The government of China has set up a system of internet censorship, intending to block internet users within Mainland China from accessing material deemed undesirable, such as foreign news sites, sites with dissident political content, many Hong Kong and Taiwanese websites, and pornography. However, some people in mainland China are buying software for them to access Google, Facebook,etc. This software is generally not very expensive. They use a version of Virtual Private Network or VPN to access those sites.

One part of the block is to remove some websites from search results on search engines. These search engines include both the local version of international search engines (e.g. Google.cn, Bing) as well as domestic ones (e.g. Baidu, 360 Search). Many world-renowned websites are removed from the search result, such as all porn sites, some western news websites like The New York Times and Bloomberg, and a few sites in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In addition, access to a handful of US-based universities are blocked, as these websites often contain discussions regarding issues deemed politically sensitive by the Communist Party of China.

Some words are sensitive. Attempting to search for such a term may result in the turning on of the "safe search" feature, and limiting the result pages in China. However, the general internet traffic filter may interrupt a HTTP connection between the browser and the server if it detects intensive sensitive words in plaintext, as it does with other protocols, such as the Post Office Protocol, and any sequence connection to the server is also denied. This filter affects self-censored search engines, since their censorship is filtering websites, not keywords. This system is described in greater detail at Internet censorship in mainland China.

The system is highly flexible. Certain words may be blocked during politically-sensitive periods of the year, while others may be blacklisted for just a short time due to some contemporary relevant issue.

Any sequence containing the term is also blocked. For example, since 法輪 / 法轮 (falun, or "dharma chakra") is blocked, so are 法轮功 (Falun Gong) and 轉法輪 / 转法轮 ("Turning dharma chakra"). Also, only the Chinese terms are blocked, while the English terms are freely searchable (unless specified otherwise).

This list is not intended to be exhaustive. Most were verified for Simplified Chinese searches for the Baidu search engine. It is known that trying from different locations inside and outside China, on different search engines, and at different times can yield different results.

Because Google has decided to re-direct its Google.cn domain to Google.com.hk, censorship by Google is far less relevant.

Words

General concepts

Chinese phrases are given as traditional / simplified where they differ.

Events

Xinjiang and Tibet

疆獨 / 疆独 (Xinjiang independence)

藏獨 / 藏独 (Tibetan independence)

達賴 / 达赖 (dalai, as in Dalai Lama)

Dissident groups

Since 民主 (democracy) is blocked, any political group with that name is also blocked. This includes both dissident groups like 中國民主正義黨 / 中国民主正义党 (Chinese Democracy Justice Party) , 民主中國 / 民主中国 (China Democracy) and government-sanctioned groups like 中國民主同盟 / 中国民主同盟 (China Democratic League)

天安門母親 / 天安门母亲 (Tiananmen Mothers)

Dissidents

Politicians

Dissident news

Falun Gong

法輪 / 法轮 ( falun , or "dharma chakra")

, or "dharma chakra") 法倫 / 法伦 ( falun )

) 輪功 / 轮功 ( lun gong , the second and third characters of Falun Gong)

, the second and third characters of Falun Gong) 輪大 / 轮大 ( lun da , the second and third characters of Falun Dafa)

, the second and third characters of Falun Dafa) 大法 ( dafa , or "Great Law")

, or "Great Law") 洪志 ( hongzhi , given name of Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi)

, given name of Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi) 弟子 (disciple)

真善忍 (Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance) — the principles of the Falun Gong practice

the principles of the Falun Gong practice 明慧 (Minghui, official website of Falun Gong)

falun

hongzhi

minghui not blocked : 王文怡 (Wenyi Wang)



Taiwan

Pornography

花花公子 (Playboy)

Others

References

Further reading

Wikinews has related news: Bi-directional Censorship from the Great Firewall of China