the same organization, a Weibo archive it seems

  • https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/nov/google-can-bring-end-censorship-10-days-heres-how made some noise at the time

  • https://twitter.com/GreatFireChina

• other websites: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/267715/is-stack-overflow-accessible-in-china/288497#288497

• Garry King Harvard papers:

  • http://gking.harvard.edu/50c#

  • http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-Censorship-China-Allows-Government-Criticism-Silences-Collective-Expression

  • http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/randomized-experimental-study-censorship-china

• https://github.com/phoeagon/gfw-sim GFW emulation

• https://github.com/citizenlab/chat-censorship data on Censorship

https://github.com/gfwlist/gfwlist

Chinese people widely use this website list with browser extensions, so as to only use more expensive and risky censorship circunvention traffic when accessing certain webpages.

The result is a well maintained list of interesting websites. About half of which is porn.

Get the full list with:

See also:

• https://github.com/gfwlist/gfwlist/issues/3 "How to use this repo?"

• https://github.com/gfwlist/gfwlist/issues/1141 "Add categories tags to each entry"

• https://www.bypasscensorship.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

• https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf "How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument" by "Gary King, Jennifer Pan, Margaret E. Roberts" published on 2017-04-09

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCnnPf2OnHo "Chinese Internet Trolls Get Paid 50 Cents For Every Comment" by "laowhy86" published on 2018-09-27

20-CD anthology.

ISRC of CD 1: CN-E01-04-450-00 / A.J6

Amazon link of CD 1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QZSWQS (archive)

Publisher: [china-record-corporation].

Chinese information: http://web.archive.org/web/20190816092018/http://www.gyhj.org/read/179301/1/1

English information with Google translate: http://web.archive.org/web/20190816090447/https://1337x.unblockninja.info/torrent/1254538/Master-of-Chinese-Traditional-Music-Complete-Series-20-CDs-ABEE/

English song names properly copied from images: http://web.archive.org/web/20190816092313/https://muzz.pro/chinese_instrumental_traditional_music_master_of_chinese_traditional_music_20_albums_2005_mp3_tracks_320_kbps-1625006.html

A search on Amazon leads many of their albums in loose form: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=master+of+chinese+traditional+music&i=digital-music and you can patch together most of them by looking at the following two cover art styles:

TODO golden cover vs gray cover: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QZUFQI (archive), TODO find precise list.

14-CD anthology.

ISRC: CN-A50-06-389-00 / A.J6 (seems to be for the whole anthology)

Chinese information: http://web.archive.org/web/20190817072026/http://keai99.com/thread-435767-1-1.html

Chinese name: 中国民乐大师纯独奏鉴赏

Publisher: Chinese Musicians' Association

ISRC of CD 1: CN-F13-03-435-00 / A.J6

Publisher: [china-record-corporation].

Amazon link of CD 1: https://www.amazon.com/Zhong-Guo-Gu-Chinese-Primitive/dp/B000S996JO (archive).

English tracklist and front covers: http://web.archive.org/web/20190817221426/https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1298954

• Treasury Of Chinese Musical Instruments http://web.archive.org/web/20190817225846/https://muzz.pro/chinese_traditional_folk_treasury_of_chinese_musical_instruments_4_cd_s_2005_mp3_tracks_320_kbps-1624801.html

The most important publisher: China Record Corporation, AKA "CRC Jianian".

Government-owned unfortunately, their the website takes forever to load: http://www.china-crc.com.cn/, and features mostly Communist shit, and I can’t find the decent traditional music listed there.

One thing to try is an Amazon advanced search by label "China Record Co": https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-music&rh=p_33%3AChina+Record+Co&s=relevancerank&Adv-Srch-MP3-Submit.x=42&Adv-Srch-MP3-Submit.y=4&unfiltered=1&ref=sr_adv_m_digital

• tier 1: amazing, worth a trip

• tier 2: worth it, but not exciting, so not worth a trip just for it

• tier 3: I wouldn’t go there

• go with Chinese food-loving friends to Chinese restaurants

• read up Chinese restaurant recommendation websites written in Chinese by Chinese for Chinese

• read up small shady Chinese food recommendation websites by sinophiles like me

Big Western sites like Google Maps reviews and TripAdvisor are completely and utterly useless for this and will recommend you places in which poor non-Chinese which don’t know what real Chinese food is like.

