反中共政治宣传库。Anti-Chinese government propaganda. 常见问答集新闻集饭店音乐建议。卐习万岁卐FAQ, news compilation and restaurant and music recommendations. 卐 Heil Xi 卐.

住在中国大陆有真名用户或者用中国邮箱的网友请别给星星,不然你要被警察请喝茶。先注册一个Gmail/Protonmail匿名用户才来,最好也要用VPN/Tor/ShadowSocks. Friends who live in China and have real name on account or who use a Chinese email provider, please don’t star this repo, or else the police might pay you a visit some day. First create an anonymous account with Gmail/Protonmail instead (non Chinese email provider), preferably from behind VPN/Tor/ShadowSocks. 你不是一个人。未来需要隐藏的将是今天的五毛,而不是你。You are not alone. In the future, it is the wumaos who will have to hide, not you. See also: What should pro-democracy Chinese living in China do about the dictatorship? 想要民主住在中国大陆的人应该干什么?.

Xi Jinping The Governance of China photo

1. About (关于)

This repo has the following goals:

GitHub collateral freedom
Figure 1. With HTTPS censors can’t know which path you access. Featuring Xi Jinping BDSM at cosplay fair.

2. Copypasta

Here’s an image/sentence copypasta/summary of key events for the Screen name keyword attack (网名审查关键字攻击).

Another advantage of this is that since it comes first in the repo, it ensures that key elements show up on github.com despite file size cutups: https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1610.

Each summary section contains a link to the main section, which contains sources and description of each image.

编程随想 Programthink

Programthink

社会主义核心价值观 Core socialist values

Core socialist values

水浒传 Water margin

Water Margin tribute to dissidents

我喜欢我的独裁制度 I like my dictatorship

Anonymous middle fingers
Immoral and uneducated
Immoral and uneducated en
Pig politics Chinese
Rebel pepper pig can%27t eat democracy cartoon translated to English by Ciro Santilli

六四事件 Tiananmen square protests 1989

Music!

Tiananmen students sitting
Tank Man
Tiananmen crushed dead

法轮功 Falun Gong 1999 70M believer religion banned

Falun Gong Guangzhou
Falun Gong lady silenced

新疆改造中心 Xinjiang re-education camps 2018

Xinjiang prisoners sitting identified
Xinjiang prisoners march
Uyghur sale website
Xinjiang camp in camp

小熊维尼 Winnie the Pooh 2018

Xi Pooh Obama
Xi Abe Pooh
Xi Jinping heart

郝海东 Hao Haidong Chinese soccer superstar turns against the CCP 2020

Hao Haidong kick

冠状病毒审查 Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus

Li Wenliang covid

基督迫害 Christian persecution 2018

Church demolition
Last Supper Mao
Pope CCP deal

LGBT权利 The suppression of homosexuality

Tiananmen lesbian kiss
Addicted bed

996.ICU

996ICU

Gay Putin

Gay Putin

The poisoning of Alexei Navalny 2020

Navalny hospital sitting

Vajiralongkorn Hamtaro

Side by side comparison between Thai king Vajiralongkorn and Hamtaro
Thai king crop top

3. Mirrors of this page (此网页的镜像)

You can download the webpage locally from GitHub at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/archive/gh-pages.zip

Media such as images are not stored in this repository, but rather at https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship-media to keep the lightweight clone. That downloaded HTML will read images from that repository, e.g. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship-media/master/Xi_Jinping_The_Governance_of_China_photo.jpg. But we’ve learnt after creating that maybe the raw.githubusercontent.com subdomain is censored: GitHub censored subdomains (GitHub 审查的子域). If anyone can confirm, we will start using another image provider by default.

Clone locally with Git using GitHub images:

git clone https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship
cd china-dictatorship
git checkout gh-pages
xdg-open README.html

Build it yourself:

bundle install
make
xdg-open README.html

Build and view the multipage version:

make multipage
xdg-open out/multipage/README.html

Build with GitLab served images:

git clone https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship
cd china-dictatorship
make MEDIA=MEDIA=https://gitlab.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship-media/-/raw/master

Build with local images:

git clone https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship
git clone https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship-media
cd china-dictatorship
make MEDIA=../china-dictatorship-media

or build to use GitLab images:

Given GitHub censored subdomains (GitHub 审查的子域), this might be the only way to view the images from China.

The cool thing about Git is that we can maintain several mirrors on multiple websites very easily:

Ones that went down:

It is really interesting to see how many people star the GitHub repository, and then a few minutes later they think about how they might get put in jail, and then unstar it. Talk about Chilling effect (寒蝉效应)! But yes, for the love of God, please stay safe: What should pro-democracy Chinese living in China do about the dictatorship? 想要民主住在中国大陆的人应该干什么?.

The perfect solution might be to download all images and upload them to https://github.com/cirosantilli/media since GitHub content does not go through Camo, we have to see if such images don’t fail to load as often.

A few NPM/Git CDNs can also be used to bypass subdomain blocks, and some actually render HTML with the correct content type. Lists of such CDNs:

Some we’ve found, with HTML content type:

Without HTML content type:

We’ve also tried to use jsfiddle like-services, but most don’t work well:

3.1. Software package mirrors (软件包管理器镜像)

We also have a NPM Node.js package https://www.npmjs.com/package/china-dictatorship. After installing NPM, you can be use it as:

npm i -g china-dictatorship
china-dictatorship > README.html

This forces China to also block/curate package managers to block this repo. The package is already available in the following NPM Chinese mirrors, both which were blocked at some point:

There is actually a cnpm tool to install from Chinese mirrors: https://github.com/cnpm/cnpm.

We also managed to upload a Python PyPi package at: https://pypi.org/project/china-dictatorship/ Is as:

python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade china-dictatorship
china-dictatorship.py > README.html

This package was deleted by pypi in 2023 without any warning or notification:

and re-attempting upload fails with:

ERROR    HTTPError: 400 Bad Request from https://upload.pypi.org/legacy/
         The name 'china-dictatorship' isn't allowed. See https://pypi.org/help/#project-name for more information.

Bastanrds and Cowards.

Like NPM, this will also have Chinese mirrors that will need to be censored by their admins ovrview https://titanwolf.org/Network/Articles/Article?AID=25a20c20-c97b-4bfe-af67-760861343658 :

We later found on Google by chance that libraries.io picked it up and rendered the README.adoc nicely as well: https://libraries.io/pypi/china-dictatorship (archive). This is why packaging is a good idea.

A programmatic interface is also exposed on those packages, making it easy to quickly add a --china option to your project, e.g. from Python:

import china_dictatorship
assert "Tiananmen Square protests" in china_dictatorship.get_data()

print(china_dictatorship.get_data())

or from Node.js:

const china_dictatorship = require('china-dictatorship');
if (!china_dictatorship.get_data().includes("Tiannmen Square protests")) throw 0;

console.log(china_dictatorship.get_data());

You have to do the assert after the imports because otherwise Chinese mirrors could replace the real package with dummy packages to not break imports, as was already done once at https://registry.npm.taobao.org/china-dictatorship.

This outputs the rendered HTML, which end users should the pipe into a file:

./your-program --china > README.html
xdg-open README.html

Concrete examples:

These also offer great plausible deniability: a citizen in China could always argue that they were just interested in the software itself, and had no choice but to download it.

TODO: create an Ubuntu PPA and Ruby gem as well.

Create tags,and update all mirrors in one go with: push-mirrors:

sudo apt install python3-setuptools
python3 -m pip install --user setuptools wheel twine
./push-mirrors

In particular, that script calls push:

./push

which is more lightweight and pushes just to GitHub and GitLab Pages, so we are going to be using that more often to avoid overloading package managers too much.

./push is used to publish every commit.

There is no need to update package versions or add git tags, all of that gets done automatically by the script!

See also: Protestware.

3.1.1. GitHub proxies (GitHub的代理)

Another source of China-specific mirroring of this project are GitHub proxies, https://linuxpip.org/github-in-china/ contains an overview:

4. GitHub repositories with censored information (政治敏感的GitHub库)

For lists of censored information outside of GitHub see: Lists of material censored in China.

For content outside of GitHub: Lists of material censored in China.

Mentioned in other sections:

Possibly not censored, but sensitive:

Not mentioned in other sections:

Interesting users:

Non-information but also interesting:

TODO evaluate:

Reasonable topics:

Sensitive but not necessarily censored, maybe re-evaluate:

4.2. Terminus2049 (端点星计划, 2049bbs)

Jekyll GitHub Pages repository that saves full text copies of censored articles:

本仓库存放被删文章

This repository stores deleted articles.

Also accompanies a dynamic forum https://2049bbs.xyz/ which appears to be where content for the static pages gets discussed and brought up. But it possible that the website has been compromised and is leaking identity of users. At some point, https://2049bbs.xyz went down. Live https://web.archive.org/web/20200719151022/https://2049bbs.xyz/ dead: https://archive.vn/JFqCJ

The "Terminus" in the repo name seems to be a reference to Isaac Asimov’s fictional Terminus planet which is called 端点星 in Chinese, but it is not clear where the 2049 comes from in that context. Forgetting the Chinese name, Terminus2049 could be a reference to the fictional "World War Terminus" from the Blade Runner 2049 (2019) movie, which also explains the 2049.

First commit on 2018-04-27, GitHub pages domain blocked in China at least since 2019-03 according to GreatFire (自由微博): https://zh.greatfire.org/search/all/https%3A//terminus2049.github.io but not in GitHub gov-takedowns (由其各自政府在某个国家审查的仓库的GitHub官方列表) as of 2020-04.

The full post list can be seen most conveniently at: https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io/tree/master/_posts The number of articles is insane, usually several every day.

Most articles appear to be taken from recent news at the time of writting, although there are a few from before the repo started. As of 2020-04, the oldest article was from 2016 MeToo events reported by Yue Xin (岳昕), some other topics include:

They use Jekyll tags a lot, which makes for a good grouping of the topics.

In 2020-04-25, it was reported that three Beijing-based contributors were arrested during Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus (2019冠状病毒病早期迹象审查):

People:

In 2020-06-12 their families received calls saying that they had been charged with Picking quarrels and provoking trouble (寻衅滋事罪):

How their identities were found:

Terrible opsec…​ they used real name GitHub emails on early commits, including the institutional university address, before they started better opsec under https://github.com/TerminusBot / terminus2049@protonmail.com

https://github.com/thphd/2047 is a project to restore terminus, live at https://2047.name Ciro mention at: https://2047.name/e/76182458 by https://2047.name/u/5155 which is similar to a Mohu (膜乎) mention, so they seem to share the database? Who knows what’s the relation between all those Pincong (品葱, uncensored forum) lookalikes. TODO that website shows an ICP license 非经营性网站备案 (2000)? Very confusingly also mirrored at https://pincong.org e.g. https://pincong.org/t/10219/https://2047.name/t/10219[], which is very similar to Pincong (品葱, uncensored forum)'s address. Related account: https://github.com/PincongBot

https://2047.name has a links section at: https://2047.name/links shown on the sideboard, containg links of interest. Some all not are very China specific.

https://2047.name/register registration requires an invitation code.

https://github.com/2049bbs/2049bbs.github.io / https://2049bbs.github.io/ maintains another archive up to 2019-03-03.

Chenmei Caowei
Figure 2. Side-by-side photos of Chen Mei (陈玫) and Cai Wei (蔡伟) from Terminus2049 (端点星计划, 2049bbs). Source.

4.4. duty-machine GitHub account (责任机器GitHub用户)

Anonymous user with automation setup such that anyone can request certain webpages to be copied on to GitHub anonymously through a separate website, notably:

The project claims to have been inspired by Terminus2049 (端点星计划, 2049bbs), but hopefully they will have better operational security.

Unfortunately, it was found that the project could be used by malicious users to at mention spam GitHub users: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/192, let’s see if they patch it. Edit: the did.

4.4.1. duty-machine porn attack (责任机器色情攻击)

https://github.com/duty-machine/duty-machine/tree/d6ee9ff8e504b863352f163f7e143e84161ac349 explains that the automatic submission had to be taken down because Wumao (五毛) uploaded porn which is against GitHub’s content policy.

Related idiotic attempt on China Dictatorship (中国独裁统治) project: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/500 where user crazy3523 uploaded some of Ciro’s own existing anti-China images, and tried to pretend to be anti-CCP, and slipped a few child porn softcore in the middle hoping Ciro wouldn’t see them. Their email was <crazy3523@protonmail.com>. They even went as far as creating another apparently anti-CCP post at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/386 previously.

This highlights the following ideas:

  • it is impossible to have uncurated anyonymous content on GitHub

  • censorship of non-political issues can seep into censorship of political issues

4.5. Zhao Heming (召赫名)

A few accounts were created by this pseudonym, e.g.:

Much more sanely encoded/formatted/rendered versions of the articles can be found at:

Both Zhao Heming repos contain reproductions of two manifestos are pasted together on a single file, and somewhat broken encoding.

Ciro noticed that thoe repos attracted an incredible ammount of Wumao (五毛) on the comments, despite having very simple copy pasted content, it was very impressive!!! Ciro was jealous, and added some anti-wumao comments in. On commits:

https://github.com/zhaohmng/-21-/issues/416#issuecomment-784939665 "为什么这个屎一样的东西会出现在我个人主页左侧的repositories中,那里不是应该只有自己的项目才会出现吗?有办法屏蔽它吗?还是github故意的?" explains why so many people come comment in the repository: it is because it appears on the "Explore repositories" repository suggestions which show on the side bar of your GitHub homepage, and on searches. This was also mentioned at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/201 originally titled " 一搜索中文就跑出这屌鬼玩意,爱玩政治去竞选总统啊,笨,死扑街". Ciro feels that that Chinese people might use GitHub search much more than Western people because their search engines are shit due to Censorship (审查), Censorship makes countries poorer (审查使国家更穷) comes vibrantly to mind.

After further inspection, taught understood that repository descriptions given to GitHub can be really huge for SEO: they had pasted the entire 21st century text there.

So Ciro attempted the same approach, and pasted all of https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/blob/master/赫连禾-21世纪新政宣言.md, https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/blob/master/郝雪森-三朝罪恶元凶王沪宁.adoc and https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/blob/master/魏京生-第五个现代化.md in there on 2021-03-23, and the effect was dramatic: an immediate 4x more views on the following day according to https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/graphs/traffic (40 unique visitors to 100 on a Wednesday), and a few wumao comments. And a wumao soon confirmed that it was working directly: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/201.

Ciro believes that this is due to two reasons:

  • there aren’t so many good Chinese repositories to compete with

  • perhaps more importantly, Chinese language does not have spaces, which makes implementing search for it more difficult, because if you hit all the characters, even if they are not part of the search words, it also gets counted as a hit

This can be automated with: description.sh.

Further optimizations using description by using GitHub-Chinese-Top-Charts (GitHub中文排行榜):

git clone https://github.com/kon9chunkit/GitHub-Chinese-Top-Charts
./description

this does some processing to increase density creates a BOMB:

As of late 2022, Ciro noticed that GitHub had limited maximum repository description lengths to something way way smaller like 512 characters. Ciro’s old descriptions were kept, but they cannot be edited anymore unless reduced to 512 characters. So they will likely remain unchanged forever now.

Ciro started using that one instead to see if it was going to be more effective on 2021-03-28. First it hit a peak of 168 visitors on Monday 2021-03-29, and then fell back to 90 and 81 on the following days, so similar to the previous Chinese political input. It is very hard to understand why the first day was so different.

It also includes:

  • https://github.com/trending?since=monthly&spoken_language_code=zh trending Chinese repositories

    A large part of those projects falls in the following categories:

    • interview preparation. Competition is of course cutthroat with such a large population.

    • collections of interesting things Chinese like repositories or blog posts

      but it also does feel like China might be building up more basic infrastructure as open source than in the west, where things developped closed source first on pre-Internet days, and somewhat stayed that way. That’s a cool thing about China.

Furthermore, Ciro later noticed that under GitHub’s settings, there is a "Preferred spoken language" box described as "We’ll use this language preference to filter the trending repository lists on Explore and our Trending Repositories page." Therefore, the secret to get lots of hits is to add Chinese programming keywords to the repository description string.

New issues:

On top commented/liked issues:

The first is "21世纪新政宣言" (New System Declaration for the 21st Century).

It proposes a peaceful reunification of China with Taiwan (Republic of China, 台湾, 中華民國) under their specified political system described in 12 paragraphs. This system is a reformed type of Western democracy, which the manifesto also criticize downsides of.

The manifesto is dated drafted 2019.8.6, and several versions have different update dates and revision numbers, e.g. our copy is dated 7th edition of 2020.6.19. TODO what is canonical?

The manifesto provides an email "wanghunn@gmx.com" for those who signed it to send the signed version to, and describes the author as male 70 years old Chinese person.

TODO what does: "起草人:赫连禾" mean?

The title presumably refers to Wang Huning (王沪宁).

Wikipedia mentions:

Wang is believed to have been one of the principal architects behind the official political ideologies of three paramount leaders: "Three Represents" by Jiang Zemin, the Scientific Development Concept by Hu Jintao, and the Chinese Dream and Xi Jinping Thought (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想, 2017) of Xi Jinping.

so it must be about him.

The manifesto is divided into 23 numbered headers which appear to be independently published texts later collected. It is signed by 郝雪森 (Hao Xuesen) 2016-09-10. One of the sections gives the email: haoxuesen@gmx.com[].

4.5.2. GitHub search pollution reports (GitHub 搜索污染报告)

Others:

4.6. Bot + issue mention attack

In March 2021, this repo had a traffic search spike for: "Search · 联级选择器"

This term refers to https://ant.design/components/cascader-cn/ which seems to be a CSS live selector

Someone actually used wumao techniques mentioned at:

to attack that repo:

TODO which exact GitHub action did they rely on? That repo currently has a https://github.com/ant-design/ant-design-pro/actions/workflows/issue-open-check.yml Issue Open Check GitHub action sample run: https://github.com/ant-design/ant-design-pro/runs/2209272410?check_suite_focus=true we see the similarity issue analysis thing, but how could that have worked more precisely to link across repos? Asked at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/203

4.7. Wumao GitHub repos (由五毛的GitHub库)

In other sections:

Not in other setions:

Related:

5. FAQ (常见问答集)

5.1. Why attack websites with censored keywords? (用审查词攻击网站有什么用呢?)

This would then end Censorship (审查).

And then Ciro believes that this would also end the dictatorship.

The keyword attacks increase the cost of censorship.

If commies censor things, they will get worse IT technology, and thus become less rich and militarily powerful.

Since all they care about, like any other politicians, is power, the only way to make them stop censorship is to make the cost of censorship higher than not censoring.

Without the threat that China will be less technologically, and therefore militarily advanced, there is no incentive for the CCP to destroy the firewall.

The goal is to put them in a position where they have to choose between either:

but not both, since having both means that they will start WW3 and destroy humanity.

And if they decide to destroy the dictatorship, Ciro wants to help China become the most awesome country on Earth.

Related attack: Photobombing-like attacks.

5.1.1. Does Ciro Santilli want to harm the Chinese programmers? 三西猴想要伤害中国程序员吗?

No.

This is not a revenge of any kind.

Ciro knows that he is harming you in the short term, and he doesn’t like that.

But he believes that this harm is a necessary means to reach his real goal, which is to destroy the firewall, and the dictatorship.

Don’t you think it is worth a try? Destroying the firewall, would enormously benefit not only Chinese programmers, but every single other Chinese person too.

Once the firewall is destroyed, which may destroy the dictatorship, he want China to develop the best science and technology in the world, and Would Ciro Santilli like to live in China? (三西猴想住在中国吗?).

And by the way, with his extensive contributions to open source software, Ciro is already helping China, and all underdeveloped countries, to become stronger. His hope is that if poor countries become richer and better educated, that they will be less likely to be influenced by the CCP’s money, and therefore are more likely to be allies of democracy.

5.1.1.1. Does Ciro Santilli want to make the Chinese people people look bad? (三西猴是想让中国人脸色不好?)

No, the opposite.

Ciro only wants their dictatorial government to look bad to destroy it, and help China become the most awesome country on Earth.

Even the Chinese that are against their own Government cannot do much about it openly, so it is not their fault.

And even those who supported their dictatorship must be respected, whoever stupid and brainwashed you might think they are, since it is impossible to prove who is right or wrong in politics.

See also: About (关于).

5.1.2. Does Ciro Santilli think that the Chinese are stupid or brainwashed? (三西猴觉得中国人是傻子或是被洗脑了吗?)

Obviously not, if you even thought about this, it is likely because of: The CCP exaggerates the threat of the West to keep in power (中共夸大了西方要继续掌权的威胁).

Don’t you see that this is just pure and simple politics? And likely ineffective one at that: Will the keyword attacks really help to destroy the firewall? (关键字攻击真的有助于破坏防火墙吗?).

