# New Chinese Network Jargons

Xinyuan Chen ${ }^{1}$ Sumiyo Nishiguchi ${ }^{2}$
Graduate School of Modern Commerce, Otaru University of Commerce
Center for Language Studies, Otaru University of Commerce ${ }^{2}$
g1202252006@edu.otaru-uc.ac.jp
nishiguchi@res.otaru-uc.ac.jp

## Introduction

China is well known for its Internet- monitoring and censorship efforts. As Internet technology and the online culture develop, the Chinese government continues its efforts to control content and communications. In online exchanges, As of April 20 over 2,000 Chinese people have been convicted by police for their words. To avoid detention, Chinese are using a new form of language in their online communications to avoid censorship. Firstly , I will present the background of web censorship, the mechanisms of web censorship, the rationale and examples of new alternative languages. Finally , I will create a new dictionary for the new language to facilitate understanding the meaning.

## 1 Background

Since the start of the 21 Century, we have witnessed a rapid expansion of surveillance state in China. China started to develop its surveillance capacity as early as 1998 when the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) initialized the Golden Shield (GS) project - an allencompassing informatization platform designed to facilitate police operations. By 2006, the Chinese police had built a nationwide intranet infrastructure that connects all levels of public security bureaus (from the MPS at the center to about 3,000 county-level bureaus).

In China, anyone who provides information to the public through the Internet, publishes works online, posts news articles, distributes audio-visual materials, or operates an Internet bulletin board, message forum, or chat room must first receive a permit from the appropriate government agency. Furthermore, any content that someone wants to publish is required to be pre-approved by the government or acquired from governmentauthorized sources. Ordinary information exchange also has to pass the platform review, if the word blocking is triggered it will not be able to send information or the information sent is blocked. Next paragraph, I will describe how the review is conducted and what types of text will be removed.

## 2 Conviction for speech

Conviction for speech refers to cracking down on crackdowns such as being convicted, detained, dismissed, dismissed, blocked accounts, and suppressed by public opinion for making certain speeches. To avoid being convicted for their words, the Chinese public must avoid digital surveillance systems on the Internet. A new mode of communication is born on the Internet. In China, people are often arrested by the police for comments made online, usually for 1-15 days in detention. There is no clear standard for what kind of speech will result in an arrest, and it is usually left to the discretion of the local police.

## 2.1 Electronic monitoring range

The Chinese government monitors cell phone SMS, email, computer security system, QQ, WeChat, skype, $\mathrm{msn}$, and other programs in different technical ways. Yu (2008) And all Chinese apps now monitor users' information delivery. And big software companies also put out blocked word guides to make it easy for advertisers to avoid these words to prevent accidental deletion of information.

Even private message exchanges (whether text delivery or voice calls) such as WeChat and QQ chats
are monitored. When a keyword that is not allowed to be sent is detected during message delivery, your message will not be sent, and the voice call being made will be cut off immediately. But the troubling thing is that no one knows exactly what the blocked keywords are. I will then go into detail about several speech control scenarios.

## 2.2 Speech control examples

## 2.2.1 Current Affairs News

When there is some news in China, the public is not allowed to spread or discuss it, and the places in this current affairs news, the actions become the key words to be watched.
- e.g. On the night of 7 August 2012, a traffic patrol brigade in a city in Henan Province, China, was pursuing a construction forklift truck when the pursuit became too violent, resulting in the death of four people and the injury of ten others when the truck ran into a park napping area.

Once the matter became known, the local moderator of Tianya Forum posted in several forums, making reasonable demands, only to be secretly arrested by local police on August 14 and criminally detained on August 15 for extortion of the government.

A police accident resulted in a death, although this is a current news story. But people are not allowed to spread.

## 2.2.2 Political Related

The widespread publicity of this incident has instead led people to start affectionately calling Xi Jinping as Xi Baozi.

Baozi is a very common nickname in China, and almost everyone had someone in their childhood class whose nickname was Baozi. It is not a derogatory term, but is usually used to describe round-faced, naive people. And in China, calling someone by their nickname is a symbol of closeness.
- In November 2010, Quan Ping, a student returning from studying in the United States He was arrested because he wore a cultural shirt with Xi Baozi on it. In June 2017, Jing Yingjun from Hunan, was arrested at his door and detained for 7 days for insulting a party leader for posting the word $\mathrm{Xi}$ Baozi in a group of classmates on WeChat.
- After this incident, Xi Baozi was officially identified as Xi Jinping's code name. And the names of both baozi and baozi store became banned words.