If you go out on the street by yourself, you are very unlikely to find really good Chinese food since the enormous majority of Chinese restaurants are not real Chinese food.

If there are only Chinese clients inside the restaurant, it is a good indicator that it might be good. If all clients people are Western, run away.

Western people don’t know what good Chinese food is, so if you are not in a place that has a very large Chinese population, real Chinese food restaurants cannot survive, and won’t exist. This usually implies being in large cities of rich countries.

Beware of restaurant owner changes: if the menu looks a bit different, it has likely happened.

This is politically incorrect, but here goes: if the place looks as if it is maintained by more recent immigrants, and looks more modern, it is more likely to be good. There are however some venerable older uncles who have cooked well their entire lives and are still fine. Things tend water down across generations, and there was likely not enough real Chinese clientele for them to serve real Chinese food and survive in the past.

If a restaurant advertises itself as "Asian", it is less likely to be very good.

Conversely, restaurants that specialize in a single region of China are more likely to be good (bot not certainly good).

It is already difficult to do the cuisine for one part of China well, imagine for multiple countries.

Just beware of "Sichuan" restaurants: their cuisine is so well known even in the West that I’ve seen many not so good restaurants that describe themselves like that, even if the owners are from another region. But there are many good ones which really are from there as well.

For all restaurants, ask the waiter for suggestions. Tell him that you:

• want the most typical dishes, not what the foreign locals eat, but what the Chinese eat

• can eat spicy food, way more than any foreign local person can.

  The spice level you generally want is is "zhong1 la2" (medium spicy)

  If you can’t eat spicy, either learn or stop reading now and accept the fact that you will never eat good Chinese food.

• if the restaurant is from some region, ask for dishes from the region, and which are different from other regions.

  I was once given jiaozi (super popular dish everywhere in China which I buy frozen and eat every 3 days) in a Tibetan restaurant…​ Yes, I do believe Tibetans also eat jiaozi! :-)

• Speaking a little Chinese goes a long way towards convincing the owners that you can handle the real thing.

Only order dishes with meat. Those without are not worth the money / time. Aubergine is the exception.

Paris has one of the largest Chinese communities outside of China in the whole world centered in the 14eme arrondissement, plus a lot of Chinese students with money around.

As a result, you can find some of the best Chinese food in the world outside of China!

Bibilography:

• http://carnetdecroute.blogspot.fr

• http://cnkick.net/2013/09/10/les-meilleurs-restaurants-chinois-de-paris-le-guide-cn-kick/

• https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-Chinese-restaurants-in-Paris

• http://www.newsavour.com/restaurants/ Chinese only, Paris, website subsidiary of some larger Chinese group.

• Restaurant Sichuan (川里川外)

  17 Rue le Peletier, 75009 Paris

  Xianglaxie.

  Last checked: 2017/06

• Chez Yong (Ding Ding Xiang, 鼎鼎香)

  42, rue de la Colonie, 75013 Paris

  • shui zhu niu rou

  • dishes with intestines

• La Chine sur la langue (舌尖美味)

  163 rue Saint-Denis, 75002 Paris

  • Spicy soup with Chinese charcuteries. Ma la tang.

  • Large dry and thin bread. Jing dong da bing. 京东大饼. Picture.

• Quatre Amis (那家小馆)

  29 rue de Charenton, 75012 Paris

  • Fried octopus

  • Shui zhu niu rou

  • Anything with intestines

• Le Céleste Gourmand (福来居, fu lai ju)

  8 Rue de la Tacherie, 75004 Paris

• L’Orient d’Or (福源丰)

  22, Rue de trévise, 75009 Paris

  • Galettes croustillantes au canard (xiang su ya dai bing, 香酥鸭带饼)

  • Poisson pimentee (suan tang yu, 酸汤鱼)

  • Soupe aux cartilages de porc avec algues (hai dai pau gu tang, 海带排骨汤)

  Hunan style.

  25 euros / person.

• Carnet de Route

  57 Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, 75009 Paris

  Last checked: 2016/04

• 0 d’Attente (锅先生不等位)

  55 Boulevard Saint Marcel, 75013 Paris

  +33 9 81 49 68 06

  http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187147-d6984996-Reviews-0_d_Attente-Paris_Ile_de_France.html

  Like style of chairs and cutlery.