Related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ncGTvkxDQ How does propaganda change our beliefs? by Etienne Augé (2021). At: https://youtu.be/K2ncGTvkxDQ?t=139 he mentions his 6 principles of propaganda, the first of which is that it should be undetected. As soon as Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) saw that, he changed the description of this repository from "Anti-Chinese government information." to "Anti-Chinese government propaganda.".

5.1.3. Screen name keyword attack (网名审查关键字攻击)

A keyword consists of adding censored words to your username: https://stackoverflow.com/users/895245

This only works on websites that show usernames everywhere.

This then leads to your username appearing on thousands of pages, depending on how much you contribute to the website.

It is also possible to do it with images, although this is less effective in taking down websites since images are harder for the firewall to track automatically. But:

  • they are more memorable than words

  • they also work on websites like GitHub where your real name does not show on most pages, only slug

so maybe the most effective approach is to use both keywords and images to get the best of both worlds ;-)

This type of attack is essentially an Embargoes make dictatorships stronger (禁运使独裁更强大), and it is especially effective in websites that contain valuable technical content, such as Stack Overflow and GitHub.

See also:

Some non-screen name ones: * https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/6620655, that site is open source BTW, great initiative: https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2

Some people say don’t shift where you eat. Ciro says: bring a shitbucket to the canteen, and start a shitfight.

Chrysanthemum Xi Jinping with black red liusi added by Ciro Santilli
Figure 3. Chrysanthemium Xi Jinping (菊花习近平, 2015) has been used by Ciro Santilli as a profile picture censored image attack

5.1.4. Cute cat theory of digital activism (可爱猫理论)

Someone told Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) a while after he had started doing his Screen name keyword attack (网名审查关键字攻击) on Stack Overflow, he didn’t know about it before, but it is basically what he was doing.

You can never invent anything new anymore nowadays!

This is especially relevant to GitHub! And GitHub’s mascot is also a cat ;-) Some mentions of this:

Related:

5.1.4.1. Anti-CCP content in the Bitcoin blockchain (在比特币区块链的反中共内容)

Blockchain technologies, such as Bitcoin, provide essentially uncensorable (at a transaction cost), because the messages are put together with financial transactions which are extremely valuable to its users.

Services that can be used to easily view this data online include:

We have been able to find the following anti-CCP information in the blockchain so far:

source of humanity and the mother of truth dp

+ TODO meaning of "dp". Part of a quote by Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波, 1955-2017, Tiananmen leader) which was delivered in his Nobel Prize speech in absentia: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2010/xiaobo/lecture/, fuller quote:

+

Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity, and the mother of truth. To strangle freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, stifle humanity, and suppress truth.

But of course, there are crypto-Wumao (五毛)'s there too!!! The incongruence of a dictatorship and uncensorability is just mind blowing:

Neutral references:

  • blk01341.txt tx 3d2226aa2591acfb0d3c9206b9bb2058b0a488ad6d0e9c61e0c8f3c53d0d4b90 "EW Hello Xi Jingping" (mispelled). "EW" is a service identifier, not part of the message.

On the test blockchain (boring!):

Bibliography:

Other blockchains:

5.1.4.2. Collateral Freedom (依附的自由)

GreatFire (自由微博) people called a Cute cat theory of digital activism (可爱猫理论)-related project of theirs "Collateral Freedom" (a reference to collateral damage), in which they seem to be trying to forward censored websites somehow through AWS to force the Chinese Government to block the entire AWS in China:

Collateral Freedom ties access to information to the Chinese economy. If [authorities] truly want to block access to this information, then they must give up certain access to economic freedoms.

At some point the Wikipedia page was created, but the concept was largely publicized by Greatfire most likely, although it might have been older. It is also not obvious that it satisfiers notability requirements of Wikipedia as of 2021.

There’s an useless Wiki page for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom

https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/10/amazon_backtracks_on_s3/ clarifies that on Amazon S3 the question is about:

the second of which can be easily blocked by domain, but the first can’t, and how amazon was planning on killing the first option.

GitHub collateral freedom
Figure 4. With HTTPS censors can’t know which path you access. Featuring Xi Jinping BDSM at cosplay fair.
5.1.4.4. Dual-use technology (军民两用技术)

Normally, the term "dual-use technology" is used in the context of blocking exports that can be used either for peace, but also for war.

However, as mentioned by a Twitter friend, a Screen name keyword attack (网名审查关键字攻击) for Freedom of Speech is also essentially a dual-use matter.

5.2. Politics should not be posted in technical websites such as GitHub or Stack Overflow 不应该在技术网站例如Stack Overflow和GitHub讨论政治

So, where do you propose politics be posted? On Facebook or Twitter, which are already blocked by the Great Firewall (GFW, 防火长城)? Or maybe on Weibo (新浪微博), where it will be taken down within seconds due to internal censorship?

Is the Chinese government using the Internet the way it was meant to be used, by investing billions in Censorship (审查)?

What about 996.ICU (2019)? Did you also complain about it, or did you just star it like 250k of your fellow programmers?

Any act of protest will use things in ways that it was not meant to be used.

For example, the street is not meant to showcase protest banners, it is meant to be a passageway for cars.

As engineers, we have a moral responsibility towards society. We should not blindly follow orders of those in power if it violates our principles, e.g. build weapons or censorship mechanisms. And we should freely express our principles and violation concerns.

Making a statement where no one will ever see it, like a personal website, is sure to have no effect.

Much of the best art and technology is about using something in a way that it wasn’t meant to be used.

Finally, the political powers of each website decide what is allowed or not on their website, and what is not allowed gets blocked. So far, Stack Overflow and GitHub’s Terms of Service have said to go ahead:

Another consideration is that any profile information is essentially a form of advertisement. Some people advertise their skills for hire, or their company and product. Other people, advertise their religion or sexual orientation. So why should you not be able to advertise your political position? Companies pay millions of dollars to grab other people’s attention. Ciro feels it is much fairer to instead pay for those ads with your labour of love.

致"反对此项目的墙内程序员"

本项目上线第二天,就收获 363 个 star 兼 88 个 fork,甚至还挤进 GitHub 的"当日 Trending"——俺很荣幸,也很高兴有这么多人给俺捧场。

但是在本项目的 issue 列表中也看到好几个反对此项目的程序员(应该都来自墙内),他们担心这个项目导致 GitHub 被 GFW 封杀。

这几年来,类似的言论俺已经看了不少。就好比强盗拿刀杀人,围观者不但没有谴责强盗,反而去谴责卖刀的店家——这就是传说中的"斯德哥尔摩综合症"。

有兴趣的同学,可以看俺之前的博文——《天朝民众的心理分析:斯德哥尔摩综合症

Translation:

In reply to: "Programmers behind the GFW who are against this project"

The second day after the project went online, it got 363 stars and 88 forks, and even squeezed into GitHub’s "Trending repositories of the Day". I am honored and I am so happy that so many people gave me their support.

However, in the issue list of this project, I also saw several programmers who opposed this project (likely all from within the GFW), and they worried that this project would cause GitHub to be blocked by GFW.

Over the past few years, I have read a lot of similar comments. A good comparison would be if a robber were killing someone with a knife, and the onlookers not only did not condemn the robber, but instead condemned the shop that sold the knife. This is the legendary "Stockholm syndrome".

The more places we can denounce dictators, the better people are off, the minor annoyance to sensitive people is worth it. Ciro wrote a poem:

Don’t discuss politics on Stack Overflow.
Don’t discuss politics on GitHub.
Don’t discuss politics on YouTube.
Don’t discuss politics on Facebook.
Don’t discuss politics on Twitter.
Don’t discuss politics.
Don’t discuss.
Don’t.
.

Infinite duplicate pool:

5.2.1. Is Ciro Santilli making programming contributions with the main intent of promoting his political agenda?

No, that is just a side effect.

For example, if that were the case, he would definitely target more widely used technologies, in particular Web and JavaScript, instead of obscure things like C and assembly in which I have spent tons of my time.

Also, any attempt to influence a billin people is unlikely to have any effect. Much more likely to have any effect, would be for Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) to become rich and powerful first, and the best way to do that is to invest in whatever he thinks is most useful.

Actually, it can even be argued that Ciro’s somewhat irrational, since he would be much more likely to become rich and powerful by bowing down to the CCP and trying to get their money instead.

On the other hand, becoming rich and powerful is also highly unlikely, so maybe it’s justa matter of taking a low-risk low-reward path?

Ciro has have very little free time, and he will never do something for political reasons, only things that interest me technically.

Finally, do you really think he’d be able to do such awesome projects if he had primarily political considerations in mind? XD

5.2.1.1. Is Ciro Santilli making trivial edits on questions just to spam your name further?

No.

I just think that the website is great, and want to push it to perfection, in particular with better Google keyword hits, and uniform grammatically correct titles.

If you think that any of my edits were harmful, please ping me and open a meta thread to discuss specific edits, and I will comply with consensus.

5.2.2. Communist bread (中共面包)

Earliest sources found so far are from Reddit:

English text:

Stop interfering in China’s internal affairs Bread

Chinese text:

中国人不吃这一套
美国没有资格
居高临下同中国说话
巧克力酱面包
保质期10天

Translation:

The Chinese people don’t eat this trick
The United States is not qualified to
Take the high ground and look down on China
Chocolate sauce bread
Best before: 10 days

Here is a different picture of the same product from April 14th: https://twitter.com/YukayuyuWasGod/status/1382218316895244295 That one might allow better brand identification: 万X福 That one also posted at: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/o2zbsw/偶然看到这张图不知道是不是真的/ Watermarked Weibo @第三豹弹

Stop interfering in China s internal affairs bread
Figure 5. Chinese dual-use bread. More info at: Communist bread (中共面包).
Stop interfering in China s internal affairs bread
Figure 6. Communist bread vs Communist condom. Someone made a brilliant communist condom Photoshop reply to the Communist bread (中共面包). Pointed out at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/523 and a previous source at: https://weibo.com/5586291457/K9Vg7ceM7?type=comment#_rnd162900969912. Part of the joke is that the Chinese message reads "中国人不吃这一套" (The Chinese people won’t fall for this trick, literally "don’t eat this trick"), and "套" is the last character for condom in Chinese (避孕套), so the sentence is recast as "The Chinese people won’t eat this condom.". "套" more generally means a type of "slip-on cover or envelope". Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) reposted at: https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/p4p3u3/stop_interfering_in_chinas_internal_affairs/ on r/China Reddit sub. As mentioned at https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/p4p3u3/stop_interfering_in_chinas_internal_affairs/h90foja the association of the Chinese sentence with condoms had been done independently before this Photoshop emerged, see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdEQ7JavgLw by GFWfrog (墙国蛙蛤蛤). GFWfrog also twitted this image of course: https://twitter.com/gfwfrog/status/1387121102967672835.

5.3. Why would China be better without its Dictatorship? (为什么没有独裁的中国会更好?)

Because it would make China, and the world:

5.3.1. Why would democracy and freedom of speech make China richer? (为什么民主和言论自由能够让中国变得更加富有?)

There is infinite debate about this out there, some examples:

For:

Against:

  • presidents only care about the 4-8 year horizon, while dictators can make longer term decisions to maintain power forever, their power being limited only by "the people are happy enough to not start a revolution"

  • dictatorships can make changes faster without the same amount of discussion that happens in democracies, where power is more spread out.

    Killing a million people will make us richer? No problem, let’s do it.

    That is great when they make good decisions, but it sucks when they make bad ones more likely.

Maybe China was poor because of Mao’s crazy communist regime. Similar regimes also made Russia (俄罗斯) poor. And yes, before that exploitation by the West may have been a factor.

Definitely, the current regime is better than Mao’s, but just imagine how rich China could be if it had more freedom and justice.

Imperial China lost the race for the Industrial Revolution. Will another dictatorship be able to stay on top of the next technological revolution?

XKCD 937 tornado guard
Figure 7. XKCD 937 "TornadoGuard" comes to mind in relationship to the variable performance of dictatorships. Source.
5.3.1.1. Dictatorships have greater development variability (专政具有更大的发展可变性)

While average rate of growth do not appear to differ much between democracies and authoritarian regimes, the variability in performance does differ more among authoritarian governments. China has had remarkable growth since the 1980s, but the prolonged devastation and hardship produced by China’s "Great Leap Forward (大跃进, da4 yue4 jin4, 1958-1960)" (when millions of farmers starved to death) and its Cultural Revolution would unlikely have occurred in a democratic country like say India. Nor is it likely that say Cuba and many African nations would have suffered so long with such terrible economic policies if they had reasonably democratic institutions.

5.3.1.2. Tea egg incident (茶葉蛋事件, 2011)

A Taiwanese celebrity said many people in China can’t even buy tea eggs, which are extremely cheap and easy to make at home: you just need to cook some eggs in any cheap tea! Chinese internet Wumao (五毛)s made fun of that, and likely rightly so.

5.3.2. Censorship makes countries poorer (审查使国家更穷)

Dictatorships need Censorship (审查) to survive, and they must control all information to make themselves always look good: Would ending the Great Firewall truly end the dictatorship? (结束防火墙真的会结束独裁吗?).

As a result, knowledge of problems flows more slowly, and therefore they also take longer to solve.

Maybe this hurts the argument, but Hillary agrees: :-)

But countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccGzOJHE1rw&t=2110 "Secretary Clinton Speaks on Internet Freedom", U.S. Department of State, 2010-01-22

This suggestion is even more explicit in the fictional World War Z 2006 novel by Max Brooks about a virus outbreak in China. It was later adapted into the World War Z (2013) movie by Paramount:

The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

Amartya Sen is another famous proponent of similar arguments in the area of hungers: https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/211/44284.html (archive)

In democratic countries, even very poor ones, the survival of the ruling government would be threatened by famine, since elections are not easy to win after famines; nor is it easy to withstand criticism of opposition parties and newspapers. That is why famine does not occur in democratic countries. Unfortunately, there are a great many countries in the world which do not yet have democratic systems.

although like any other political argument, some disagree.

Virus outbreaks and other natural disasters also illustrate this well: Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus (2019冠状病毒病早期迹象审查).

Bibliography:

5.3.2.1. Chernobyl 2019 miniseries (切尔诺贝利_(迷你剧))
  • link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)

  • link:https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/切尔诺贝利_(迷你剧)

Suggests that part of the reason why Chernobyl happened is because of the Soviet Union’s obsession to save face, and illustrates well how Censorship makes countries poorer (审查使国家更穷).

The URSS only admitted Chernobyl three days after when Swedish nuclear plant radiation detector alarms started going off.

Related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocBVLMHK6c8 Chernobyl supercut scene where the reactor explodes, and a chief engineer "Comrade Dyatlov" accepts a hastily made radiation measurement of 3.6 Roentgen as "Not great, not terrible" and forwards it to his superiors who take actions based on that, even though the radiation measurement apparatus only goes up to 3.6 Roentgen! Needless to say, the actual radiation was much, much higher: when a proper measurement was made much later on, the value was 15000 Roentgen!
3 6 Roentgen
Figure 8. Photo of a CDV-717 radioactivity meter that maxes out at 3.6 Roentgen (倫琴) like the one that would have been used in Chernobyl. Source.
5.3.2.2. Censorship makes no one trust your country (审查使得沒有人相信你的国家)

Who would trust a government that does not trust its own journalists and citizens?

Even democracies cannot be trusted, but dictatorships? No one ever believes what they say, even when it’s true.

And as a result, this makes it very difficult to have allies.

Sure, other dictatorships will seem to become allies with your dictatorship and collaborate.

But deep down, you know that they are all just waiting patiently to put a knife in one other’s backs.

Dictators will always live in fear.

5.3.2.3. Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus (2019冠状病毒病早期迹象审查)

The Chinese Government censored the initial outbreak in January and did not inform Wuhan on January 8, which likely made the situation much worse than what it could have been.

On the other hand, one may argue that the "city closure" measures were stronger/faster than in democracies, and maybe that is true.

And Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) does believe that the virus would have escaped even if there had been no censorship. Although maybe thousands of lives would have been saved due to smaller saturation of hospitals had a proper early warning been given.

So Ciro’s main criticism is that of the censorship of citizen reports the event: People arrested for reporting on the 2019 Corona Virus (因报道 2019 年冠状病毒而被捕的人). Why do you need to censor things when you are doing so well?

And it should also be said that some Western politicians have used "blame China" as an excuse to divert attention from their own failures.

Some believe that the Chinese government grossly under-reported death counts. Initial official figures were about only 3300 deaths, in the insanely densely populated Wuhan area, while Italy had reached 10000 deaths:

Maybe China is saying the truth this time. Maybe the rapid Dictatorship response worked. But maybe the most important lesson to take out of this is that no one trusts in a Dictatorship after an infinitely long history of lies and lack of freedom of the press.

Good timelines so without a fucking paywall:

Timeline:

News coverage:

In other countries:

Covid gag mask
Figure 9. Assemblage of a respirator mask with a BDSM gag ball (口塞) attached to it, suggesting that citizen reports of COVID-19 in China have been censored. Source.
CCP Olympic medal 2020 vs COVID death counts
Figure 11. Comparison of how some Chinese sources counted COVID deaths excluding Taiwan (Republic of China, 台湾, 中華民國) and Hong Kong (香港), while at the same time including their gold medals in their gold medal count to overcome the United States' medal count. TODO original untranslated source. Source.
5.3.2.3.2. Sitong Bridge protest (北京四通桥抗议, 2022, 彭立发, Peng Lifa, Peng Zaizhou, 彭载舟, Warrior of Sitong Bridge, 四通桥勇士)

Peng Lifa is the real name, and Peng Zaizhou the pen name. TODO two twitter accounts on NYT.

不要核酸要吃饭
不要封城要自由
不要谎言要尊严
不要文革要改革
不要领袖要选票
不做奴隶做公民
No covid test, but food!
No lockdown, but freedom!
No lies, but dignity!
No the Cultural Revolution, but reform!
No leaders, but votes!
No slave, but citizen!

罢免独裁国贼习近平
Remove the dictatorial state traitor Xi Jinping!

And the dude had a loudspeaker too, he was not planning to flee at all:

要吃饭,要自由,要选票!罢课,罢工,罢免独裁国贼习近平!
Demand food, freedom, ballot! Students, workers, strike and depose the despotic traitor Xi Jinping!

Sitong Bridge protest
Figure 12. Sitong Bridge protest photo from the crosswalk. Source.
Peng Lifa time 100 2023
Figure 13. Peng Lifa. Source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lguW9FjLKC0 Video compilation by The Guardian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL2HGN0tRAk Video compilation by The Sun.
5.3.2.3.3. 2022 COVID-19 protests in China (白纸运动, 白纸革命, White paper protests)

Some Reddits:

White paper protest Beijing 2022
Figure 14. White paper protesters in Beijing. Source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDAX8UO4ZQA (GitHub reupload of first segment) First segment of the video: protestors in Shanghai shouting "共产党下台,习近平下台" (CCP, get out, Xi Jinping, get out). Reuploaded from: https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/z5fpat/shanghai_protestors_calling_for_the_end_of_xi/ which already had it cut. Clearly visible shop signs on the back: "Jasmine Cashemire", "Biu Biu". Possible address according to Apple Maps: Nanjing West Road 1678. https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/z5fpat/comment/ixy66n9/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 says https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/z5fpat/comment/ixy66n9/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 "Urumqi Middle Road".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK4355hLtSg (GitHub reupload) Lady makes a spontaneous speech about Censorship (审查) during protests in Chengdu (成都市). Source from The Great Translation Movement (大翻译运动官方推号): https://twitter.com/TGTM_Official/status/1598290936500342784[. Also discussed on r/China Reddit sub:https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/zb1giv/chengdu_western_china_a_lady_giving_a_speech_in/[]. The melodramatic background music greatly weakens the video, it is a bit on the same lines as Little pink explains the difference between the American dream and the Chinese dream, though now on the opposing side. Chinese-style propaganda to fight Chinese-style propaganda I guess.

我一直非常愤怒的一点是,为什么我们说一句实话……我这两天,我在微信、我在抖音,我都在发,但是我所有的朋友都来劝我说‘小心’,‘小心被抓进去,这一抓就是要坐几年(牢)

One thing I have been very angry about is why we tell the truth…​ I have been posting on WeChat and Douyin in the past two days, but all my friends have come to persuade me to say 'be careful', 'be careful If you are arrested, you will have to sit there for several years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzD3oprW_M (GitHub reupload) Students shout Democracy, Rule of Law, Freedom of Expression (清华大学学生们:民主法治,表达自由) and at Tsinghua University, Bejing. Discussed on r/China Reddit sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/z5vq5u/tsinghua_university_students_call_for_democracy/[. A Pincong (品葱, uncensored forum) post supporting the slogan: https://pincong.rocks/article/50818.
5.3.2.3.4. Li Wenliang (李文亮)

He reported the virus, but was told by authorities to stay quiet, and later died from the virus, becoming somewhat of a martyr:

The following excerpt from his forced confession trended:

你能做到吗?
你听明白了吗?

