Chinese censorship: herding cats on the Internet

Search terms that are censored in China:

�Tibet�
�Tiananmen Square protests�
�Carrot�

Apaprently �carrot� has a Chinese character that is the same as the surname of President Hu Jintao.

The New York Times has run a great story by Shiho Fukada about Internet censorship in China, where the effort to control the content seen by 384 million Internet users who have 181 million blogs is like �herding cats.�

�This is China�s censorship machine, part George Orwell, part Rube Goldberg: an information sieve of staggering breadth and fineness, yet full of holes; run by banks of advanced computers, but also by thousands of Communist Party drudges; highly sophisticated in some ways, remarkably crude in others,� Fukada wrote.

Apparently there is some push back by Chinese citizens.

Interesting read.

�China�s Censors Tackle and Trip Over the Internet�

Tom Kelchner