  Ironically, the service was not particularly fast as the name indicates. Normal, but not ultra fast as I imagined :-)

  lotus with rice (Nuo mi tang ou) and boeuf sechee (guo xian sheng …​) not very good, but baked fish and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meigan_cai kaorou were great.

  Last checked: 2016/02

• Autour du Yangtse (食尚煮意)

  12 Rue du Helder, 75009 Paris

  • Marmite de poisson et de tofu (豆花鱼)

  • Saliva chiken (口水鸡)

  • Aubergines farcies sur plaqua chauffante (铁板脆皮茄)

  http://www.autourduyangtse.com/

• Deux Fois Plus De Piment (绝代双椒)

  Address: 33 Rue Saint-Sébastien, 75011 Paris

  Sichuan style.

• Délices de Shandong (山东小馆)

  88 Boulevard de l’Hôpital, 75013 Paris

• Hakka Home

  3 Rue Voltaire, 75011 Paris

  Food from the Hakka people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people

  Most dishes are like other good Chinese restaurants in Paris, but there were a few different ones.

• Maison Dong (东馆)

  36 Rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris

  Last checked: 2017/04

• Royal Tching Tao (青岛人家)

  8 Rue du Bel-Air, 75012 Paris

  • Galettes croustillantes au canard. Shi zi tou.

  • Sweet fish （Song shu gui yu 松鼠桂鱼)

• Le Pont de Yunnan (滋味云南)

  15 Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, 75009

  Great food, but we had a bad service experience: got kicked out too early, even with a reservation.

• Tien Hiang (天香)

  14, rue Bichat, 75010 Paris

  Vegetarian food: most dishes are an imitation of a dish with meat.

  Not as good as the original meat for me, but very interesting and good for a change.

  Chinese vegetarians are rare. In theory, the origin of the food in this restaurant is Hong Kong Buddhism (Buddhist monks cannot eat meat, while other believers can.)

• Likafo (利口福酒家)

  39 Avenue de Choisy, 75013 Paris

  https://www.facebook.com/pages/LIKAFO-%E5%88%A9%E5%8F%A3%E7%A6%8F%E9%85%92%E5%AE%B6/139814799396

  Meigan cai roast pork (梅菜扣肉) http://img.epochtimes.com/i6/901120923161469.jpg

• Restaurant Sichuan (四川人家)

  31-33 Rue Descartes, 75005 Paris

  Perfect Fuqi feipian.

  Huiguorou is good not my style, I prefer with leek.

  Last checked: 2017/04

11.2.1.1. Paris tier 2

• Shanghai kitchen

  14 Cours Jean Ballard, 13001 Marseille, France

11.3.1.1. Little Wooden Hut 小木屋

Little Newport Street
WC2H 7JJ

11.3.1.2. Murger han

8A Sackville St
Mayfair, London
W1S 3EZ

11.3.1.3. London tier 2

Little Newport Street
WC2H 7JJ

11.3.2.1. Spring Restaurant 春天

66 Mill Rd
CB1 2AS

11.3.2.2. Seven Days 天天美食剑桥

66 Regent St
CB2 1DP

11.3.2.3. @72 China

72 Regent St
CB2 1DP

11.3.2.4. Golden House

12 Lensfield Rd
CB2 1EG

11.3.2.5. 1 + 1 Rougamo

84 Regent St
CB2 1DP

11.3.3.1. A Taste Of China 三秦百味

11.3.3.2. Xi’an

• China Red Restaurant

  3 Rockingham Gate, Sheffield S1 4JD, United Kingdom

  Last checked: 2016/06, shuizhuyu.

• Chuanxiangyuan Restaurante (川香园餐馆 )

  \R. Barão de Iguape, 47 - Liberdade, São Paulo - SP

  Eat the big fish dishes, they are worth it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuqi_feipian was not very good.

  Free tea was good.

  Rice could be better.

  Owners are actually from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianjin , not Sichuan, as implied by the 川 in the name of the restaurant. GF told me that those big fish dishes are typical from there.

  Last checked: 2016/01/09

Last checked: 2016/01

• Cuisine Szechuan

  2350 Rue Guy, Montréal, QC H3H 2M2, Canada

• Kanbai

  1110 Rue Clark, Montréal, QC H2Z 1K3, Canada Good

• Délice oriental

  1858 Rue Ste-Catherine O, Montréal, QC H3H 1M1

Not worth it:

• Chez Chili

  1050B rue Clark