Translation:

Can you manage?
Do you understand?

Li Wenliang covid
Figure 15. Selfie of Li Wenliang (李文亮) on his hospital bed before he died. Source.
Li Wenliang COVID barbed wire mark by Kuang Biao
Figure 16. Caricature of Li Wenliang (李文亮) wearing a mask made of barbed wire by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚). The image circulated on Weibo for some time. Source.
5.3.2.3.5. nCovMemory

Popular GitHub repo documenting personal experiences and media reports:

Related:

5.3.2.3.6. People arrested for reporting on the 2019 Corona Virus (因报道 2019 年冠状病毒而被捕的人)

TODO maybe not arrested but relevant:

5.3.2.3.7. Fang Bin (方斌)

He was the second Chinese citizen journalist to vanish while reporting from coronavirus epicentre" by South China Morning Post (SCMP, 南华早报)

Hist last YouTube video simply shows the following caligraphed message with him reading it twice:

全民反抗
还政于民
方斌书

which translates as:

All the people, revolt.
Return the country (politics) to its people.
Written (calligraphed) by Fang Bin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7VIG2qp0j4 Fang Bin’s last YouTube video from 2020-02-09.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUvBNpkxrJo "Fang Bin is second Chinese citizen journalist to vanish while reporting from coronavirus epicentre" by South China Morning Post (SCMP, 南华早报)
Fang Bin revolt 2020
Figure 17. Montage with images from two of Fang Bin’s last YouTube videos: on the left from the antepenultimate video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUXV4Ih2xrk, and on the right from the last "All the people, revolt" one.

5.3.4. Why would democracy and freedom of speech make China less likely to start a war? (为什么民主和言论自由会让中国不太可能发动战争?)

This has been discussed to death:

Some arguments include:

  • the people who will actually fight and die on the front can’t vote against it

  • dictators have huge power, so if they put it in their heads that they want to start a war, it is much harder for sensible people to stop them

  • dictators need to keep the people in fear all the time to keep their power, and a war is a great way to achieve that

Of course China won’t say that they are starting a war when they do.

They will of course start with territories which they claim as theirs, to add to other recent additions which were not theirs until the recent past, even though their inhabitants desperately want to leave China:

When China calls the USA Imperialist (帝国主义), there is of course some truth to it, but it is also very ironic, because as Lindybeige mentions, China is obviously the largest empire on Earth! Despite its uniformization efforts, China is highly diverse since it is obviously made up of a large stitched up carpet of nations that were conquered by a single empire. E.g. Xinjiang (新疆) translates literally as "The New Frontier"! Not to mention obviously the unification of the Warring States period (战国时期, 475-221 BC).

Bibliography:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRmHOSnehTk Ending of the Sportpalast speech, AKA total war (总体战) speech by Goebbels, given in 1943, when Germany started to lose the war. This was later target of opposing allied propaganda. Total war, that’s what dictatorship bring you. Fucking YouTube likely deleted a better uncommented version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRmHOSnehTk it as of 2022, political correctness idiots.
5.3.4.1. The United States has recently started several wars and killed millions! (美国最近发动了几场战争,造成数百万人死亡!)

Not even democracies can fully protect people from other countries, because they don’t vote. Yes, congratulations, Western democracies are not perfect (西方的民主有很多缺点).

But if the USA were a dictatorship like China it would kill way more, because it would censor every report against the war internally to its own people, and the wars would just go on like in [nineteen-eighty-four-war-is-peace].

How many times do we have to bring Hitler up? 70-85 million deaths in one go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

The only reason China has not started wars is because it is a poor country, and it would lose them. If it were rich, it would have started more wars and killed 100 times more people.

Finally, some wars are good.

If a country is oppressed by a dictatorship, and most of its people want to be free, it might be right to help them be free.

If a country sponsors terrorism, it might be a good idea to take out their Government.

This has to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, and maybe a verdict will never be reached. But at least in a democracy the people can decide based on varied information. In a dictatorship, whatever the dictator decides happens.

Also, most of those small wars that he USA started end up being proxy wars between the USA and Russia (俄罗斯)/China, with the USA pushing for democracy, and Russia/China pushing for more dictatorships.

5.3.5. The Chinese masses are still uneducated, and not fit for free speech and democracy 中国大众愚昧,不能好好选领导

When will they be ready? Who decides? What if they think that they are ready now?

In George Bernard Shaw’s "Maxims for Revolutionists" words:

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Many democracy supporters jokingly recognize democracy’s shortcomings.

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

Art Spander:

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.

Laurence J Peter:

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.

Immoral and uneducated
Figure 18. Preaching to the mob meme template: "中国人道德低下素质差。所以不适合民主。" Translation: The Chinese people are immoral and uneducated (people are angry). That’s why they’re not suitable for democracy (people are happy). This makes fun of the fact even if you say bad things about the Chinese, some people will complain that you are racist. But the same people will also say the same bad things about the Chinese people as a way to explain why it is better if they don’t vote, and no one minds that. Source.
Immoral and uneducated en
Figure 19. Translation of the above.
5.3.5.1. The Chinese masses are not interested in politics and therefore not ready to vote (中国群众对政治不感兴趣,因此不准备投票)

But how would they be interested in politics or be able to discuss it, if it is impossible to have a different view without going to jail? See also: Chilling effect (寒蝉效应).

What about the 1 million people in Tiananmen and the 70 million Falun Gong (法轮功, Qigong new religion/cult) followers? Did they not care?

5.3.5.1.1. Lurker (吃瓜群众)

Most people dare not comment, they just watch, knowing that any comment, in either direction, is a risk they take, with little likely benefit.

5.3.6. As long as China is developing economically, it is fine to violate the human rights of a few million people (只要经济好,我不在乎人权)

Herman Goring actually justified the atrocities of Nazism in the exact same way during his appearance on the Nuremberg trials.

What is the point of having all that wealth, when you risk being put into jail for unfair reasons?

Pig politics Chinese
Figure 20. Rebel Pepper (变态辣椒, RFA cartoonist) cartoon about a pig who does not care about politics because it cannot be eaten. 民主又不能当饭吃 Source.
Rebel pepper pig can%27t eat democracy cartoon translated to English by Ciro Santilli
Figure 21. Translation by Ciro Santilli of the Rebel Pepper cartoon about the pig who does not care about politics because it cannot be eaten.

5.3.7. Democracies have less corruption than dictatorships (民主国家的腐败比独裁国家少)

One of the key points of Xi Jinping’s governments has been to quench corruption. And use that as an excuse to get rid of rivals while at it.

However, there is one much better solution to that: democracy and freedom of speech.

The reason is obvious: with censorship, corrupt politicians can censor anything bad that they did, and so it becomes much harder to destroy corruption.

In George Bernard Shaw’s "Maxims for Revolutionists" words:

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Ciro does however believe the China spy stories (中国间谍故事) claims made at https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/21/china-stolen-us-data-exposed-cia-operatives-spy-networks/ that the anti-corruption is also a legitimate national security issue for China, in addition to being a tool to take down political rivals:

Over the course of their investigation into the CIA’s China-based agent network, Chinese officials learned that the agency was secretly paying the "promotion fees" - in other words, the bribes - regularly required to rise up within the Chinese bureaucracy, according to four current and former officials. It was how the CIA got "disaffected people up in the ranks. But this was not done once, and wasn’t done just in the [Chinese military]," recalled a current Capitol Hill staffer. "Paying their bribes was an example of long-term thinking that was extraordinary for us," said a former senior counterintelligence official. "Recruiting foreign military officers is nearly impossible. It was a way to exploit the corruption to our advantage." At the time, "promotion fees" sometimes ran into the millions of dollars, according to a former senior CIA official: "It was quite amazing the level of corruption that was going on." The compensation sometimes included paying tuition and board for children studying at expensive foreign universities, according to another CIA officer.

https://youtu.be/8F0kSDV9U_E?t=408 Shocking Russian Military Corruption Exposed by Task & Purpose (2022) poses an interesting thesis: the toplevel of corrupt governments know about the corruption of officials and accept it. And this is in part to have leverage over them, to be able to bring them down whenever they feel like it. This incentivizes loyalty.

Well known corruption cases:

Related events:

5.3.7.1. Operation Fox Hunt

Trying to prevent corruption is fine, but violating the laws of other countries in doing so, or the Rule of law (法治) of their family is not.

5.3.7.1.1. The detention of Liu Changming’s (刘昌明) family (2018)

China imposed an exit ban on the ex-official’s family, who are also USA citizens:

  • officer Liu Changming (刘昌明)

  • wife Sandra Han

  • children Victor Liu (born July 1999 in the USA) and Cynthia Liu (27 in 2019, born in China, but also American citizen)

China says that the children and wife do have valid Chinese documents, so maybe those idiots did not give up their Chinese citizenship and went to China. Why, why, why would you do that? Don’t they know anything about China?

Cynthia claimed her father has left home a long time ago and that they are not in contact with their father.

Liu is a so called naked official (裸官), who let his family go live outside of China to prevent such problems with the CCP.

The wiki page also explains that in 2014 rules were added to prevent promotion of officials whose spouses live abroad.

This reminds Ciro of a Mafia movie, maybe Godfather II, where the bad guy says he "likes doing business with a man that has a family, because he has more collateral".

Coverage:

2019-05-09 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2hBtXdaYsQ Cynthia Liu, daughter of Liu Changming (刘昌明) pleas freedom on YouTube. Commented upload by CBS, TODO can’t find original video on YouTube, maybe they sent straight to CBS?

5.4. Will the keyword attacks really help to destroy the firewall? (关键字攻击真的有助于破坏防火墙吗?)

It is both unlikely, and hard to be sure.

Just like it is unlikely that the activity of on individual can have a big influence in any group of 1 billion people.

Every action is statistical: I just push the balance a little bit towards freedom.

This FAQ and any talk is useless. You and I are wasting our time here.

The possibility of blocking Stack Overflow and GitHub is 1000x more useful than any talk, but it is still useless.

However, potentially blocking those websites takes 0 of my time, I just leave the content there, so it is worth my time.

To have an idea, in 2015 there are about:

And if we never start somewhere, nothing will ever happen.

Furthermore, even if the GFW falls, it is not clear that this will imply the end of the dictatorship: Would ending the Great Firewall truly end the dictatorship? (结束防火墙真的会结束独裁吗?).

Nobody can hear you
Figure 24. House of Cards S01E02 "Nobody can hear you. Nobody cares about you. Nothing will come of this." GIF. Source.

5.4.1. Embargoes make dictatorships stronger (禁运使独裁更强大)

The keyword attack is basically an embargo.

There is already a lot of literature about this, especially in the cases of Cuba and North Korea. It is basically a libertarian vs conservative/Cato vs Heritage thing in the US:

The key dilemma is:

  • if we keep contact with the Dictatorship, maybe its people will see that democracy is better and start a liberating revolution

  • if we keep giving technology to the Dictatorship and it does not become a democracy, we are making a Dictatorship more technologically advanced, and therefore dangerous

Some interesting aspects of the keyword attack embargo:

  • it is immediately self-enforcing: we don’t need politicians to decide and enforce the complex "if you do this, we punish you like that" question.

    By political and technological information is together, and this immediately puts the dictatorship in a bad spot, without us having to decide anything.

  • by affecting programmers in particular through Stack Overflow and GitHub, we make them more likely to develop better Firewall climbing tools themselves

One point in favor of the embargo is that China has opened up since the '80s '90s, but did freedom improve at all? Under Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!), it may be argued that it did not, and maybe that we should just stop feeding them technology and accept that they won’t become free.

Trump’s 2019 China trade war, and in particular the Huawei (华为, Chinese Qualcomm) ban, is an event that has brought this question to the spotlight once again.

5.4.1.1. Keyword attacks could be used by certain CCP political groups to justify blocking off the entire external Internet, and make the dictatorship even more pervasive

It is a risk, but it would make China drastically less powerful, so at least they wouldn’t be able to start or sustain WW3. So I don’t think it will go that way.

5.4.2. Stack Overflow and GitHub could be blocked at no cost by the Chinese government (中国政府可以免费封锁 Stack Overflow 和 GitHub)

Hitting the block button has, of course, no cost.

The cost of blocking Stack Overflow lies of course in the loss of information, and slower technological development, see also: Why attack websites with censored keywords? (用审查词攻击网站有什么用呢?)

The 2019 996.ICU (2019) event however brought to my attention that Chinese (usually WebKit-based) browsers are already censoring HTTPS websites selectively of course, see e.g.: https://github.com/996browser/996.BROWSER/tree/77f28a36a862e3cc4d238dc47c19872156096bc4

But Ciro doubt developers use those browsers, right? The only way would be for China to forbid foreign browsers entirely.

BTW, TLS 1.3 ENSI brings a whole new dimension to HTTPS by encrypting the domain name as well!

5.4.2.1. Is Stack Overflow blocked in China? (Stack Overflow 在中国被封锁了吗?)

It worth noting however that as mentioned at Is Stack Overflow blocked in China? (Stack Overflow 在中国被封锁了吗?) that websites can become non-functional if CDNs they rely on are taken down, instead of the website being taken down itself.

For example, Stack Overflow relied on Google for some of its JavaScript and on Imgur for images, both of which are blocked in China.

5.4.3. Keyword attack profiles disturb me (关键字攻击个人资料页打扰我)

But isn’t it better to be annoyed than having war, being poor or put into jail unfairly?

Installing any of those immediately give you 10 Sesame Points, 习万岁.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPI5QkPrWzI "What is more obscene: sex or war?" scene from The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996). Ciro just can’t stop thinking about that scene when someone tells him that his profile disturbs them. What is more obscene? Xi Jinping memes (习近平模因) or human rights violations?
5.4.3.1. Browser extensions to hide keyword attacks (隐藏关键字攻击的浏览器扩展)

If the truth is too much for you to bear, worry not, you could use one of:

  • Greasyfork browser extensions

  • a custom ad terminator expression shown at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/87 stackoverflow.com##a[href="/users/895245/ciro-santilli-%e6%96%b0%e7%96%86%e6%94%b9%e9%80%a0%e4%b8%ad%e5%bf%83%e6%b3%95%e8%bd%ae%e5%8a%9f%e5%85%ad%e5%9b%9b%e4%ba%8b%e4%bb%b6"]

  • https://gist.github.com/chenx6/97d912a6ef623f5142f69f44b580c1a0 replaces Ciro’s username with "Ciro Santilli my mother died".

  • https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/942 mentions ADGuard with rules:

    github.com#?#li.repo-list-item.public.source:-abp-has(a:-abp-contains(cirosantilli))
    github.com#?#li.repo-list-item.public.source:-abp-has(a:-abp-contains(cheezcharmer))
    github.com#?#li.repo-list-item.public.source:-abp-has(a:-abp-contains(zaohmeing))
    github.com#?#li.repo-list-item.public.source:-abp-has(a:-abp-contains(zhaohmng-outlook-com))
    github.com#?#li.repo-list-item.public.source:-abp-has(a:-abp-contains(Iorine))
    github.com#?#li.repo-list-item.public.source:-abp-has(a:-abp-contains(jk-ice-cream))
    github.com#?#li.repo-list-item.public.source:-abp-has(a:-abp-contains(anuragyantra))

    which reference various forks of china-dictatorship: https://github.com/cheezcharmer/chinese-dictatorship zaohmeing: Zhao Heming (召赫名) https://github.com/Iorine/china-dictatorship https://github.com/jk-ice-cream. This one has some original content on profile: https://github.com/jk-ice-cream/jk.ice_cream_ apparently linked to Gay rights (LGBT权利) https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/473912-github搜索净化. Matching username of a GitHub user: https://github.com/danicastarr. * source code: https://github.com/BonjourFeng/Github-Search-Purification * List: 'cirosantilli', 'wumaoland', 'codin-stuffs', 'cheezcharmer', 'gege-circle', 'zhaohmng-outlook-com', 'zaohmeing', 'Daravai1234', 'candice531033938', 'jk-ice-cream', 'jk-ice-cream-250', 'sky8964', 'pxvr-official', 'zpc1314521', 'jjzhang166', 'panbinibn', 'programthink', 'hello-world-1989', 'b0LBwZ7r5HOeh6CBMuQIhVu3-s-random-fork', 'thethetpvmy', 'wwwswitch520cc', 'shotoanqrob', 'sitempeanhkkwg', 'fukeluo', '1206256980', 'curees', 'yuoppo', 'Createree', 'vghl', 'wholedata', 'dunjian', 'mksshare', 'abshare', 'tpxdat', 'jhdyg', 'changfengqj', 'Dujltqzv', 'xmq1024', 'golade', 'kdjfhd', 'dkjhy', 'junsolg', 'dkjiiu', 'faithhow', 'yamtioy', 'zugzuc', 'lusvont', 'kenyatas', 'koeheu', 'juttama', 'duspub', 'wuqdid', 'visxud', 'suyfic', 'qokkod', 'roepuo', 'purfob', 'gitprocode', 'ynwynw', 'hanguodianying', 'hgyw', '69sm', 'urlapp', 'Augensternhx', 'urlweb', 'fuliso', 'nishjd', '36dshipin', 'hapump', 'zhguoxmw', 'KoreanMovies', 'hanjutv', 'mamadepengyou', 'mamatouyunmuxuan', 'erzideqizi', 'wodeqizidejiejie', 'xiaoyizidemeng', 'qingyuzongheng', 'jiangnanerxi', 'hanguobiaomei', 'djhgy', 'XXOOBY', 'baoyu1024', 'kk234kkkk', '15923-ORIX', 'wutaed', 'webzhibo', 'apptuijian', 'follow666', 'yu90892', 'aconteet', 'getmal', 'itxinfei', 'mingtiana', 'midoushipin', 'paofushipin', 'yinghanshipin', 'GTVapp', 'huangyouquan', 'devlookme', 'audwq', 'jhdgy', 'di6gandh', 'shuangyuzhibo', 'lvchazhibo', 'xiaolanshipin', 'bofangqi', 'yingtaoshipin', 'xiangfeizhibo', 'lvchaApp', 'luoshenzhibo', 'yaojizhibo', 'mudanzhibo', 'aiaizhibo', 'gaochaoqwe', 'jiolde', 'lsdhw', 'kanavdaohang', 'harnh', 'kuadaner', 'wapquan', 'laoyeer', 'reteres', 'haoersn', 'zhengjianzhong0107', 'huaaweiCode', 'jianjian00001', 'm2ak-dev', 'yyzwz', 'froginwe11', 'luanmenglei', 'xijinping0', 'cyqqq', 'qldaisd', 'lTbgykio', 'yao270161651', 'jt0008jt0008', '15625103741', 'sky1234566778', 'chfucao', 'chifuyidaocao', 'updrmeltm', 'alice548', 'yazm000', 'cpnorg', 'tffygbu', 'Liberty-China', '1989CCP', 'liulihaocai', 'RevolutionaryCommitteeCPC', 'LeiyanLu', 'webdao', 'GC4WP', 'tu01', 'ziliao1', 'zzs70', 'ff2017', 'guitu2017', 'tu2017', 'wm001', 'wnel2017', 'dunhlino', 'nelaliox', 'jianjian3219', 'giteecode', '666bears', 'wang-buer', 'id681ilyg316', 'uhjid', 'usdui', 'uhskl', 'uyjks', 'uhskldf', 'itgsi5', 'uifskv', 'uhgask', 'igfkld', 'udsjd', 'ufodk', 'uigsjt', 'ighfrs', 'haivs', 'idrkkld', 'yuisju', 'uldydj', 'uyuek', 'tydfj', 'uuedif', 'ykwsw3', 'uigsi7', 'tyiis', 'ykeik', 'ukvdj', 'uyikl', 'ufzekg', 'yiksure', 'rhksgz', 'rthls', 'rhjaw', 'rehlxs', 'thzsgt', 'tdidst', 'eglct', 'tjkdyu', 'tjlks', 'tjjds', 'rllfs', 'rhkstd', 'yjscdr', 'servisee', 'ufsjzf', 'bvnbvnfgd', 'duliyingshi', 'calendi', 'mayeobey', 'QQMusic-Jay-Chou', 'boylovecomic', 'bt9527', 'FarmerChina', 'Waymon102092', 'baofx', 'biehd', 'moonpas', 'lyqilo', 'liliqh', 'hourv', 'xinfue', 'jijidianying', 'YuyanCai', 'jtdh', 'isdkxr', 'yhildyu', 'ykldyld', 'igsigk', 'uidekj', 'iufskw', 'udsjhf', 'tjkdx', 'rtkist', 'tjlsyh', 'euhf', 'rjzsht', 'rhkdzu', 'ehkkld', 'xzgfsw', 'iofgd', 'yufdk', 'ujkdub', 'iofgdsk', 'dyghikg', 'ugdskf', 'ifwaih', 'oigsiu', 'yjksku', 'yfdkkrf', 'thjsqd', 'yjsyhf', 'ydjsu6', 'igseyf', 'ujudy8', 'tykde', 'ykmdi8', 'yklzrf', 'uijdkd', 'yjkshc', 'tkajc', 'ykdzs', 'jklsx', 'ejldux', 'ifxspo', 'ogsvtf', 'ifdeu', 'yudfdi', 'ofssj', 'igegkx', 'ugfkd', 'ugdsk', 'udskts', 'yjlkdss', 'fkdryl', 'rtuyjsr', 'tus56f', 'yjdsd', 'yuet6h', 'ugtw', 'tlkxt', 'yesrs', 'ykkds', 'yjksu', 'yhyshs', 'xdzfby', 'yujzdh', 'znfl', 'kjiud', 'shijuezhishi', 'hy1980boy', 'ww0304', 'ZXCASD854', 'zfpdh', 'batiyadh', 'yinsedh', 'yyfxz', 'bllpooe', 'joodfer', 'qdmang', 'chaenet', 'mzsyv', 'kzhaoes', 'clnnews', 'kendnes', 'hongnews', 'luokez', 'li721-LY', 'itunsr', 'cctnews', 'htmle', 'xmmj2', 'younownews', '445435213', 'seseClub', 'enewse', 'wsnewse', 'qsnews', 'soasmoughroy', 'adminewhat', 'wsermusic', 'molingfer', 'zhihues', '95movies', '99fuli', 'qnewse', 'tareres', 'hukioip', 'Hochoclate713', 'ervnme', 'greenleaf8888', '93-days', 'doubanm', 'xhydh', 'fvckslvt', 'MDCM-FB', 'b08240', 'm3u8-ekvod', 'huan768468', 'SweeOBC', 'ningmengsuan7788', 'supperqb', 'idskjs', 'ifsird', 'gklksr', 'ifsjxr', 'ifskxt', 'ghjklsd', 'udsskd', 'tgsjk', 'ihgsk', 'ujsjk', 'ijhdf', 'fghhgks', 'udfae4', 'jujwdj', 'ydsdk', 'uyfgsj', 'ykkxrd', 'branono', 'hytcd', 'kjiuo', 'SaolApp', 'lourv', 'uisdlk', 'hutuhai', 'dengminna', 'whmnoe4j', 'txy9704', 'ufsjl', 'udsks', 'uifsjk', 'ygsaj', 'udsts', 'yurdek', 'ghklsr', 'ifsnx', 'ufskd', 'yujst6', 'ifsurjn', 'saoyagma', 'yusyrdk', 'uijhgr', 'geeeeeeeek', 'gfjklk', 'uiskv', 'ccccsp', 'rrrsp', 'udjxs', 'qiezisp', 'egklkd', 't6korf', 'line915577', 'haijv', 'huaxinzhibo', 'haijiaofabuye', 'haijiaoshequ', 'HaijiaoCommunity', 'haijiao-app', 'fulibaike', 'lurmarp', 'entvasa', 'gotwib', 'hghkiiy121', 'gubcem', 'uijssu', 'yjhuk', 'yklsd', 'haijiaoWeb', 'winston779', 'tyukkst', 'ujsnmc', 'ygssk', 'igdkdy', 'qiezishiping', 'kjuhd', 'xiaogongzhuAPP', 'babyzhibo', 'yaojingzhibo', 'balizhibo', 'jiuaizhibo', 'liuyuezhibo', '69live', 'asidw', 'kuaimaoVIP', 'siguaha', 'mizhizhibo', 'lihzd', 'caomeizhibo', '36DAPP', 'luolisheApp', '69zhibo', 'jiejiezhibo', 'k8japan', 'buyaoshan', 'dk111222', 'fanbaovpn', 'HGcrowntiyu', '196tiyu', 'parryno', 'boyiscode', 'moonews', 'kim1528'

