Discussion of the Libya revolution (or Egypt or Tunisia for that matter) on any social forum in China is limited, but not completely banned outright. Most posts are deleted. The ones remain do not directly mention the Chinese government or analogies to China. However, on one forum, a post titled "salute to Peru!" was allowed to remain, and was followed by more than 17,000 comments. That is more than 1100 pages of comments. And it has been viewed more than 1.6 million times. Let's take a peek at Chinese's creative ways to get around censors.
The said post is here. It was posted on Feb 23, 2011. The poster said
Salute to Peru!
My other post was just deleted by the moderator. That's alright. I'll just say one sentence and leave.
An old news: May 19, Peru parliament building will lower its flag to mourn those who died in the Wenchuan earthquake. Peru government May 16 decreed that May 19 will be a national day of mourning, to remember those who died in the Wenchuan earthquake in China. This is the first time Peru declares a national day of mourning for foreigners.
Today, Peru is another first.
But the poster did not mention what this "first" was. The first few commenters were quite puzzled, asking "what happened?" or "why?" One commenter replied with a vague "world civilization", while another asked "what is going on? Why has every word become sensitive word? What happened to -- flower?" ("jasmine" has been banned on Chinese blogs since the jasmine revolution started in Tunisia).
Next, a commenter posted a photo of JFK with his quote
Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us!
Then someone explained that this has to do with the "big white robe" (referring to arabian traditional dress). Peru was the first nation to break diplomatic relation with Qaddafi. The subsequent comments referred to this way of talking as speaking "martian".
As the pages grow, the language becomes clearer. After a few hundred pages, people started to paste in wholesale western media's report on Libya. More and more comments started point towards China. Someone said,
Support! Next time, it will be the Libyan people supporting us.
Interestingly, there were also comments about Taiwan, like this one:
North Africa tells us why Taiwan is important to China:
The keeper of traditional Chinese culture
The seed of democratic idea
The leader by example
And this was followed by the reply
More than that, once dictatorship is removed, only Taiwan can fill the vacuum, and bring real democracy.
Chinese people are pinning their hope on Taiwan.
And let me end with this commenter's sentence:
Dawn: through the fog, between the water and the clouds, I see the ship of our time sails towards us, I see the bright light from the torch that Lady Liberty is holding...