As of May 6, 2020, Chinese social media, Xiaohongshu, has published a sensitive thesaurus of 564 words about Xi Jinping. Including the words combined in a sentence, 35,467 combined words about Xi Jinping are blocked. Famous Chinese singer baritone, Liu Keqing, because of his looks and Xi Jinping have a few similarities. He was reported during the TikTok live and was permanently blocked.

## 2. 2. 3 Negative words

Any negative words are not allowed to be issued in China, probably to give young people a healthy and safe online environment. However, because of the usage of Chinese, a large amount of correct information is also blocked.
- The word 'smile' is banned as a game id because it contains 'sm'.
- The Stray Dog Association posts adoption information online.
- -有小狗, 共五只
- -There are dogs, total five.
- Because total in Chinese is “共', its same as communist party in Chinese. This information has dog and communist party(狗, 共). So it be blocked. even though there is a comma.
- eg3 A website maintainer called by police said his website needed a facelift because of sensitive words. After searching all night, he found where the problem
- - 我有一台独立服务器.
- I have a dedicated server.
- In Chinese, the quantitative word to describe a
computer is 台, is same as Taiwan. And the meaning of dedicated also can be Independent. So it has Taiwan independent.

If it were manually reviewed, these words would certainly not be misunderstood, but in order to improve the efficiency of the review, the AI review would make it impossible to send even the simplest words.

So, it is exceedingly difficult for Chinese people to use traditional Chinese to communicate on the Internet, so a lot of new languages have been invented to express themselves while avoiding sensitive words. I will add them in the last appendix. (Some of these new languages are also blocked)

## 3 Reflections

The Chinese web's blocked word system has caused a lot of inconvenience to Chinese people in their daily communication.

China has the world's largest online market, many foreigners will also want to go to China to make money on the Internet, so it is very important to master sensitive words

But it has also been used positively by many smart people. For example, because China's network has a firewall, many people will illegally transport YouTube videos to China for oh-so-profitable purposes, and copyright lawsuits are difficult to handle when crossing borders. However, many youtubers have found that by adding some sensitive words to their videos, they can't be posted in China to defend their copyright.

## 4 Reference

1. Federal prosecutors accuse Zoom executive of working with Chinese government to surveil users and suppress video calls. Washington Post. [2022-04-23

2. China censorship leaks outside Great Firewall via root server. Ars Technica. 2010-03 [2011-05-19].
3. Xiao, Muyi; Mozur, Paul; Beltran, Gray. 购买影响

力 : 中国如何操纵 Facebook 和 Twitter. The New

York Times. 2021-12-20

4. Chile NIC explains Great Firewall incident. [2019-05$16]$.

5. China's Internet Censorship Anthem Is Revealed, Then Deleted. Sinosphere Blog. 2015-02-12 [2021-10$14]$.

6. Chile NIC explains Great Firewall incident. [2019-05$16]$.

7. Zhong, Raymond; Mozur, Paul; Krolik, Aaron; Kao, Jeff. Leaked Documents Show How China's Army of Paid Internet Trolls Helped Censor the Coronavirus. ProPublica. 2020-12-19 [2021-10-14]

8. 《中国数字时代》真理部指令专栏. [2016-01-26]

9. https://twitter.com/speechfreedomcn

10. 国务院组织机构. 中国政府网. [2022-08-09]

## 5 Appendix

I created an online dictionary to include blocked words in Chinese, and replacements for those blocked words.

https://openpro.dict.naver.com/_ivo/dictmain?dictID=a0 71bd81906a4ac6b098a04203d1c8de

## Chinese Internet Jargons

## Deng xiaoping

高利亚

邓布利多

广安人

总设计师

火枪

稻上飞

矮子
 Xinyuan Chen ${ }^{1}$ Sumiyo Nishiguchi ${ }^{2}$ Graduate School of Modern Commerce, Otaru University of Commerce Center for Language Studies, Otaru University of Commerce ${ }^{2}$ g1202252006@edu.otaru-uc.ac.jp nishiguchi@res.otaru-uc.ac.jp  