  • https://github.com/wilson7yz/PurifyGithubSearchPage

  • https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/470797-github-去除中文搜索污染 by "Mai Kuraki". Blocklist is:

5.5. Non-Chinese people should not interfere in Chinese politics (外国人不应该干预中国政治)

Why don’t you go instead shitpost in one of the following repositories and which are written in Chinese by Chinese citizens, many of which have many times more stars than china-dictatorship, and therefore are much more effective at taking down the GFW? GitHub repositories with censored information (政治敏感的GitHub库).

See also:

5.5.1. In Memory of Bethune (纪念白求恩)

Amazing quote from Mao Zedong (毛泽东, 1954–1976)'s short essay "In Memory of Bethune" (纪念白求恩), an eulogy to Canadian communist Norman Bethune (白求恩) who worked as a medic for the CCP during the Second Sino-Japanese War, saying that the CCP should embrace help from Communists from other countries to their revolution:

一个外国人,毫无利己的动机,把中国人民的解放事业当作他自己的事业,这是什么精神?这是国际主义的精神,这是共产主义的精神,每一个中国共产党员都要学习这种精神。列宁主义认为:资本主义国家的无产阶级要拥护殖民地半殖民地人民的解放斗争,殖民地半殖民地的无产阶级要拥护资本主义国家的无产阶级的解放斗争,世界革命才能胜利

What kind of spirit is this for a foreigner who has no self-interested motives and regards the liberation cause of the Chinese people as his own cause? This is the spirit of internationalism, this is the spirit of communism, and every Chinese Communist Party member must Learn this spirit. Leninism believes that the proletariat of capitalist countries must support the liberation struggle of the people of colonial and semi-colonial countries, and the proletariat of colonial and semi-colonial countries must support the liberation struggle of the proletariat of capitalist countries. Only then can the world revolution be victorious.

Brought to our attention by Reddit user No-Lingonberry-2173 at: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/1bn47e5/comment/kwgqaye/

Bibliography:

Bethune 27th anniversary
Figure 26. Commemorating the 27th anniversary of Bethune’s publication in 1967. Source

5.5.2. The CCP would not be in power if it weren’t for the Second Sino-Japanese War (如果没有抗日战争,中共就不会执政)

TODO study further to confirm:

5.5.3. Non-Chinese people have been brainwashed by the USA know nothing about China (非中国人被美国洗脑,对中国一无所知)

Everyone is "brainwashed" by their environment.

E.g. people in the West are brainwashed to believe in democracy, freedom of speech and human rights.

Saying that "someone is not Chinese, he does not understand China", is just an useless Ad hominem (訴諸人身) argument and closely related to Non-Chinese people should not interfere in Chinese politics (外国人不应该干预中国政治).

Since you know so much about China, why why don’t you just actually prove your point by teaching Ciro one single interesting about China that Ciro didn’t know about? He loves learning new things.

But please, link to reference material instead of just saying it, it will be much more convincing.

But if you are Chinese, also consider that you have been brainwashed by the commies, so likely much more than Ciro since you live in a dictatorship.

See also:

5.5.4. The CCP exaggerates the threat of the West to keep in power (中共夸大了西方要继续掌权的威胁)

However, the CCP greatly exaggerates how evil the West is, because making your people constantly afraid is a classic strategy used by dictators to stay in power.

Or in fable form:

Once upon a time, there was a farmer with a farm.

One day, the animals on the farm started feeling a bit trapped, and started bumping against the fence to get out.

The farmer, however, was smart, and told the animals:

Careful! There is a wolf outside! If you go out, you will be eaten by the wolf!

The animals, were not that smart, and listened to the farmer, they were afraid!

From time to time, one of the animals would disappear (and without their knowledge, reappear on the farmer’s dinner table).

But the farmer kept giving the animals delicious food without them making any effort, so they decided to believe the farmer’s explanation that animal had escaped and been eaten by the wolf.

Maybe, there was actually a wolf outside. But if they had escaped, only some of the animals would have been eaten by that wolf.

But by staying on the farm, all the animals were, sooner or later, eaten one by one.

TODO source.

This theme is also highlighted in many well known works/events.

North Korea for example, China’s good and trusty friend, is just a caricatural level of this, since it manages to be more a dictatorship than even China itself!

In fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel (1984, 乔治·奥威尔 一九八四, 1949) is undoubtedly the most prominent example, in which the Party constantly switches from being at war with one country to the other in a never ending perpetual war (exactly like North Korea vs South Korea, or China vs Taiwan (Republic of China, 台湾, 中華民國)).

One of the best related quotes comes in Part Two, Chapter 9 when Winston reads Emmanuel Goldstein’s subversive text, one of the chapters contains (emphasis by Ciro):

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This—​although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense—​is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.

This is also the first line of the party slogan, which perfectly resonates with the CCP:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

or in Part One, Chapter 3:

Since about that time, war had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. For several months during his childhood there had been confused street fighting in London itself, some of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.

Another amazing quote that comes to mind is from the 1982 BBC TV adaptation of John Le Carre’s spy novel "Smiley’s People". In it, master British spy codenamed Smiley manages to coerce the head of the KGB spies, codename "Karla" to defect to the West by threatening to publicize illegal acts Karla committed for the benefit of the health mentally troubled daughter, and which would likely lead to his execution. In a letter he writes to Karla, he says, likely copied verbatim from the novel:

And I am not going to make any claims about the moral superiority of the West. I’m sure you can see through our values, just as I can see through yours in the East. You and I have spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in each other’s systems. I’m sure each of us experienced innumerable technical satisfactions in our wretched cold war. But now your own side is going to shoot you, for nothing. For misdemeanors you have not committed, because of a power struggle within your own kind, because of someone’s suspicions or sheer incompetence.

https://youtu.be/74Mw3N6WxG0?t=174 Cant Get You Out of My Head S01E05 Part Five The Lordly Ones also (2021, BBC) mentions that a huge propaganda machinery was created to spread the fake news that Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 (六四事件) was an evil western plot.

Bibliography:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcoBv6ibh8M The excessive fear of external country theme is also mentioned in https://youtube.com/watch?v=TcoBv6ibh8M V for Vendetta (2005) "What you think will happen" scene., where a viral outbreak is used by governments to increase their power over the people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n59ugeOA4mA A random dude re-enacts the scene from Smiley’s People
5.5.4.1. Friendly West-China moments (中西友好时刻)
5.5.4.1.1. United China Relief (葛思德)

United China Relief was the largest humanitarian effort in the United States to aid the Chinese people up to that time. The organization, which was renamed United Service to China (USC) after the Second World War, raised over US$50 million in donations over ten ten years.

United China Relief 3 million Chinese
Figure 27. 1942 billboard by United China Relief that reads "3,000,000 Chinese have given their lives for democracy. What have you given?"

5.6. Ciro Santilli and this page are completely biased against the Chinese Government! (三西猴和本页完全对中国政府有偏见!)

If we had more Western democracies are not perfect (西方的民主有很多缺点) content, then maybe this repository would be considered a more reputable source by Chinese people.

However, there are a few practical problems to that:

For those reasons, we currently forbid, posting several evil-West news without explaining why dictatorships handle it better. It would just generates more noise than signal.

If you do explain however why dictatorships/China handle it better, then the post is welcome.

Any political material that is censored by any country besides China, will also be readily accepted.

Any evidence of positive political progress towards freedom will also be added to this repo, e.g. people openly discussing politics online, human rights activists doing political stuff and not being put into jail, etc.

See also:

5.6.1. Ciro Santilli’s claim to the Qing Dynasty throne (三西猴清朝皇帝觊觎)

Ciro Santilli’s Ciro Santilli’s wife (三西猴的老婆), her mother, and paternal cousin, believe that Ciro’s wife is the descendant of the brother of a recent Qing emperor through her father’s family.

Although they have not been able to produce concrete evidence, which could be explained by the endless political turmoils in 20th century China, Ciro decided that this would be a good bet to take, and married her anyway.

If anyone is able to provide further evidence of this relationship, please, please, please get in touch.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Qing Dynasty (清朝, 大清, 1636-1912), like the previous Ming Dynasty (明朝, 1368-1644), used Generation names (行辈), such that the first character of the given name is the same for all people in a given generation (counted directly from the first emperor that adopted the rule.

For example, this wiki page contains a good family tree of the most important Qing people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_Chinese_monarchs_(late)#Qing_dynasty and we see that many important people around 1861 were Zai 載something, e.g.: Zaichun, Zaiyi, Zaitian, etc.

The last emperor was Puyi, so Pu is the last well known mark. But there were others planned that never got used for after him as shown at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=House_of_Aisin-Gioro&oldid=858104957.

  • Zai (before Pu)

  • Pu (wife’s great-grandfather)

  • Yu (wife’s grandfather)

  • Heng (wife’s father)

  • Qi (wife)

  • Dao (wife’s children). At least one thing is decided from this: Ciro’s children Chinese names will all be Ai Dao Something.

Many of them have had different names in different places/countries, notably many used the name 肇(Zhao) rather than 艾.

Further anecdotal indicators follow.

Ciro’s wife and family are clearly of the Manchu ethnicity just by looking at them, and they originally lived in the North East of China

Ciro’s wife’s family name is the 艾, pronounced "ai4", which she claims is a reference to the 愛 (also pronounced ai4) in Aisin Gioro (愛新覺羅氏), which is the name of the Manchu ruling clan of the Qing dynasty.

艾 iself is however a somewhat common family name, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_(surname) mentions that it is listed in the Hundred Family Surnames (百家姓), a list of common surnames compiled in the Song Dynasty (宋朝, 960-1279) with around 400.000 members as of 2008. Presumably members of the falling Qing dynasty chose that relatively common Chinese name to avoid persecution, while still retaining a bit of their history.

Bibliography:

Ciro Santilli portrait as Qing emperor
Figure 28. Ciro Santilli’s portrait as Qing emperor. Original image.

5.6.2. Ciro Santilli’s father-in-law (三西猴的)

Ciro’s father-in-law, who he barely met, was very old when he had Ciro’s wife, and passed away before Ciro could talk a lot with him, they only saw each other once or twice over Skype, he died soon afterwards.

Having a child late which is consistent with the claims that he spent several years in jail during Mao’s purges, see also: Ciro Santilli’s wife (三西猴的老婆). Being an educated person was a crime in those days, and he was a chemical engineer.

His brother and sister both managed to escape to the USA and Japan, but he took his grandma’s advice and stayed in China.

Ciro’s wife adores her father, who she strongly resembles, and it is a huge shame Ciro didn’t manage to meet him better.

Like his daughter, he was a bibliophile, foodie, Buddhist and incredibly morally upright.

The fact that he survived so many years in prison also attests to his incredible hopefulness and mental health: Ciro Santilli’s mother-in-law (三西猴的岳母) always tells how many other prisoners killed themselves in those days out of hopelessness. Ciro’s wife shares that amazing quality, which Ciro also believes is compatible with the Royalty theory.

After jail, he actually stayed in the same shitty city where he had been imprisoned, and continued to work as a chemical engineer to make a living and try and improve the country that had so badly betrayed him a few years back.

He also seemed to be an amazing story teller, of which he knew many. At one point, a jail cook took him under his wing, even tough he did not know how to cook too well yet, just to hear his stores. Being highly intelligent, the father-in-law man learned to cook too of course.

Another remarkable episode is when he was working in the prison kitchen, and some man was starving and asked for food. He told the man to come later during the evening. The man came, and he gave him a bowl that seemed to be full of cooked vegetables (likely 白菜). The next day, the man came back, and kowtowed him. Beneath the vegetables, he had hidden some good chunks of then very precious meat!! This story makes Ciro cry.

5.6.3. Ciro Santilli has a preconceived opinion about China that cannot be changed (三西猴对中国成见很深,无法改变)

Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) tries to justify why he think China would be better with democracy, but I know that ultimately all of this is useless.

Everyone’s opinions are all determined genetically and by bring-up, and there is nothing he can do to change yours, or you change his.

From that point of view, all of this is just a cold blooded political game, in which Ciro tries to force the CCP to take down the Firewall: Why attack websites with censored keywords? (用审查词攻击网站有什么用呢?).

Ciro never gets mad about China, even if your opinion is contrary to his, and therefore wrong.

Using the reply policy is one of the reasons why Ciro never gets mad.

Ciro also has doubts about the efficiency of certain things I do as expressed throughout this FAQ, e.g. Embargoes make dictatorships stronger (禁运使独裁更强大).

Also, Ciro have never said that anyone else is wrong.

In the end, he just end up thinking about new replies to things people say to him, and add them to this FAQ so that future replies will be faster to copy paste. See also: Doesn’t Ciro Santilli have anything better to do than pissing off China? (除了反对中共以外,三西猴有没有别的更好的事儿要作吗?).

The real goal of any online discussion, is not to convince people, but rather to determine who is an ally and who is not, and get those allies together to defeat the commies.

5.6.4. Does Ciro Santilli support Falun Gong just because his wife and mother-in-law do it? (三西猴是否仅仅因为他的妻子和岳母就支持法轮功?)

Not consciously, Ciro thinks would likely support them even if I didn’t have family ties to Falun Gong (法轮功, Qigong new religion/cult).

Likely he wouldn’t have started this campaign if he didn’t know them of course.

But of course, this is impossible to answer objectively.

Wouldn’t you be rather upset if your mother in law were put into jail unfairly for 15 days?

But don’t you think that 70 million people (6% of the total population in 2000!) getting completely squashed by the Party illustrates extremely well the dangers of the dictatorship?

Or if a Jew has escaped a concentration camp and told the world about its horrors, would you just dismiss their claims due to their biased opinion?

With that in mind, Ciro tries his best to give FLG only the right level of exposure I think it deserves relative to other events, according to these guidelines: How does Ciro Santilli choose keywords for the keyword attack? (三西猴如何为关键词攻击选择关键词?).

If more recent events of mass human rights violations happen, especially affecting in the order of tens of million people, I will probably rank higher than Falun Gong, this was the case for Xinjiang in 2019 for example, even though it only affected a measly million.

5.6.5. Why did Ciro Santilli start his keyword attack? (为什么三西猴开始他的关键字攻击?)

The last straw that led Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) to start the Screen name keyword attack (网名审查关键字攻击) on Stack Overflow was when on March 2015 his girlfriend’s mother was arbitrarily kept 15 days in jail for doing Falun Gong (法轮功, Qigong new religion/cult). He posted about this at:

He then continued because he hate political censorship, and because I love China.

Every time Ciro thinks about this, he notices how stupid humans are. We see the forest fire smoke, and just never think that it will ever reach your home on the border of the forest.

Until it actually does, and then you are really fucked.

So in a sense it was a good thing that Ciro had this little backyard fire with this mother-in-law, as it woke him up further to how serious the CCP thread was, and led him to action.

Because before that, he was one of the majority who just constantly hears about the increasing mountain of evidence of human rights violations, and does nothing about it.

The Darkest Hour (2017) film comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA1Uz_TMzhs. The movie shows that Britain was truly hesitant whether to negotiate or fight Hitler, even after the Nazis had already started invading other European countries, and would clearly not stop. Luckily, we are not at a position of war yet, and might never be due to nuclear weapons. But still, a similar blindness applies. Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus (2019冠状病毒病早期迹象审查) woke up many people, but even then some haven’t faced it.

5.6.5.2. Ciro Santilli’s post when his mother-in-law was put into jail for doing Falun Gong (岳母因修炼法轮功入狱时的帖子)

Maybe some people would be happy if their mother-in-law were put into jail. But unfortunately, this wasn’t the case for Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的).

Ciro Santilli with his mother in law during his wedding in 2017
Figure 29. Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) with his soon-to-be mother-in-law before his wedding in 2017. Annoying? Sometimes. But threat to the fucking Chinese State? How fucked does your political system have to be for the answer to be a "yes"?
5.6.5.2.1. Jail post en

My girlfriend’s mother, a 63 year old lady, was kept 15 days inside a Chinese "correctional facility" because she does Falun Gong.

She had to stay all the time in a small room with a bed and a toilet, under video surveillance, being fed three meager meals a day.

I see Falun Gong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong as just another moderate religion which causes no harm to its believers. The only reason that it is unofficially outlawed in China is because the communists fear it as a political competitor.

There was no trial and no explanation. She was going to take a train to visit her sister. But she didn’t know that there was an important political event happening in the capital: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_National_People’s_Congress So the police at the station, who already knew she did Falun Gong, took her away.

When she came back home, the house had been searched and was all messed up. Her religious books and computer were missing.

I’m glad she was not physically harmed. I find it fascinating how even well educated Chinese support a government which simply does not represent some of its people. How will you feel when something like that happens to your own family, and there is nothing you can do about it?

