A Chinese musician famous for playing a two-stringed fiddle,
a 1994 Hollywood drama about two prison inmates, a United Airlines flight bound
for Washington and the initials of a certain famous international news
organization -- what do they have in common?
If you try to search "Abing," "the Shawshank
Redemption," "UA898" and "CNN" on Sina Weibo, China's
equivalent of Twitter, you receive this terse message: "According to
relevant laws and policies, results are not displayed."
These terms have joined a fast-growing list of keywords
blocked by Chinese censors as they try to prevent the public from obtaining
news on a prominent human rights activist who recently escaped his more than 18
months of house arrest in eastern China.
Chen Guangcheng is now in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, and
American and Chinese officials are scrambling to resolve his situation, his
friends and supporters have said. In a video posted online Friday, the blind
activist recounted the brutal treatment he and his family received during
confinement.
While Chen's plight and dramatic escape have made top
headlines around the world; news outlets in China, all of which are
state-controlled, have mostly ignored the story. Major web portals and social networking
sites, though not state-owned, have to comply with strict government censorship
rules -- or risk being shut down. After launching a campaign to clean up
"rampant online rumors," Chinese authorities in late March ordered
the country's leading micro-blogging sites -- including Sina Weibo -- to
disable their comment function for three days…..
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/30/world/asia/china-chen-internet/index.ht