Oct 31, 2012

Adjunct Professor Xiao Qiang Discusses China, Weibo, and Censorship

From Reuters

China's Twitter-Like Weibo Poses Danger, Opportunity for New Leaders

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - As China prepares for a generational power shift in the next two weeks, a similar shift is happening online that is testing the limits and displaying the evolution of China's legions of state-directed censors.

Since its launch three years ago, Weibo, China's version of Twitter, has become the country's water cooler, a place where nearly 300 million Internet users opine on everything from Korean soap operas to China's latest political intrigue.

It has posed a unique challenge for Chinese Communist Party leaders whose overarching goal is to maintain tight political and social control, while at the same time wanting to give their citizens a conduit to blow off steam....

"If a party secretary is criticized, it is hard for them to go all the way to Beijing and say ‘please delete everything on Weibo about me'," said Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at [the School of Information at] UC Berkeley who founded news website China Digital Times that keeps an updated list of banned words on Weibo.

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Last updated:

October 4, 2016