5.6.5.2.2. Jail post zh

Translation by my wife:

我女朋友的母亲,一位63岁的女士被监禁在一个中国的"劳教所",只因为她炼法轮功。

她被迫待在一个小屋子里面,只有一张床和一个排泄的地方,一直处在监视器下,每天两个窝头一碗只有几个白菜叶的汤。

我看过法轮功https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong 只是一个和平的信仰,对相信它的人没有任何坏处。它在中国被非官方的定为违法(其实没有一项明确法律禁止),唯一的原因就是工产党害怕它是一个政治竞争对手。

没有审讯没有任何解释。她正准备坐火车去看她的姐姐。但是她并不知道那个时候有重要的政治会议正在首都进行:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_National_People’s_Congress 所以那些知道她炼法轮功的铁路警察把她带走了。

当她回到家中时,房子被搜查过了,四处一切混乱。她的信仰书籍和电脑都没有了。

我很庆幸的是她身体并没有受到伤害。我觉得很意思的是一些受过良好教育的中国人怎么能够迫害一部分它的人民的政府呢?如果这样的事情发生在你的家庭,而你什么都不能做,你会怎么想?

5.6.5.2.3. Jail post pt

Translation by myself:

A mãe da minha namorada ficou 15 dias num "centro de correção" chines porque ela faz Falun Gong.

Ela ficou o tempo todo num quarto pequeno com uma cama e banheiro, sobe videovigilância, recebendo 3 refeições pequenas por dia.

Para mim, o Falun Gong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong é apenas mais uma religião moderada que não causa nenhum problema para seus crentes. A única razão pela qual ele é proibido na China é porque os comunistas tem medo dele como competidor politico.

Não houve julgamento nem explicação. Ela ia pegar um trem para ver sua irmã, mas ela não sabia que teria um evento político importante na capital: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_National_People’s_Congress Então a polícia da estação, que já sabia que ela faz Falun Gong pegou ela.

Quando ela voltou pra casa, a casa tinha sido procurada pela polícia e estava uma bagunça. Os livros religiosos e seu computador foram confiscados.

Eu fico feliz apenas que ela não sofreu abuso físico. Eu acho fascinante como mesmo muitos chineses educados apoiam ainda um governo que não representa parte do povo. Como você vai se sentir quando algo do tipo acontecerá com a sua família, e você não pode fazer nada sobre isso?

5.6.5.3. Further details about Ciro Santilli’s mother-in-law’s persecution (三西猴岳母受迫害的更多细节)

March 2015: 15 days in jail for no reason: https://www.facebook.com/cirosantilli/posts/952661734753174. They took her computer. When she left jail, she asked to get it back, and a cop said they would only give it back if she paid 10,000 yuan for it.

June 2017: 3 cops came to her house. She was there. They asked if she still did Falun Gong. She said yes. They took photos of her Falun Gong books/posters. They were polite.

October 2017: 7 - 8 cops came to her house at 11PM. They knocked the door strongly and made noise, and questioned neighbours of her whereabouts. Luckily she was not there.

5.6.5.4. In the Tweet about his mother in law, Ciro Santilli says "correctional facility", but reeducation through labour has been abolished

He was not very precise here, the precise term is "jail". He was not talking about: Re-education through labor (劳动教养). Unfortunately it is not possible to edit a Tweet.

5.7. China is fine as it is, stop making it worse (中国很好,别让它变得更糟)

Welcome to the wonderful world of democracy, a world where people can have different political opinions than you :-)

If you are so fine, why are you reading this at all? Go back to being fine.

See also:

5.7.1. I like my Dictatorship (我喜欢我的独裁统治)

And it must feel good to have absolute truth in the Cult of Xi, and let the black police get rid of weirdos for you.

But what happens when the dictatorship turns again you our your family? Will you fight, or will you just let them do whatever they want because they can never be wrong? See also: Most Chinese people don’t care about the minorities (大多数中国人不关心少数民族).

And when your son betrays you or sacrifices himself for the Dictator, will you just smile and accept it in pride?

Intolerance is a risky way to live.

5.7.1.1. Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973, 春天的十七个瞬间, Soviet series about a Soviet spy against the Nazis, 关于苏联间谍反对纳粹的苏联系列)

Soviet mini-series about about Stierlitz, who is an undercover Soviet spy acting as a Nazi officer in Nazi Germany during WW2.

As a fun note, it seems that Putin (Путин, 普京, 1999-2008, 2012-∞) is a Stierlitz fan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stierlitz#cite_note-Sakwa-5, and Putin also served in Germany like Stierlitz, but in Dresden, which was in East Germany.

A scene from the awesome mini-series comes to mind when thinking about I like my Dictatorship (我喜欢我的独裁统治).

In Episode 7, Stierlitz travels on a train with a Nazi officer.

The war is almost over, and the desolate officer tells Stierlitz:

I told my children: I hate any democracy!

No democracy in our Reich!

Any democracy in our country is doomed to end up with one thing: the dictatorship of small shopkeepers.

The more freedom we have, the sooner we want to be controlled by SS troops again.

And then we want our the secret police back, and concentration death camps again, and the universal fear everywhere! Only then we feel calm and secure.

No need to prove your point of view in defending the fate of the homeland.

No responsibility.

Just raise your hand in honor of him, who will take care of everything for you,

Just shout out "Hail Hitler!" and everything will become understandable.

No more worries.

https://youtu.be/pc6DP1jNEec?list=PLHiAMOiVIvsD2u8g0RLwvdRScEe9yiUr5&t=1527 Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973), Episode 7, general confession scene.

It is amusing to see Soviet series criticizing dictatorships, given that the Soviet Union was itself a major dictatorship!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xoM6-1SWl4&t=191 The Living Dead Episode 1: On the Desperate Edge of Now by Adam Curtis (1995) describes how the Nazis, disilusioned by both democracy and communism, built Nationalism by creating a mythical past. In Nationalism, the individuals would surrenders themselves to the State.
5.7.1.2. Most Chinese people like their dictatorship (中国大众支持他们的独裁)

One is reminded of the game "We Happy Few" (2018), which which people are forced to be happy. Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel (1984, 乔治·奥威尔 一九八四, 1949) also comes to mind of course.

The interesting thing, is that even those pro-CCP are much more likely to stay anonymous because:

  • you never know when something you said will become a sin against some new trend of the dictatorship

  • when the dictatorship inevitably falls, you would be persecuted by the victorious freedom fighters

We cant complain
Figure 30. Westerner: "How is life in China?" Chinese: "Oh, we can’t complain." Westerner: "That’s awesome." Chinese: "No, seriously…​ we can’t." is a word play between the more common "we can’t complain because everything is great" and "we can’t complain because Xi will make us disappear". Source
We cant complain zh
Figure 31. Translation of the above.
Scarfolk public displays of personal distress are unpatriotic
Figure 32. "Public displays of personal distress are unpatriotic" spoof poster by Scarfolk Council (2017). Source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xoM6-1SWl4&t=1606 The Living Dead Episode 1: On the Desperate Edge of Now by Adam Curtis (1995) comments on how interviews with Hermann Goring (赫尔曼·戈林) during the Nuremberg trials (纽伦堡审判) went: "Again and again, Jackson accused Goring of corruptly using his powers to commit crimes. Each time, Goring replied that such acts might be considered crimes in a democratic state, but that in Germany, democracy had failed. Eliminating the political opposition was necessary, to fulfill a higher principle: that of the Nation. And that it had worked, Goring insisted. It had brought order and prosperity to Germany". Jackson asks: "Well, if you wanted a certain people killed, you would have to have some organization that would kill them didn’t you?". Goring replies: "This was the only possible form of government at the time and it proved that Germany could be pulled out of the abyss of misery, poverty and unemployment and withing a short space of time be made flourish and bloom." This is exactly the justification given by the CCP for oppressing minorities and freedom of speech: the CCP is indistinguishable from the Nazis.
Anonymous middle fingers
Figure 33. Presumed Chinese people giving the middle finger (竖中指) to various Chinese "Communist" Party (CCP, 中国共产党, 1949-, Cult of Mao/Xi, 毛习邪教, 10.000 year Reich) symbols, most notably Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!). Even if this was made by the CIA, it perfectly illustrates the point that obviously no one speaks against the CCP because otherwise they will be put in jail. If you are going to do this, for Fuck’s Sake please cover your fingers, like the ones using gloves, or the banknotes, because if the photo resolution is good enough, you could be identified by your fingerprint. A r/China repost. This photo seems to be the result of a campaign started by GFWfrog (墙国蛙蛤蛤) in response to the 100th anniversary of the Party in 2021. This was also explained at: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/667778.html on China Digital Times (CDT, 中国数字时代, USA government media). Related: Anonymous accounts ban (2017). This project was perhaps inspired by pro CCP images celebrating the 100 years such as https://archive.ph/OJGHl/5f09f24ce2e3f856b08e79cdade72ad2af72e9a0.jpg from https://kknews.cc/culture/gmnl5vy.html on kknews (pro-CCP media). Source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y2FIqfIpiw (GitHub reupload) Give Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!) the middle finger silly GIF by GFWfrog (墙国蛙蛤蛤) 给习近平竖中指由墙国蛙蛤蛤傻逼视频. Source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zndzntIDLFE IGN review of the "We Happy Few" (2018) game.
5.7.1.2.1. Run xue 润学

Slang about learning ways to escape from China by emigrating.

5.7.1.2.2. Chilling effect (寒蝉效应)

It is really interesting to see how many people star the GitHub repository, and then a few minutes later they think about how they might get put in jail, and then unstar it.

Unstarring events are exceedingly rare in Ciro’s other repositories.

The expression two steps forward, one step back comes to mind.

Luckily in this case, it does not seem possible to view who unstarred a repository after the fact:

The catch 22 of dictorships is that:

  • if is citizens express themselves anonymously, they are dismissed as foreign agents

  • if they express themselves non anonymously, they go to jail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-hCdbsyWw0 "my paranoia as a Russian YouTuber" by NFKRZ (2020) talks about the Chilling effect (寒蝉效应)
5.7.1.2.3. View all users who starred a repository on GitHub including those who unstarred

The Chilling effect (寒蝉效应) is extremelly visible on GitHub.

Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) is able to see this easily because the star notification remains in the GitHub dashboard even after unstarring.

However, star events are also publicly visible permanently on events API under the WatchEvent: https://docs.github.com/en/developers/webhooks-and-events/events/github-event-types#watchevent

This appears to get them all from GitHub Archive's Google BigQuery up to the last whole month:

SELECT actor.login, MAX(created_at)
FROM `githubarchive.month.*`
WHERE type = 'WatchEvent'
AND repo.name = 'cirosantilli/china-dictatorship'
GROUP BY actor.login
ORDER BY MAX(created_at) DESC

Ciro verified that does include people who unstarred.

That one exceeds the free data limits as of December 2021 however, so you need to select more specific months/years at a time. Note that year data is only released once every year.

The following ranges manage to get all data as December 2021 for free:

FROM `githubarchive.year.201*`
FROM `githubarchive.year.202*`
FROM `githubarchive.month.2021*`

supposing that unique starrers

You can then "Save results" as CSV to view all users.

There don’t appear to be unstar events however. You can see single people star multiple times, which means that each new star gives a new row, which is why we do the GROUP BY.

5.7.1.3. Most Chinese people don’t care about the minorities (大多数中国人不关心少数民族)

How can you be that certain that your children won’t have dissident ideas and be punished unfairly for them?

Intolerance is a risky way to live. Everyone is part of one minority in one way. If all minorities were oppressed, everyone would be oppressed.

Dictatorships crush minorities much more than democracies.

Do think the majority of the Chinese people would vote to put 50 year old Falun Gong (法轮功, Qigong new religion/cult) meditating aunties in jail, if the CCP hadn’t made a huge propaganda campaign and used an iron fist?

Are the Chinese really that selfish to vote for this oppression, even as the free media would show videos of meditating old ladies in jail on national television? Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) does not believe this.

Minorities are put in jail because the CCP fears them. Dictatorships can only survive if there is zero difference in opinion in the population.

The famous quote from Evelyn Beatrice Hall (伊夫林·比阿特丽斯·霍尔) comes to mind:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
我不同意你的意见,但我以死捍卫你说话的权利”

See also:

5.7.1.3.1. First they came (起初他們)

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak for me.

A translation from Wikipedia:

起初,纳粹抓共产党人的时候, 我沉默,因为我不是共产党人。

当他们抓社会民主主义者的时候, 我沉默,因为我不是社会民主主义者。

当他们抓工会成员的时候, 我沉默,因为我不是工会成员。

当他们抓犹太人的时候, 我沉默,因为我不是犹太人。

最后当他们来抓我时, 再也没有人站起来为我说话了。

5.7.1.3.3. This is Ciro Santilli’s personal problem, we have nothing to do with it, stop punishing us for it (这是三西猴的个人问题,我们与此无关,不要因此而惩罚我们)

We have to fight for justice for our fellows, or else when injustice happens to us, no one will fight for use either: Most Chinese people don’t care about the minorities (大多数中国人不关心少数民族).

Every form of protest incurs some damage. E.g., if we manifest on the street, it generates a traffic jam.

If you just work to make money and have a good life, without any plans to improve the government, you are just making the economy of the dictatorship stronger, then when they start a war or kill yet another minority, blood will also be on your hands. See also: What should Western countries do about China? (西方国家应该怎么对待中国?).

5.7.1.3.4. If anyone disagrees with the government they must be punished to keep the stability of the country (如果有人不同意政府,他们必须受到惩罚以保持国家的稳定)

The most possible stable state is a Why does Ciro Santilli say that China is a dictatorship? (中国不是独裁!) like Nazi Germany. Except for the part where they try to take over the world and fail. This is exactly what China is becoming: the freaking Fourth Reich (希特勒只有一个蛋, 1939).

Destroying diversity is the best way to reach a point where everyone can agree to start a new big war and destroy everything.

The CCP thrives on the excessive fear it instigates into its own people.

How can society improve, if we are never allowed to try new things out?

Change in democracies does not require violence. Violence happens because the government punishes any dissidence, even if pacific, to retain its own power.

In democracies, radical policy changes happen without dropping a single drop of blood. People vote, and policies change, end of the story. In JFK’s words:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable

See also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXRG7yiqR3I Passage of Kennedy’s discourse that contains the quote "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable".

5.8. There are bad things happening all over the world, why doesn’t Ciro Santilli fight for those causes as well/instead? (世界各地都有不好的事情发生,为什么三西猴不为这些原因而战/相反?)

We have to choose the one we think is the worst, and focus on it.

Ciro SO username and protest time are not infinite.

However, it is good that different people have different interests, and someone will surely be fighting for whatever cause you care about.

See also:

5.8.2. Western democracies are not perfect (西方的民主有很多缺点)

Oh, no. You have discovered our secret!!!

That is definitely true.

Nothing is perfect in this world.

As Churchill once brilliantly put it:

Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

However, this is all obviously subjective, and believing that dictatorship is a better form of government is also a valid belief, e.g. Dictatorships have greater development variability (专政具有更大的发展可变性).

If you find an event on a Western democracy that you would like to highlight, send a pull request.

We will not however include events that are not currently censored.

Every country did fucked-up things in the past, the question is if they currently allow discussion about it or not.

Posts that only mention "evil West" non-censored events without adding anything to the discussion will be marked as I want to take my chances and make a shitpost in cirosantilli/china-dictatorship (屎帖子) and treated as such, since spamming those is the primary Wumao (五毛) technique to stop intelligent discussion.

The reason why "Evil China" posts are not shitposts in general on the other hand, is that they have one specific purpose: to destroy censorship.

This "Western censorship copypasta string" was posted automatically by a bot during r/China purge day:

North Dakota Access Pipeline Protests 北达科他州接入管道抗议
Ferguson Riots 弗格森暴动
2017 St. Louis protests2017 年圣路易斯抗议活动
Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll 比基尼环礁的核试验
Unite the Right rally 团结右集会
Charlotte riots 夏洛特暴动
Attack on the Sui-ho Dam 袭击穗河水坝
Milwaukee riots 密尔沃基骚乱
Shooting of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile 奥尔顿·斯特林和菲兰多·卡斯蒂利亚的射击
Occupation of the Malheur NationalWildlife Refuge Malheur国家野生动物保护区的占领
death of Freddie Gray 弗雷迪·格雷的死
Shooting of Michael Brown迈克尔·布朗的拍摄
death of Eric Garner, Oakland California 奥克兰奥克兰市埃里克·加纳(Eric Garner)逝世
Operation Condor 神鹰行动
Occupy WallStreet 占领华尔街
My Lai Massacre 我的大屠杀
St. Petersburg, Florida 佛罗里达州圣彼得堡
Kandahar Massacre 坎大哈屠杀
1992 Washington Heights riots 1992年华盛顿高地暴动
No Gun Ri Massacre 无枪杀案
L.A. Rodney King riots 洛杉矶罗德尼·金暴动
1979 Greensboro Massacre 1979年格林斯伯勒大屠杀
Vietnam War 越南战争
Kent State shootings肯特州枪击案
Bombing of Tokyo 轰炸东京
San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing 旧金山警察局公园站爆炸案
Assassination of MartinLuther King, Jr. 小马丁·路德·金遭暗杀。
Long Hot Summer of 1967 1967年炎热的夏天
Bagram 巴格拉姆
Selma to Montgomery marches 塞尔玛到蒙哥马利游行
Highway of Death 死亡之路
Ax Handle Saturday 星期六斧头
Battle of Evarts 埃瓦茨战役
Battle ofBlair Mountain 布莱尔山战役
McCarthyism 麦卡锡主义
Red Summer 红色夏天
Rock Springs massacre 岩泉大屠杀
Pottawatomie massacre 盆大屠杀
Jeju uprising 济州起义
Colfaxmassacre 科尔法克斯大屠杀
Reading Railroad massacre 阅读铁路大屠杀
Rock Springs massacre 岩泉大屠杀
Bay viewMassacre 湾景大屠杀
Lattimer massacre 拉蒂默大屠杀
Ludlow massacre 拉德洛屠杀
Everett massacre 埃弗里特屠杀Centralia Massacre 中部大屠杀
Ocoee massacre Ocoee大屠杀
Herrin Massacre 赫林大屠杀
Redwood Massacre红木大屠杀
Columbine Mine Massacre 哥伦拜恩矿难
Guantanamo bay (关塔那摩湾拘押中心)
extraordinary rendition 非凡的演绎
Abu Ghraib torture and prison abuse 阿布格莱布的酷刑和监狱虐待
Henry Kissinger 亨利·基辛格 1953 Iranian coup d’état (TPAJAX Project, Operation Ajax, 1953年伊朗政變)
Eight-Nation Alliance (八國聯軍) (1900)
Unequal treaty (不平等条约) (1842-1933)

Some others:

See also:

Free speech umbrella
Figure 34. Signe Wilkinson 2017 Free Speech "Can you just move it so it doesn’t cover them?" (TODO proper translation, with a quickly fixed up Google Translate: 你可以移动雨伞以使其不会遮盖住他们吗?) umbrella cartoon. Ciro once saw a Wumao (五毛) post this. It made him smile. If the cartoon were about dictatorships, Uncle Sam would be instead decapitating and raping the people on one half of the umbrella. Of course humans are shit in democracies as well, but at least that system makes it harder for them to oppress each other. Source.
Guantanamo bay protest London 2008
Figure 35. At https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/260 ((archive)a Wumao (五毛) posted this image of Amnesty International (国际特赦组织) protesters outside the American embassy in London in September 2008 protesting against the Guantanamo bay (关塔那摩湾拘押中心) camps. The wumao used this to criticize Guantanamo bay, saying that it was like Xinjiang "re-education" camps (新疆再教育營, 2017-) but in the USA, apparently unaware that this was a staged protest. So it actually has the exact opposite effect than intended: because there is no Censorship (审查), here people in the West can together to denounce something they don’t like. Imagine if a crowd of 100 people in China got together to denounce the Xinjiang camps! They’d go to jail immediately. Furthermore as Ciro repeated a million times: Guantanamo bay detainees are not American citizens, and democracies cannot fully protect people who can’t vote. In China however, no one can vote, so everyone can be oppressed. Source.
China imperialism cartoon
Figure 36. French political cartoon from 1898 by Henri Meyer showing leaders of Western powers, Russia and Japan splitting up China between them. The CCP would arguably not have raised to power if not due to Japanese interference. Maybe the West deserves the Nazi CCP they helped create, much like post World War I treaties helped create Nazi Germany. Colonialism was horrendous. As a Brazillian, Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) knows this all too well. Source.
5.8.2.2. The West is racist against black people (西方人对黑人有种族主义)

Obviously Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) and everyone else knows that the Chinese are INCREDIBLY racist against blacks, way way more than in the West, based on conversations he’s had/overheard, and other circumstantial indications:

China is so openly racist that as far as the culture is concerned it isn’t racism but rather stating a fact. They think it’s totally normal and correct to believe terrible things about black peple. Its really shameful.

