You’re Forbidden to Say “Canadian French” on China’s Internet

Don’t bother posting the phrase “Canadian French” on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.  Censors will probably discover your words and delete them in minutes.

Why aren’t those words allowed?  The answer has nothing to do with Canadian French people.

It’s a well-known fact that the Internet in China is severely censored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  Hundreds of words are forbidden on Weibo, especially words that people might use to criticize the communist regime.

For example, the word “tank” has been erased from Weibo because it has to do with the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, according to the Epoch Times.

Jason Q. Ng of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab wrote a book called “Blocked on Weibo” that lists 150 of these words.  Ng suspects that 100,000 people or more are working on censoring the words, he told the Epoch Times.  He explained that there are almost 600 million Weibo users, and sometimes their forbidden keywords are blocked within seconds after they post them.

When somebody mentioned his book’s title on Weibo, the words were deleted within minutes, according to the Epoch Times.

And if you dare to post “Canadian French,” it will meet the same fate.  According to the Epoch Times, this is because the Chinese words for “Canadian French” are “Jia Na Da Fa Yu,” which includes the words “Da Fa,” which are part of “Falun Dafa,” the name of the traditional Chinese spiritual practice that the CCP is persecuting.

You can’t post “Renmin University of China Law School,” either, because it also has the characters “Da Fa.”

Falun Dafa is a meditation practice based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.  When the practice became enormously popular in China in the 1990s, the CCP started getting nervous.  If everyone believed in the spiritual principles of Falun Dafa, no one would be left to believe in communism, which promotes things like fighting and atheism.

So the CCP began a Nazi-style persecution which they have continued to this day – arresting Falun Dafa practitioners, torturing them in labor camps, and censoring information about the practice (including, apparently, anything that contains a piece of the name.)

Sorry, Canadian French folks – you might not be appearing on Weibo for a while.

Source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/293661-why-the-words-canadian-french-dont-appear-on-chinas-weibo/