Label: racist-west

The only reason wumaos can point to the USA is that there are so many blacks there, and because for historical reasons they are in such a fucked up condition still today. Also in China, so people are just all much more generally fucked on average, so the difference wouldn’t show as much.

wumaos notably mention:

The murder video went viral and was not taken down (would have been in China), all four officers were charged, and the event sparked nation wide protests:

Of course there is racism in the West. And we must recognize that, and fight it.

BTW the USA, and other Western countries besides Germany, were/are also incredibly racist against Jews, e.g. Richard Feynman could not be admitted in certain universities due to a Jewish quota, even though he was not a believer himself, therefore based on race alone!

Racism in the West vs China George Floyd vs Xinjiang
Figure 37. Racism in the West vs racism in China. Of course there is racism in the West against black people. But the people have the choice to speak up against it to try and change things. In China however, speaking up against Muslim racism, means going to jail. Image sources: murder of George Floyd, George Floyd protests in Philadelphia, Xinjiang prisoners, Tiananmen Square on 2021-06-03, the anniversary of Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 (六四事件).
5.8.2.2.1. You criticized China so you are racist (你批评中国,所以你是种族主义者)

As of the 2020’s, given the importance of political correctness in the West, some wumaos have tried to turn to this line of defense.

Of course, it rarely works, because criticizing a government is different from criticizing a race.

This is something however that wumaos have trouble understanding, because their Nazi estate insists that Insistence that the group is THE ONLY WAY (Orange Papers, 坚持他们的团体是唯一的方式生活, 橙色文件), and that CCP equals China.

This does however highlight one of the fundamental dangers of any type of Censorship (审查), including political correctness: what if you are criticizing something that is actually bad?

5.8.2.2.2. We Don’t Hire Blacks by Aaron Dewitt (我们不雇用黑人, 2020)

This amazing video was originally uploaded to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d81mEbL8Yw8 by Aaron DeWitt (The Chinese Tea) on 2020-09-21 but it was down as of 2021-06-21. Last Wayback Machine (web.archive.org, 网站时光机) archive as of that date: 2020-11-03.

The video description was:

This is an exposé of racist companies that I worked for, some of which operate in the United States and Canada, all of which are headquartered in China.

In it, Aaron describes his experiences with the recruitment team of one of his former employers, an unnamed "Chinese ed-tech company in Beijing", for which he worked in human resources. In another also deleted video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6uFGGunRxc he mentions that he cannot mention the name of the company because he was under NDA.

Notably, in that video, he gives several screenshots of Google Sheets spreadsheets with explicitly racist reasons why people were not hired, one of which is reproduced here. Examples of such reasons include:

  • "Skin color"

  • "Non-Caucasian"

  • "62-years old"

  • "elderly"

  • "Hispanic"

He mentions:

On the first day at this company, I had an orientation with my supervisor Ng, who is the head of the training department. She told me:

"We hire blacks. Obama black is OK. But no darker, or they’ll scare the kids. The kids will think they’re some kind of monster!"

which would lead parents to just go to a competitor instead. Then he mentions about the Google Sheets documents that:

They shared this document with the entire management team in Beijing, and everyone not only knew, but expected this discrimination to take place.

In the video he also explains how he once went to a 2 week holiday to Bali, and when he came back with his skin darker due to the tanning, he was reprimanded by a manager, who said that he could not work looking like that.

He explicitly mentions later the video that VIPKid, for which he did not work, is a similar company in nature, but not the one he is talking about.

Wikipedia mentions about VIPKid

Its online-classroom portal enables students to receive 25-minute English language lessons from fluent English-speaking teachers.

In March 2019, VIPKid fired two American teachers for discussing the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 (六四事件) and Taiwan (Republic of China, 台湾, 中華民國) with their students in China. Teachers have also reported witnessing child abuse when teaching lessons, but they found little recourse to report such issues.

As of 2021-05-05, the banner image of VIPKid’s website explicitly includes a token black person: https://web.archive.org/web/20210505045920/https://www.vipkid.com/, so their PR department clearly caught air of this. This is however only a frontend for hiring American teachers. The real Chinese client website https://www.vipkid.com.cn/, rest assured, contains no black people: (archive)

Wikipedia links as one of its sources to this 2019 article https://www.wired.com/story/when-online-teaching-job-becomes-window-child-abuse/ which mentions:

Of the dozens of companies vying to cash in on the tutoring business, it is by far the largest, having raised $825 million in investment capital since its founding. Other major players include Qkids, Magic Ears, DaDa, and Gogokid, all based in China.

so it is overwhelmingly likely that one of those is the one mentioned Aaron is talking about:

  • Qkids

  • Magic Ears

  • DaDa

  • Gogokid

Later in the video Aaron mentions that the company in question "basically went bankrupt".

He also mentions that he later worked for offcn, which is run by the Chinese Government, and they would absolutely not hire black people.

We don t hire blacks by Aaron DeWitt 2020
Figure 38. Screenshot of the video We Don’t Hire Blacks by Aaron Dewitt (我们不雇用黑人, 2020) showing a list racist job interview candidate rejection reasons.
5.8.2.3. Western democracies have invaded other countries and crushed separatism (西方民主国家侵略别国粉碎分裂主义)

What matters is that citizens can disagree with those actions, publicly say it, vote accordingly, and not go to jail, so that policy will be changed if the majority so wants.

In China, the minority controls the majority, and the majority cannot say anything even if they disagree.

If the majority wants to do evil however, evil will get done, it is impossible to prevent that.

People from other countries don’t vote for your politicians in democracy. Therefore, democracies cannot protect them.

Too young, too naive. China is already invading its own citizens right now as of 2020 to obtain resources! Xinjiang "re-education" camps (新疆再教育營, 2017-). And it is using the exact same excuse as the American politicians: terrorism!

Even when the US invades another country, the people who support the US enemy can still pick up arms and fight. And Russia can send help if they want to annoy the Americans, making local resistance stand an actual chance. But when you oppress your own people, they are completely defenseless, and 100% certain to be fully oppressed, since no foreign country would risk world war 3 by sending help.

Do you really think that the CCP would give a fuck about invading other countries? And furthermore, China is specifically oppressing Islamic people in Xinjiang, exactly the same religion of people who live where? In the Middle East.

Xinjiang is China’s Middle East.

The reason the USA has invaded countries in the Middle east and China hasn’t yet is a mixture of:

  • the USA is more developed, and has greater fuel needs, and greater capacity to carry such a war.

    Although as we’ve seen, they’ve been essentially losing those wars quite often now, by not saying long enough to establish a new stable government.

    Part of their defeat is also due to Russia (俄罗斯), and increasingly China, helping the other side however.

  • the Middle East is full of dictatorships, and dictatorships are natural allies of other dictatorships therefore it is more likely that they won’t invade one another.

  • the Cold War is still fresh in the American mind. Oil is crucial to fight a war. Countries will do anything to survive, even if it means killing others.

Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) is not saying that any of this justifies the actions of the Western powers in the Middle East. But simply that it has nothing to do with democracy or non-democracy.

See also:

5.8.2.4. Western democracies also censor subjects such as child porn and hate speech (西方民主国家也审查儿童色情和仇恨言论等主题)

First, child porn and hate speech are also banned in China, so shut up. every type of speech is less free in Why does Ciro Santilli say that China is a dictatorship? (中国不是独裁!).

Second, if you don’t think child porn should be banned, there isn’t much point in arguing with you.

Now, hate speech is a very complex subject. Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) does feel that we should be very careful when banning hate speech, and he is not sure if it should be banned at all, as perhaps it might just make matters worse.

But of course, there is also censorship in Western democracies, and there is a gray area between what should be censored or not.

Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) only argues that there is on type of speech that must never ever be censored: political speech.

This way, the majority can always discuss and vote to change what can be censored or not.

In China, however, trying to discuss such changes in laws puts you in jail, so bad laws cannot be changed. This lack of freedom also gives the impression to many brainwashed Chinese that dicatorships are better because you see less conflict online. Which is great, until your human rights are violated, and you’ve got no one to talk to.

The lack of ability to discuss political problems leads to extremely serious problems:

Deciding on hate speech, means having to decide what level of hardcoreness we are willing to accept, and there is no clear right or wrong answer.

For example, which of the following do you think should be banned:

  • This scientific study suggests that white people do less well in IQ tests.

  • This scientific study suggests that black people do less well in IQ tests.

  • I’m an idiotic irrational racist and I dislike white/black people. I won’t kill them, but I dislike them, and I can’t change that, I’m really sorry.

  • Let’s all gather together and kill our black/white/gay/straight/Muslim/Christian neighbours tomorrow.

  • Let’s all gather together and kill our oppressive dictator/president tomorrow.

Ciro believes that none of the above should ever be censored, because any form of "hate-speech censorship" immediately opens a precedent for political censorship.

If someone is idiotic enough to organize illegal acts like hurting someone publicly before doing it, it will just make it easier for them to get caught.

And if its just empty words, just block those idiots to not see their posts, or downvotes their posts to reduce their impact.

And if the majority supports idiotic acts like killing someone because of their race, it will get done in a democracy regardless, because that’s what democracies do: they cater to what the majority wants.

There’s not point in censoring them. Such censorship only makes things worse, as the perpetrators will use that as publicity for their cause.

See also:

5.8.2.4.1. Fake news (假新闻)

When a government controls all information to make it look good, and no one can challenge it, you cannot trust any of the news produced by that country, as anything could be fake.

It is much better to have some fake news, but also few sources that are likely telling the truth.

Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) is also extremely critical of Western social media companies such as Twitter (推特) and Facebook which have censored "fake news" from real legitimate accounts or real people, which is a point that Trump has justly criticized in Ciro’s opinion.

If it is from a Chinese/Russian botnet, sure, destroy those accounts.

But from legitimate accounts of citizens? The people have to decide for themselves what is fake or real, not you, Twitter and Facebook. If the majority is made of idiots who believe in fake news, then so be it, that’s how democracy works.

Censoring any citizen, no matter how stupid you think they are, creates a precedent for dictatorship, and even an incentive to terrorism.

More interesting case is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_First_Amendment_Institute_v._Trump. Ciro feels strongly that people who try to have meaningful discussions on Twitter should automatically lose a lawsuit, and that people should be able to block whoever they want from their personal controlled accounts or forums. It is only the companies who provide the forum service that must be neutral.

5.8.2.4.2. Unjust social media censorship in the West (西方不公正的社交媒体审查)

Minor:

YouTube:

5.8.2.4.3. Censorship of "politically incorrect speech" (审查政治不正确言论)

I think Trump is disgusting as a person

because they thought Trump would become sad and cry.

Western governments should pass laws that prevent this kind of arbitrary political censorship by companies.

Please enjoy this politically correct cartoon
Figure 39. "Please enjoy this culturally ethnically religiously and politically correct cartoon responsibly" cartoon by Michael Shaw from the New Yorker (2006) makes a reference to the fact that all humour is a criticism of something, and that excessive political correctness can be used as a way to limit free speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiqDZlAZygU Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) defending freedom of speech in the context of the Reform Section 5 campaign to remove all criminalization of insults. The campaigns slogan was "Feel free to insult me!". He then quotes: "The strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech" from an Obama speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNjYSns0op0 Munk Debate on Political Correctness (2018) features Stephen Fry and Jordan Peterson speaking against political correctness. Those dudes are awesome. https://youtu.be/rJOMYEXK6cs?t=150 summarizes it well.
5.8.2.5. Western society is extremely unequal (西方社会极度不平等)

Exactly! And this is something Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) fights daily against through his open source contributions.

And politicians don’t really care enough. Partially because:

  • the poor don’t have access to proper education and vote less often

  • corporations pay for their election campaigns

  • many of the politicians are rich themselves

But do you really think that further increasing the power concentration as done is China is going to help reduce inequality?

If so, you have been brainwashed beyond reason. Increasing the concentration of power will obviously make society even more unequal and corrupt, never less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHFrhIAj0ME Can’t get you out of my head - Part 1 (2021) documentary by Adam Curtis for the BBC. This awesome documentary suggests and explains why Western politicians care less and less about the people, and why Western companies have gained more and more power. It also mentions how after China gave up on communism and became a capitalist country, it completely lost any guiding ideal. The West still had the ideal of democracy. But for China, there was only one thing left: money. Our dear Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!) is of course doing his best to instill nationalism into China to fill that void. What could possible go wrong with that?
5.8.2.7. Snowden (斯诺登)

Censoring anyone who says "my president is shit", which is what China does, is much, much more serious than censoring intelligence leaks.

The problem with dictatorships, is that they make every information that makes them look bad a "state secret". Including any information that hundreds of thousands of people have witnessed, or economic performance metrics! See also: Internal censorship is necessary to prevent fake USA accounts from creating harmful propaganda (内部审查是必要的,以防止虚假的美国账户制造有害宣传).

The level of unknown surveillance that Snowden uncovered is a bad thing about the US.

Snowden’s prosecution was inevitable. Countries need secret services. Secret services need laws that prevent leaking classified information that was produced by government officials.

Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) has never and will never criticize China or any other country for spying or prosecuting spies.

If Snowden were Chinese, the Chinese government would ban talking about him or anything he uncovered. A keyword attack with "Snowden" in the West has no effect.

It is obvious that the level of surveillance in any dictatorship will be infinitely higher, since the Government has much more power and no-one can criticize.

On the West however, the debate Snowden sparked cannot be censored, and has helped to control excessive and secret state power.

Ultimately, Ciro thinks camera surveillance is somewhat inevitable, because people will always want to fight crime and terrorism and surveillance technology keeps getting cheaper and cheaper.

He is however strictly against the ban of cryptography.

He also believes that a good solution to balance out government power is the Second amendment (美國憲法第二修正案). It is better to have more school shootings and less full-blown dictatorship led genocides / mass human rights violations.

In 2019 China amusingly censored passages Snowden’s "Permanent Record" autobiography book, which Snowden then published on Twitter:

I don’t think they understand that what Snowden stands for is completely the opposite of what the Chinese gov is lol

Snowden then later released the entire Chinese version of the book for free online with the censored parts underlined: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/10/snowden_china_censorship (archive), link to the book: https://a.temporaryrecord.com/Permanent_Record_-_CN_edition_with_underlined_redactions.pdf (archive). One wonders why he didn’t just do that in the first place for all versions, maybe he needed to pay the writer that helped him?

Snowden
Figure 40. Snowden highlighted defects on abuses of power in a Western democracy, and the discussion he sparked helped to control such abuses. To obey is to betray comes to mind. Source.

https://youtu.be/MhJldILZhJ8?t=138 "A matter of internal security: the age old cry of the oppressor". Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation s03e11 "The Hunted". video::MhJldILZhJ8[youtube,height=400,width=600,time=138]

5.8.2.8. Bad things have been done in the name of freedom (以自由的名义人做过很多坏事)

Bad things have been done in the name of anything.

It’s just that much, worse things are done without freedom than with it.

Democracies cannot necessarily protect weak countries from powerful ones either. No political system can do that, because humans are trash essentially.

What democracy do is to protect its own people against its own government. Because when the government turns against part of the population in a dictatorship, that part of the population gets crushed entirely, without any chance to fight, because they don’t have an army or ally countries like other countries do.

Here are some images that Wumao (五毛)'s like to post:

5.9. Is the Chinese government evil? (中国共产党是邪恶的吗?)

Obviously not, just inefficient and dangerous.

It is just another non-democratic empire like the Qing Dynasty (清朝, 大清, 1636-1912), we might as well cal it:

共产朝
The Communist Dynasty

Like any other organization and individual everywhere in the entire world, they are just doing everything that they can to maintain their own power.

It just happens that China’s the current is political system allows the CCP to do really bad things.

And it should also be noted that it is in part the West’s fault that China currently has this shitty system.

Falun Gong (法轮功, Qigong new religion/cult) thinks otherwise of course, they think the CCP is actually made up of real actual devils in some dimension: Does Ciro Santilli believe in or practice Falun Gong? (三西猴信仰或者练法轮功吗?). E.g. on the https://endccp.com/ Falun Gong lead campaign:

The demon CCP has plundered the ancient land of China

5.9.1. Chinese politicians really care about the Chinese citizens (中国政客真正关心中国公民)

Sometimes people say Ciro Santilli is naive.

Politicians are the same all over the world.

Some might have good intentions, but most don’t give a shit about anyone else.

But all must play a careful political game, and sometimes betray their own beliefs to not lose power entirely.

Even those that genuinely care might have to play such political games.

China’s problem is not its politicians.

Western politicians don’t care about the people either: Western society is extremely unequal (西方社会极度不平等). But at least they have to pretend a little.

By John Kenneth Galbraith, possibly based on an earlier Soviet Union (苏联) joke https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ocasio-cortez-capitalism-quote/:

Under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under socialism, it’s just the opposite.

5.9.2. Is Chinese politician X evil? (中国政客X邪恶吗?)

The term evil does not make sense unless you are religious.

The best definition of evil is a psychopath with zero empathy for anyone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy although this can be better characterized as a disease or extreme personality trait.

The huge majority of those politicians are just regular dudes with a knack for politics but brought up in a fucked up political situation.

Just like you, Ciro Santilli and other politicians in any country.

5.10. Comparisons between the CCP and Nazi Germany (纳粹德国和中共长得很想)

Both CCP and Nazis share the same basic core ideology: capitalism, love your country/leader mindlessly, work hard, throw any dissidents under the bus, and everyone will become richer (except the dissidents who will be in jail or dead).

Thankfully, the CCP is possibly less bad as of 2020 it has less of "this minority (Jews) is the cause of all our problems/racial supremacy approach". But everything else, and arguably the key points that got most German people on-board in the first place, are so similar, that it has to raise huge red flags.

We must however be careful not to demonize the Nazis, as that is not a helpful way to learn from the past.

The Nazis were also people like us, and that is the scary thing we must never forget, thus we should never fall for:

Notably, it can be argued that the Nazis did bring economic growth and stability to Germany, which the people desperately needed, see also Goring’s appearance on the Nuremberg trials.

Keywords:

  • Xitler (习特勒). 习 "xi2" is very close in sound to the Chinese name of Hitler: 希特勒 (xi1 te4 le4)

  • Chinazi (赤纳粹 Chi Na Cui). TODO why 赤. Means Red, which is a reference to Communism, although red was of course it was also the color of the original Nazis. But where else is it used? Chi is also chosen to achieve the sound "Chi Na" as a variant of Shina (zhina, 支那)

See also:

Articles:

Would you have stood up to Hitler when he came to power? Or would you have been an appeaser, like Chamberlain? Or perhaps even a supporter of fascism, like the Daily Mail’s owner at the time?

We all like to imagine we’re courageous enough to stand up to tyranny and persecution. That we would have stood up to the villains of the past. Seen them for what they really were, even helped rescue their victims from danger. We certainly don’t like to think we would have bought their goods or funded, invested in their economies…​

Well today, you’re going to find out what you’re made of.

TODO some failed attempts at ASCII art flags:

卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐
卐                                              卐
卐                  卐                          卐
卐        卐卐                                  卐
卐    卐  卐            卐                      卐
卐    卐卐卐卐卐                                卐
卐        卐 卐         卐                      卐
卐    卐卐卐                                    卐
卐                  卐                          卐
卐                                              卐
卐                                              卐
卐                                              卐
卐                                              卐
卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐卐
Xi Nazi war flag
Figure 41. Photoshopped Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!) with raised fist with Nazi uniform and flag on the background. Source.
Xi raised fist
Figure 42. Likely original or similar image of Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!) with raised fist as he took oath when coming into or renewing office. Source.
Nazi war flag
Figure 43. German’s 1938-1945 war flag called the "War Ensign of Germany" in English or "Reichskriegsflagge" in German. Source.
Hitler angry rehearsal
Figure 44. Hitler has of course a few raised fists on Google Images, but they tend to be more aggressive, and less compatible with Xi’s apathic poker face. Source.
Xi mein kampf
Figure 45. Photoshopped cover of Mein Kampf with Xi’s face on top of Hitler’s and other modifications such as Mian instead of Mein, likely the same 面 (mian4, face) as the Chinese character at the bottom right. Xi Jinping Thought (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想, 2017) also comes to mind. Source.
Mein kampf
Figure 46. Original cover of Mein Kampf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QERDzr6HSQ How Rich Was Hitler? by Mark Felton Productions (2021) mentions that the success of the book helped Hitler a financially a lot when he was in great need. Ciro speculates that the same applies to Li Hongzhi (李洪志, LHZ, Falun Gong prophet), which has retained copyright of all his works (despite them being the truth of the universe, a natural force essentially), as can be seen by the copyright notice on https://en.falundafa.org/. Source.
Xi Nazi car salute photoshop
Figure 47. Photoshopped photo of Hitler giving the Nazi salute from a car with Himmler on the background with Xi’s face on top of Hitler’s. Source.
Hitler Himmler salute
Figure 48. Original photo of Hitler giving the Nazi salute from a car with Himmler on the background. This photo shows them reviewing SS troops during a Reichsparteitag (Reich Party Day) parade in Nuremberg (1938-09-05 - 1938-09-12). Source.
Chinazi flag
Figure 49. Chinazi flag (赤纳粹旗) by Hong Kong protesters. Seen on streets. An example of Flag desecration (亵渎旗帜). Source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD53MEbLDIE laowhy86 video "Can We Compare China to Nazi Germany?" published on 2020-04-29. Good side-by-side video comparisons. Says that China is more like Nazi than Russia (俄罗斯), but Ciro disagrees, all three are evil dictatorships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU Mitchell and Webb "Are we the Baddies?" Nazi Sketch. In this sketch, Mitchel, a cute self-conscious Nazi, starts to wonder with Webber, his Nazi friend, if they aren’t on the side of evil, particularly due to the usage of Nazi skulls (Totenkopf) on their uniforms. This echoes Goring’s appearance on the Nuremberg trials. Like the CCP, many Nazis thought of course that they were doing great things.

5.10.1. Hitler Has Only Got One Ball (希特勒只有一个蛋, 1939)

We have to make a Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!) version of this!!!

There’s even an Uncencyclopedia page for it.

We have to do a Chinese version. A starting point:

近平,只有一只蛋
泽东,还好有一个半
泽民,
小平,
Hitler has only got one ball
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1tF-Yrwe3U A version of the "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1DWJQkOJew The Armstrong and Miller Show "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" sketch depicts in a funny way the imaginary creation of the song.

5.10.2. Thousand-Year Reich (中华人民共和国万岁)

As mentioned at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reich&oldid=1054809270#During_the_Nazi_period a popular way of referring to the Nazi rule was as the:

Thousand-Year Reich

In China, a popoular expression for "Long Live" is "万岁", which means "live for ten thousand years".

This comes from old Imperial times, but applies perfectly to the Nazi/CCP analogy.

5.10.2.1. Fourth Reich (希特勒只有一个蛋, 1939)

Neo-Nazis thought they might be the ones. Skinhead newbs. China beat them to it by a mile.

5.10.3. China is like the Borg from Star Trek (博格 (星际旅行和中共长得很想)

TODO memes?? Only one image here: https://www.techinasia.com/qihoo-acquistion-updates-sogou-talks-confirmed-chukong-rumors-denied but we need more, e.g. several top commies with Borg photoshop, or even better something showing the people as borgs as well.

Notable mentions:

5.11. Contributing guidelines (贡献指南)

5.11.1. I want to take my chances and make a shitpost in cirosantilli/china-dictatorship (屎帖子)

So, have you reached the conclusion that your shitpost is worth the risk of getting blocked?

Remember that shitposts can also be creative: if you are going to insult Ciro Santilli, at least do it in a creative way, or else you look like an even bigger idiot than you really are.

A collection of shitposts for you to take inspiration from can be found at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues?q=label%3Ashitpost+

Also, when opening a shitpost you may mark it clearly such with the shitpost issue template which automatically assigns the shitpost label. Doing so will make you look like less of an idiot.

While we require polite replies to polite posts, no matter what which side they are defending, if a post is marked as a shitpost, things are much more relaxed and fun, and you can generally get away with telling the OP to fuck themselves without getting blocked.

Shit
Figure 51. Real shit photos may be posted in reply to shitposts. Source.
Kin no unko
Figure 52. Amazing shitposts may recieve a Golden Shit award and the golden-shit label. The image is from a Japanese Kin no unko (金のうんこ), which is likely inspired by golden Sycees. Source.
Like shitposts
Figure 53. To censor or not to censor good shitposts: that is not the question, Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) will never censor them! Source.
Caonima
Figure 54. The legendary Grass Mud Horse (草泥马, caonima) is also said to appear in shitposts from time to time.

5.11.2. I am going to write a huge wall of text to prove my point

Feel free to do that, but no one will ever read most of it.

If you want your comment to be read, choose your key point well, and deliver it.

It is a shame that most people who are ever able to do that are shitposters, but credit where credit is due.

5.11.3. Can I contact Ciro Santilli in Chinese? (我可以用中文联系三西猴吗?)

If you don’t know English well enough, that’s fine though, go for Chinese, Ciro Santilli will likely understand it: Does Ciro Santilli speak Chinese? (三西猴会说中文吗?).

But if you do, use English.

Ciro is not going to learn Chinese because of your message.

It is more productive for you to write in English, so that the rest of the West can also learn something new.

Especially since it seems that most Chinese already know what you are talking about, so you are better off teaching Western people about it.

5.11.3.1. I am going to use a bunch of Chinese slangs because it makes me feel smart (我知道网络语言,我很聪明)

Obviously, if you want to be understood, use simple and standard Chinese, since as Ciro has already stated clearly, his Chinese sucks: Does Ciro Santilli speak Chinese? (三西猴会说中文吗?).

Avoid slangs, otherwise Ciro might not have patience to Google your useless slangs down Zhihu questions.

Of course, if you have to read this, you likely are not going to say anything useful in the first place, so not reading your post is likely fine, just make sure to mark it as a I want to take my chances and make a shitpost in cirosantilli/china-dictatorship (屎帖子) if you don’t want Ciro to think you are a complete idiot.

Using slangs makes some people feel smart due their advanced knowledge of a specific subculture, or makes them feel part of that subculture to gather allies. I.e., it is a form of shibboleth. It mainly comes down to a way of avoiding any rational conversation about China’s obvious problems by highlighting Non-Chinese people should not interfere in Chinese politics (外国人不应该干预中国政治).

Or maybe they just want to waste Ciro’s time.

Such idiots don’t see however that every major slang is Googleable, and that every overly obscure slang is already not understandable by a large part of the Chinese population, and won’t be understood by anybody in 5 years, so that you are wasting your time writing this gibberish. But since you are an idiot, it’s not like you have anything better to do with your time, so maybe it doesn’t matter.

If you want to efficiently prevent anyone from understanding your stuff, Ciro recommends that you just use SHA-256 instead:

$ printf 'heil xi' | sha256sum
286b183bf41d6c9de5315bbd64f1ca35a58157ae2e7f38086978c108e67c4882  -

A Chinese insult tip 101, avoid similar sound euphemisms. If you are going to say shit at least grow some balls or tits and use the proper characters, Ciro will respect you more for it:

Places to try and decrypt Internet slang when you feel like wasting your time:

Random slangs of interest and related concepts:

Some useful slangs seen on the wild:

In other sections:

Rugae vaginales with black hole
Figure 55. A Vagina (阴道) also known as cunt (屄), is the female reproductive organ, including the naturally occurring black hole that appears in front of it whenever a picture is taken to prevent GitHub from taking down this page. Even though you’ve never seen one, there’s no need to be afraid of it, and refer to it in euphemisms like "SB". Background source and black hole source.
5.11.3.1.1. Ruhua (to disgrace china, 辱华, 乳华)

Basically a 2 character slang for Hurt the feelings of the Chinese people (伤害中国人民的感情) which cool people in the web use:

The pardox is: as soon as you start talking about ruhua, you start to risk getting banned in China, because most of ruhua is banned in China itself.

In this project for example: https://github.com/leiroc/insults the author is aiming to create a list of such insults. So someone came and suggested adding this project to the list at: https://github.com/leiroc/insults/issues/4, which is obviouly censored in China, as an example. They even have an ICP license 非经营性网站备案 (2000) at https://insults.cn/, isn’t that cute?

To which the repo owner replied:

感谢提交,这个人有点疯狂了。我就不给加到记录里面了,因为加进去,看到的人就会更加多。对于这些信息不是所有人都有分别真伪的能力。害怕有些人信了他的,或者被他诱导。所以还是让他消声少曝光的好,这些人国家肯定一直在监控的,我们可以放心。

Google Translate:

Thanks for submitting, this person is a bit crazy. I won’t add it to the record, because if you add it, you will see more people. Not everyone has the ability to distinguish between authenticity and falsehood for this information. I’m afraid that some people will believe him or be induced by him. Therefore, it is better to silence him and reduce exposure. These people and countries must have been monitoring them, so we can rest assured.

This perfecly shows the ruhua paradox. In the end, you are only allowed to talk about the most idiotic and insipid events, while censoring any serious self criticism.

TODO the README says that it is a static blog, but I can’t find the source on GitHub anywhere, that repo contains almost nothing.

The large majority of posts are about Western companies that comply with Chinese censorship requests (遵守中国审查要求的西方公司), because those cowards retract their claims afterwards.

Some sample posts that are not about Western companies:

5.12. Personal questions about Ciro Santilli (关于三西猴的问题)

5.12.1. Has Ciro Santilli you ever lived in China? (三西猴住过中国吗?)

Not as of 2019, he has only visited once in 2012, and it was amazingly beautiful.

Ciro Santilli with a stone carved Budai in the Feilai Feng caves near the Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou in 2012
Figure 56. Ciro Santilli with a stone carved Budai (布袋和尚) in the Feilai Feng caves (飞来峰) near the Lingyin Temple (灵隐寺) in Hangzhou taken during his legendary 2012 touristic trip to China. Will he ever be able to go to China again to re-experience such marvelous locations? If the CCP falls before he dies, and if the statue hasn’t been destroyed by the commies, Ciro will return to that exact spot and take a second picture. How will he look like?

But he doesn’t think it is a good idea for him to do that now, in case his Visa got accepted, because he is not interested in learning about the Chinese jail system! :-)

He knows that if you don’t mind contributing to making WW3 deadlier and shut up and obey the CCP, China is already a fine place to live as much as any other developing country.

5.12.1.1. Would Ciro Santilli like to live in China? (三西猴想住在中国吗?)

If the dictatorship ends, Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) would like to migrate to China if given a decent job to help China develop and become awesomer.

Before the Dictatorship, Ciro likely won’t be able to enter/it wouldn’t be a good idea: Would Ciro Santilli be able to visit China before the CCP ends? (三西猴能否在中共结束之前访问中国?).

And it is immoral to help make dictatorships richer by working for their companies: What should Western countries do about China? (西方国家应该怎么对待中国?).

5.12.1.2. Would Ciro Santilli be able to visit China before the CCP ends? (三西猴能否在中共结束之前访问中国?)

It would be interesting to apply for a VISA to find out.

But Ciro won’t do it because it is too risky that it would be a waste of Ciro’s precious time and money.

Firstly, Jamal Khashoggi taught us that walking into enemy into consulates of enemy countries is a bad idea.

Then, even if the VISA were accepted, Ciro could still be turned back on entering the country, thus wasting the flight time and money. This could either be a genius plot to waste the money of enemies of the state, or due to a crappy divided IT system between the border control and the VISA people.

Finally, even after the border, there is still the possibility that Ciro could be stopped in the country half-way through the visit and sent back, or be interrogated for a few days, or less likely murdered with poison.

Therefore, if you think that living in China is fundamental to understand it, please just explain what you think one can learn from the experience instead. Do you really need to live there to see its censorship machine working? It would arguably be harder to see it from the inside.

5.12.3. Does Ciro Santilli speak Chinese? (三西猴会说中文吗?)

As of 2019, oral enough for daily things, but not understand most natural casual dinner conversation or watch TV series, because they go too quickly into vocabulary subject areas that he doesn’t know. And obviously, using slangs just makes things really hard.

When it matters, and with some patience, he can make himself understood though with some analogies (archive) and a dictionary.

From the HSK vocabulary list, he estimates that he is definitely HSK 3, but not quite HSK 4. This would likely equate A2/B1 in the European system.

Phonetics wise, Ciro can’t distinguish or produce a few sounds, notably -ing vs -in and his off-tone rate is high, but it tends to not matter at all compared to his lack of vocabulary. Except for his mother-in-law, who sometimes does not understand it at all without correct tones!

Ciro reads with https://github.com/cschiller/zhongwen after Perapera died when he wants to learn new words/has patience/something is very important, and can basically understand everything in that way. TODO perapera support stopped in 2021: https://www.perapera.org/plugins/ and since browsers don’t have stable API’s it very quickly stopped working for everyone. Alternatives asked at: https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/78268/on-mouse-hover-pop-up-chinese-dictionary-browser-extension-alternative-to-perape/ Zhongwen worked, source at https://github.com/cschiller/zhongwen

When he has no patience or for larger not very important chunks of text though, he reads with Google Translate as it tends to work, and then if there is an important sentence that was translated to garbage with Perapera.

Ciro writes with a mixture of Pleco, Google translate and Googling to see if Chinese actually say the sentences that way, never Google translate alone as it would be too imprecise.

Ciro really wishes he could learn more Chinese. Ciro really loves the Chinese language. But he has other more important endeavors at the moment. There simply aren’t enough hours in a day.

Spoken Chinese is in Ciro’s opinion a relatively easy language to learn from scratch, because word formation is so often logical:, e.g.:

  • volcano = fire + mountain: 火山(huo shan)

  • train = fire + car: 火车 (huo che), a reference to old steam locomotives

and there is no useless crap like verb grammatical conjugation, grammatical gender, plural inflection, capitalization, etc. (latino sine flexione anyone?)

Ciro hasn’t tried to learn characters because too much effort, but he did learn some of the most common ones without trying.

Ciro initially learnt from book that come with audio recordings in the first 6-months to 1 year in 2010, but that got impossibly boring afterward, so he later moved to just basically talking as much as possible non-important things to his wife in Chinese, and whenever he reaches one that he doesn’t know that seems useful, he Plecos it up or just 怎么说 to his Ciro Santilli’s wife (三西猴的老婆) and then Pleco.

It should also be mentioned that Ciro also feels that it would be better if all countries more officially adopted English as an international language that everyone should learn for reasons explained at: https://cirosantilli.com/having-more-than-one-natural-language-is-bad-for-the-world

5.12.3.1. Chinese characters are insane (汉字是疯狂的)

But they should have gone further and reduced it to pinyin like the Korean and Vietnamese did, this will make your culture much easier to export.

No foreign adult will every learn to read and write Chinese unless they are completely obsessed by the culture or need it as part of their jobs. And even then, they will avoid it at all costs, because life is just too short!

Japanese furigana also comes to mind. The characters are so insane that you need to a well specified and widely used phonetic reading aid, especially for teenagers, but likely not only in case of rarer characters! There’s even an HTML tag for that for God’s sake: the HTML Ruby tag.

Yes, ideograms are:

but they just take too much time for any sane person adult to learn, it’s harder than C++!

Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) smirked when he came across the character "蒄" in Pleco, and the translation was: "meaning unknown (herb mentioned in old books)". Yes, at the word level, the same like exists in phonetic systems, but that it takes up a modern dictionary and Unicode slot is still funny.

He also smiles very broadly whenever his wife finds a character she doesn’t remember. Or when she spends 20 seconds tabbing to find the correct character for some Proper name she wants to type in pinyin. It feels good to be right.

Posts that express similar ideas:

Chinese character extreme
Figure 57. The "fictional" Chinese character "Dou" from Uncyclopedia is roughly translated as "Impossibly complex pictogram-based writing system that takes a person a thousand thousand years to learn." and illustrates well why pictograms are a bad idea. Source.
Sweet brown chinese characters meme
Figure 58. The Sweet Brown Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That meme (knowyourmeme) fits perfectly into how Ciro feels about learning Chinese characters.
Sweet brown chinese characters meme zh
Figure 59. Translation of the above.
Chinese typewriter
Figure 60. Chinese typewriter. As you would expect, it is insanely complex, and slow to type with. Source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZcui85b4EE RARE Japanese Toshiba Typewriter. Types in Japanese, Chinese + English. Toshiba Typewriter Model BW-2112.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNUEUth7qjc Commercial for IBM’s Selectric Typewriter 1960’s Contrast with the above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_cbW5JK9WM "The most complex Chinese character" by Vladimir Skultety does a reasonable analysis of which Chinese character is the most complex
poqyf109wtca1
Figure 61. When you don’t know how to write in Chinese but still want to be festive during Lunar New Year. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/10f53nl/happy_happy/
5.12.3.1.1. Seal (印章)

Seals are also of course top to bottom right to left as in the traditional texts.

5.12.4. Is Ciro Santilli a radical? (三西猴是激进分子吗?)

Saying that someone is a radical is useless Ad hominem (訴諸人身).

If you want to say something useful, give specific reasons why you think one specific thing that Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) said is incorrect.

Do you consider him a radical because it is unthinkable that China is not perfect?

Or just because he’s trying to take down some more websites that your dictatorship still does not dislike enough to block: China is fine as it is, stop making it worse (中国很好,别让它变得更糟)?

See also:

And Ciro never gets mad. Only a slightly sad or annoyed sometimes.

But maybe no radical ever considers themselves a radical? Hmmm…​

5.12.6. Is Ciro Santilli a SJW?

One major difference between Ciro and the stereotypical SJW is that he never engage in lengthy discussions as per Ciro Santilli’s reply policy (三西猴的回答政策).

He limits himself to listening as much as he can to learn new arguments.

So the rationale of his actions is no_ to convince anyone, but rather:

5.12.7. Does Ciro Santilli hate China? (三西猴讨厌中国吗?)

On the contrary. China has his favorite:

  • food

  • language

  • Chinese Music (中国音乐)

  • history

  • nature

  • culture, notably:

    • intense respect for older people. Whenever Ciro was with his mother-in-law and asked for help from young Chinese people, they were extremely nice.

      It is hard to understand how the same people have not managed to speak up when 70 million old ladies were put into jail when Falun Gong was banned. Only the extreme fear of also going to jail could explain it. Living in China is living in constant fear if you can think for yourself.

    • enormous importance given to education. One must not forget however: grades are useless, and all that matters is how much you improve society

As Bjarne said:

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses

Ciro only focus here on negative things to provide content that will activate the Great Firewall.

A small poem:

持华反党
爱国恨党

Support the Chinese people, oppose the Party
Love the country, hate the Party

Yuyuan garden door
Figure 62. Round gate at Yu Garden (豫园) in Shanghai. The large characters on top read (left to right) "流翠" TODO not sure about the second character, understand reference. Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) thinks that Chinese gardens (中国园林) are amazing!!! Source.
5.12.7.3. Why does Ciro Santilli love China so much? (为什么三西猴喜欢中国那么多?)

It is interesting how different people get different impressions!

Of course, the fact that his wife is Chinese and does Falun Gong may or may not have played a role in it :-)

It was like this: Ciro started getting interested in Chinese culture, then he started hanging out with Chinese people, and then he started hanging out with his wife!

So yes, it is a chicken and egg type of thing. The fact that she is one of the most intelligent, morally upright, cute, and "never give up" person I know may have helped me choose too.

5.12.8. Ciro Santilli’s China freedom campaign is selfish (三西猴是自私的)

See also:

5.12.8.1. Ciro Santilli is doing his China freedom campaign to become famous (三西猴正在做他的中国自由运动以成名)

No, he am a selfless human being, only concerned with the greater well being of humankind.

More serious answer:

  • he believes in this. As evidence, it has limiting effects on his technological career: Does your employer support this project? (你的雇主支持此项目吗?), and he doesn’t think he can/wants to become a politician in China if the CCP ever falls

  • the more famous Ciro is, the more impact he will have in the future

  • the more famous Ciro is, the more feedback he have that what he’s been doing has been working

Keyword: attention whore.

Duplicate pool:

5.12.8.3. Is Ciro Santilli’s china-dictatorship campaign funded or otherwise supported by some organization? 谁收买三西猴散布关于中国的谣言?

Sure, the CIA sends Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) 10 thousand USD checks from time to time, but that doesn’t change at all what he would be doing.

And sometimes the NSA, FBI, MI6, MI5, Mossad, Al-Qaeda and ISIS also pitch in a bit depending on their needs.

Just kidding.

A shady supporting organization might require that he does not disclose their support, so maybe the best answer is that you will never know for sure.

Of course, a hidden support would represent a reputation hit for both such organizations and for Ciro, which makes it less likely that I would have accepted or had such an offer.

Also consider Ciro’s motivation. If your mother in law were put into jail unfairly for 15 days, for following the same religion that your wife follows, and if you had a social media presence, wouldn’t you be tempted to do the same?

What about you, are you funded by the CCP?

The fact that Ciro Santilli is obviously a real full time software engineer based on his open source contributions, and so does not need government funding, is perhaps the single greatest advantage of not having carried this campaign anonymously:

It’s nothing world breaking, but it is at a level where it simply cannot be faked.

5.12.9. Would Ciro Santilli be doing his China freedom campaign if he was in China? (如果他在中国,三西猴会做他的中国自由运动吗?)

Not with his real name attached to it, see also:

5.12.9.1. Does your employer support this project? (你的雇主支持此项目吗?)

My employer has nothing to do with this.

He doesn’t approve or disapprove of the Chinese government or of my private actions.

The only thing that my employer does believe in is that employees can have their own political opinions, and that this should not affect hiring decisions.

Obviously, this action limits my ability to lead high profile deals with China.

Also I’m quite curious if this would limit my ability to go to China for business, but I haven’t applied for a visa since I’ve started this. It likely wouldn’t be a good idea for me to go to China :-)

But my employer believes that inclusion and non-discrimination are more valuable.

I will always do my best to not let my personal opinions affect my professional decisions, as that would be unfair to my employer.

5.12.10. Doesn’t Ciro Santilli have anything better to do than pissing off China? (除了反对中共以外,三西猴有没有别的更好的事儿要作吗?)

The Internet gives everyone the magic power of writing something, and having million people read it for free!

This is how much time Ciro spends on this project to give you an idea:

Then Ciro just contributes to programming websites exactly as he would if he weren’t making this campaign, and voila.

What has happened more and more is that Ciro has been expanding resources by short burst rather than continuously. This began especially at the end of 2019 and start of 2020 was such as hot year with 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests (反对逃犯条例修订草案运动) and Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus (2019冠状病毒病早期迹象审查).

But Ciro only works on this when his brain was too tired of technical stuff and unable to do more, or as a brain warm up routine in the morning. So it doesn’t take any work time away from him.

Telling the CCP to fuck off is surprisingly relaxing, you should try it some time too. It uses a different part of your brain other than the programming one. It is, one could say, an art form.

5.12.11. Is Ciro Santilli against Communism/Socialism in general or just against the Chinese Communist Party specifically? Ciro Santilli 是普遍反对共产主义/社会主义还是专门反对中国共产党?

Anti-dictatorship and censorship, not anti-communist in general. In this project, Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) has sometimes used the word "communist/commie" loosely as a shortcut for "supporter of the CCP", but it does not extend by default to communism in general.

Most importantly, China is far from being socialist or communist. It is just a dictatorship with savage capitalism. Exactly like Nazi Germany.

It is true that the CCP takes greater control of corporations, as shown e.g. in the Tech Crackdown of 2021, which is also something Ciro Santilli has asked for in the West, see also: https://cirosantilli.com/governments-have-lost-all-power-to-companies

But to call it communist or socialist is a joke. There are no big specific benefits to citizens that are not already present in capitalist countries. It is nothing like the Soviet Union, where people had actual job guarantees, and everything provieded for (in theory).

And Ciro has a fundamental and irrational belief that we should not violate human rights to reach those goals, which is why he opposes the CCP (and others who violate human rights).

Classify Ciro’s techno-political goals as you will:

A possible way to get closer to either: https://cirosantilli.com/electronic-voting

Anything in between however, he’s not sure about.

5.13. People in China have already considered democracy, and rejected it (中国人已经考虑要不要民主, 到底决定不要了)

OK, shall we put that to an anonymous vote just to make sure?

Dear sir or madam: do you want more control over your government? y/n

Oops, I forgot that proposing such a vote would put in you jail, never mind.

5.14. Would it be right to use violence to overthrow the CCP? (用暴力推翻中共正确吗?)

In an ideal world, Ciro Santilli is of course "against violence".

But what if you could prevent a lot of future violence with some violence today?

Ah, the eternal question which only God can answer:

Do you really think that the communists will step down if you ask them nicely enough? Even after Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 (六四事件)?

A quote from V for Vendetta (2005) comes to mind:

Q: If they do, what do you think will happen [the people protest against their Government]?

A: What usually happens when people without guns stand up to people with guns.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TcoBv6ibh8M V for Vendetta (2005) "What you think will happen" scene.

How do you think the CCP or any other party got into power and maintained that power in the first place? Obviously through violence. And likely due to earlier Japanese invasions which weakened the Guomindang.

And the CCP actually uses "the ends justify the means" as an argument to justify its own actions: As long as China is developing economically, it is fine to violate the human rights of a few million people (只要经济好,我不在乎人权).

The question of if anything is morally right or wrong makes no sense. All that matters is: what is the government that maximizes the happines of its own people, and who has the power to do what? Getting richer, is part of the equation, but so is not being constantly affraid that you will be randomly put in jail for no good reason.

Baby Hitler vs 5 million Jews trolley problem
Figure 63. One baby Hitler or 5 Million Jews trolley problem illustrates well the moral dilemma of "the ends justify the means".
What Chinese men really want
Figure 64. Translation: What women think men want (a kiss). What men actually want (decapitating Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!)). The image from the left comes from the Japanese manga Okaeri Alice according to Reddit comments. The image to the right is based on an illustration of the decapitation of Louis XVI (路易十六) during the French Revolution (法国大革命), but with Louis' head replaced by Xi Jinping’s head. An original can be found at: https://castinet.castilleja.org/users/pmckee/frenchrev/violentphase.html. Source.

5.14.1. Second amendment (美國憲法第二修正案)

If China had the second amendment in 1989, the Chinese "Communist" Party (CCP, 中国共产党, 1949-, Cult of Mao/Xi, 毛习邪教, 10.000 year Reich) would not be in power in 1990.

The availability of guns however only explains part of the problem of gun violence in the USA: the other huge thing that must be addressed is to reduce inequality.

A somewhat popular Wumao (五毛) criticism of gun violence in the USA (+ other problems) in song/poem form was brought up at https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/215

歌颂美国

自由美利坚,
枪击每一天;
白恨黑卑微,
黑仇黄有钱。
世界第一强,
川普再号强;
新冠启示录,
群体免疫法;
比强还更强,
世界一病夫。
如今五十万,
耶稣爱美国,
与民天国欢。
人命如草芥,
不及股市贵;
战火连中东,
此乃真民主。

Related discussions:

TODO origin?

5.15. Why does Ciro Santilli say that China is a dictatorship? (中国不是独裁!)

Ciro is using the word in an slightly extended/joking sense.

Maybe "authoritarian" is a more precise term, but it is just too much of a mouthful.

In particular, dictatorships are harder to sustain than authoritarianism, since it generally implies even less freedom, and a single leader whose death can destabilize everything.

The CCP is more like a social class with a large number of members and various sub-layers, and it is therefore much harder to take down on the other hand.

Dictatorship is becoming more and more precise under Xi however.

Even Mao Zedong (毛泽东, 1954–1976) admits it and put it into the constitution: People’s democratic dictatorship 人民民主专政, so funny.

Well known Evil Western media that also call China a dictatorship:

Further discussions about this useless terminology question:

5.15.1. Where can I find good words for a keyword attack? (我在哪里可以找到关键字攻击的好词?)

See also:

5.15.1.1. How does Ciro Santilli choose keywords for the keyword attack? (三西猴如何为关键词攻击选择关键词?)

I haven’t counted, but the limit for Stack Overflow is quite low, and I’m always almost at the maximum, which is about "Ciro Santilli" + 3 3-4 Chinese character events with a separator.

These are some of my prioritization guidelines:

  • recent cases receive a large prime over the raw death toll, because older cases can always be attributed to other people.

    E.g., I’ve heard there is even some opening towards acknowledging the Great Famine, thus 烏坎事件 (and others from my previous profile names)

  • words must refer to a precise event, and must be clearly summarizable in very few chars, for increased impact, and profile name length limitations.

    E.g. "High corruption rates, high pollution", although very serious, feel too generic.

  • events that relate directly to freedom of speech receive a prime, since they can only happen in China and very few other countries.

    Non e.g.: corruption and pollution. Those are hard to quantify, and there is always an immediate reply: china GDP per capita is low, same happens in India, Brazil, etc.

    Freedom of speech however, is immediately verifiable (e.g. "my Weibo was taken down"), and undeniably caused by the current central government.

  • the more people affected, and the more deeply they have been affected, the more important obviously

I am currently trying to maintain in my Stack Overflow Location a ranking of events in a single string, so that it can be easily copy pasted around. The location appears on every page if you hover over my account name, so it is likely in the HTML at least.

If you think that this list can be improved, please open an issue explaining how and why.

5.15.2. Other notable keyword attacks (其他值得注意的关键字攻击)

5.15.2.1. Notepad++

It might be a newbie text editors for newbie Windows users, but at least they use it to good use by doing keyword attacks:

The creator appears to be a Vietnamese immigrant or descendant living in France. There are many such immigrants due to Vietnam being an ex-colony: https://github.com/donho Also he must have good reason to dislike the commies due to similar commit bullshit in Vietnam. He was at Paris Diderot in 2000: https://donho.github.io/#education (archive).

5.15.2.1.1. Notepad++ Chinese browsers block (2020)

https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/17/notepad-plus-plus-blocked-in-china/ "Text editor Notepad++ banned in China after ‘Stand With Hong Kong' update" where "banned" means "the download page where they keywords are shown is now blocked in Chinese browsers". The rest of the website is still up. So no domain block due to HTTPS, browser only action for now.

5.16. What should all pro-democracy people do about China? (所有的民主派人士应该干什么?)

To obey is to betray.
To disobey is to serve.

服从就是背叛
违抗就是服务

Obéir c’est trahir.
Désobéir c’est servir.

To obey is to betray
Figure 65. To obey is to betray. To disobey is to server ("Obéir c’est trahir. Désobéir c’est servir" in French) flyer featuring the cross of Lorraine (洛林十字). Snowden (斯诺登) comes to mind. Source.

5.16.1. Civil disobedience (公民不服從)

5.16.1.1. Lie Flat movement (躺平主义)

The movement notably contradicts one of the Core socialist values (社会主义核心价值观): dedication (敬业).

Good cat lying down meme: https://www.marxist.com/china-lie-flat.htm

5.16.1.1.1. Little girl has ho hopes for school video (2021, 小姑娘对学校没有希望)

Transcript and translation:

你害怕开学吗?
随便。
对这个学校有什么期待吗?
没有。
为什么呢?
不知道。
新学期有什么新的愿望吗?
呵?
新学期有什么新的愿望吗?
没有。
没有望阿。
你一点心愿都没吗? 有没有小心愿阿?
没有。
希望怎么样有没有?
没有希望。

Are you afraid of starting school?
Whatever.
What are you looking forward in this school?
Nothing.
Why?
I don’t know.
What hopes do you have for new school term?
Huh?
What hopes do you have for new school term?
None.
Hmmm, you don’t have any hopes.
You don’t have any small wishes?
None.
What about hopes?
I have no hope.

Note: 没有希望。 would likely more accurately be translated as "I have no hopes for school". But the same sentence also means "I have no hope", and it was too tempting to recast it in terms of the Lie Flat movement.

On the background sign, we read:

二中青龙湾小学校师阳光台

Sunshine Terrace (? announcement board) of the teachers of the Qinglongwan Elementary School No. 2

The school is mentioned in a news report from 2020 at: https://moment.rednet.cn/pc/content/2020/08/24/8249389.html 市二中青龙湾小学9月1日将迎来首批学生 (City No. 2 Middle School Qinglongwan Primary School will welcome its first batch of students on September 1st) which says it is located at Qinglongwan Town, Lukou District in Hunan Province (湖南省) (青龙湾小镇, 株洲县,)

Lie flat girl
Figure 66. Still from the above.

5.16.2. Photobombing-like attacks

Explicitly forbidden in China by the law: Real username law (2015).

See also:

5.16.2.1. Appropriation attack

An appropriation attack is one where the attackers attempt to associate an existing symbol to their cause.

For example during the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests (反对逃犯条例修订草案运动) attackers attempted to use this technique to associate a generic Chinese Chun-Li-like character Mei from Blizzard’s Overwatch game to try and get it blocked in China after the gaming company punished a pro gamer for defending the Hong Kong protests. Coverage https://www.businessinsider.com/blizzard-fans-overwatch-mei-hong-kong-protests-memes-2019-10 (archive).

Mei with Hong kong
Figure 67. Mei from Blizzard’s Overwatch was used in an attempted Appropriation attack during the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests (反对逃犯条例修订草案运动). Source.

5.16.3. What should Western countries do about China? (西方国家应该怎么对待中国?)

Force all their Western servers to accept TLS 1.3 ENSI connections only: TLS 1.3 ENSI.

Companies only care about money and have no long term view, the following must be imposed by governments on Western companies.

Serious sanctions must be pot on companies that sell sensitive things to dictatorships:

Related approaches taken by the CCP that should also be stopped dead by strict enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA):

Physical presence influence must be completely blocked, e.g. cultural centers that report directly to the CCP such as Confucius institute (孔子学院) and Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA, 中国学生学者联合会) must be banned.

News about Chinese state media using Western social media:

Accounts that are not labelled as being from the Chinese government, but which support the CCP, must be investigated to determine if they are actually funded by the Chinese government.

TODO what to do with websites of: Chinese government media (中国政府媒体)? Blocking them has the downsides that:

  • it would be harder to monitor what crazy shit the commies are doing

  • those censorship mechanisms could be reused to block good websites by Western governments that are becoming Evil

Let’s just leave them up to start with, who gives a fuck about them? :-) If they are getting too many page views, we can make search engines add the disclaimer too.

Chinese social media such as WeChat (微信, Weixin) and TikTok (Douyin, 抖音) must be banned. This is less serious than regular websites, because you can always repost on Western social media but without getting spied on:

Whenever China kicks out a western journalist who is in China and reports there, the Western country must do the same and kick out a Chinese journalists for a Chinese media.

An upside of restricting Chinese servies is that it would hugely bolster Censorship circumvention (翻墙, 科学上网) technologies, as every Chinese expat would need to buy a VPN.

Western governments must identify raw material dependencies on China, and reduce them, while at the same time forbidding technology transfer to China. China has been trading cheap resources for technology, and we must stop that now.

Unfair Chinese commercial practices must be reciprocated. Chinese companies should be forced to open joint ventures to operate outside of China, which is a trick China uses to control profits and more easily steal IP from Western companies:

Sanctions must be imposed directly on Chinese officials. They must not be allowed to "escape to a better life or have investments in the West":

Xi pole
Figure 68. Rebel Pepper (变态辣椒, RFA cartoonist) 2016-09-07 cartoon entitled "宽衣撒币" depicting Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!) as a pole dancer and throwing money at other world leaders during the 2016 G20 Hangzhou summit is a reference to how China buys political influence in other countries by promising profitable trade deals with those countries. Source.
5.16.3.1. Mark government controlled social media (将政府控制的社交媒体帐户标记为此类)

All posts of all state-sponsored social media accounts must be clearly marked as such.

This should be done not only for China, but of all countries, including Western democracies.

Even better, they should add funny censored images on top of those that are from dictatorship countries.

Furthermore, marked media from dictatorships must be forbidden to both monetize and pay to promote its content.

Any outlets that do not announce themselves as state sponsored but are, must be banned forever when they are found out.

What to do about personal accounts is much harder to decide however, and especially so in the case of CCP apologists (中共辩护士), where they might really not be state sponsored, and the creator’s nationality won’t help make the decision either.

Some websites have started marking such accounts, which is a great start.

Reports of Chinese influence on social media:

5.16.3.2. China spy stories (中国间谍故事)

Do not underestimate the CCP and its control over every Chinese companies and people. Every Chinese company and person is a potential spy.

This is true for all countries however, and Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) does not not reproach China specifically for its secret service, e.g. Snowden (斯诺登) used Dell as an NSA front-end.

The point is just that the West should not underestimate this menace that comes from a Why does Ciro Santilli say that China is a dictatorship? (中国不是独裁!).

For university espionage in particular see: University espionage (大学间谍).

Some Chinese spy stories:

[[2010-dismantling-of-cia-s-network-in-china-2010]] ====== 2010 dismantling of CIA’s network in China (2010 拆除中情局在华网络)

In September 2022, actual sample website were published by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spies-iran/.

A Chinese sample website (currently the only known one): http://web.archive.org/web/20110208113503/http://activegaminginfo.com/ It is entitled:

活跃游戏

which means something like "lively games".

Around 2010-2012 about 20 CIA spies in China were killed. One was shot right in the courtyard of a government building as a message to others.

After identifying some of the websites, possibly with a double agent, Iran was able to reach the rest through Google searches for similar sites.

The trouble started in when the CIA was investigating nuclear weapons in Iran in 2009.

The fact that China soon followed could indicate that Iran sold the secret to China.

TODO do we have any such sample websites or screenshots of them? https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/167

A 2011 Iranian television broadcast that touted the government’s destruction of the CIA network said U.S. intelligence operatives had created websites for fake companies to recruit agents in Iran by promising them jobs, visas and education abroad. Iranians who initially thought they were responding to legitimate opportunities would end up meeting with CIA officers in places like Dubai or Istanbul for recruitment, according to the broadcast.

therefore the websites might not have been in English.

TODO find that broadcast. News broke 2019-06-22[] apparently: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMilJGTIvkI "US calls for Iran to free alleged CIA spy" by euronews (in English) (2011-12-20) shows a forced confession on state television by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Mirza_Hekmati. He claims to have been tortured with forced drug withdrawal. Given that Iran is in the Golden Crescent, Ciro would guess they gave him heroin, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_in_Iran "Opium in Iran is widely available, and the country was thought to have the highest per capita number of opiate addicts in the world[1][2] at a rate of 2.8% of Iranians over age 15."

Iran claims to have captured spies working for CIA

5.16.3.2.2. People’s Liberation Army (PLA, 中国人民解放军, 解放军, People’s Oppression Army, 镇压军)

The Chinese army, and also one of the central intelligence agencies, notably on cyberattacks.

As highlighted on The Gate of Heavenly Peace (1995, 天安门纪录片) 1:41, the PLA were really thought of as heroes of the people, partly due to Mao-era propaganda, as their name indicates. But when they stepped into Tiananmen, some of that was lost.

PLA soldier breaking bricks on head
Figure 69. A Chinese soldier smashes bricks on a colleague’s head during joint Chinese-India (伊朗) anti-terrorism exercises in Kunming in 2007. http://mil.news.sina.com.cn/2014-02-26/0954766058.html from Sina Corp (新浪, Weibo owner) give the Chinese term "油锤贯顶". Source. Better source with worse image quality.
5.16.3.3. The West must ban the Chinese telecommunications software and hardware (西方必须禁止中国电信软件和硬件)

They are an entry point to spying, censorship and Fake news (假新闻). Notable companies that should be banned:

Reports:

5.16.3.4. What should Western media do about China? (西方媒体应该怎么对待中国?)

When you report something about a person, for fuck’s sake include the person’s name in the title of the article, at the very least the pinyin.

Then, in the body, also add the corresponding Chinese characters on the first mention. This is how you do it: "San Xihou (三西猴)"

Yes, Chinese people also have names. And yes, pinyin has infinitely more homonyms than characters.

In the body of the article, notably in photos, include the exact location of the event if applicable.

City at the very least, but if recognizable, where withing the city.

Yes, China is big! There are many different places in China.

5.16.4. Western companies that comply with Chinese censorship requests (遵守中国审查要求的西方公司)

Western governments should prevent companies from complying to Chinese censorship requests, or at least impose fines and sanctions on them.

Citizens should boycott such companies and require them to be punished.

Some well known companies and events:

Brand censorship chart
Figure 70. 2019 summary of companies that kowtow to China. Source.
Xi bat
Figure 71. Rebel Pepper (变态辣椒, RFA cartoonist) 2019-10 carton showing several brands kowtowing to Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!), while South Park alone gives the middle finger. Source.
Xi Apple
Figure 72. Rebel Pepper (变态辣椒, RFA cartoonist) 2017-07 showing Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!) eating an Apple Inc. logo referring to the many events where Apple gave in to Chinese demands to have access to the Chinese market. Source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4WBsahU3X4 Stephen Colbert comments in 2015 on how American films make a good image of China to be allowed in China by censors to increase sales.
5.16.4.2. LinkedIn (领英)

Immediately censors anything that the Chinese government asks to censor in China.

Hi Ciro,

Your LinkedIn profile is an integral part of how you present your professional self to the world. That’s why we believe it’s important to inform you that due to the presence of prohibited content located in the headline, background image and volunteer experience sections of your LinkedIn profile, your profile and your public activity, such as your comments and items you share with your network, will not be made viewable in China. Your profile and activity continues to remain viewable throughout the rest of the countries in which LinkedIn is available. We will work with you to minimize the impact and can review your profile’s accessibility within China if you update the headline, background image and volunteer experience sections of your profile. But the decision whether to update your profile is yours.

In February 2014, we began offering a localized version of LinkedIn in China. We believe that people everywhere can benefit from Chinese individuals connecting with each other and LinkedIn members in other parts of the world, and that the creation of economic opportunity can have a profound impact on their lives and the lives of their families and communities.

While we strongly support freedom of expression, we recognized when we launched that we would need to adhere to the requirements of the Chinese government in order to operate in China. As a reminder, your profile will remain viewable throughout the rest of the countries in which LinkedIn is available.

If you have any questions, please contact Customer Service.

Regards,

LinkedIn Support Team

2021-10-14 https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/14/microsoft-to-pull-linkedin-from-chinese-market/ Microsoft to pull LinkedIn from Chinese market

The leading Chinese clone appear to be MaiMai (脉脉):

300M investment and not even an English Wikipedia page, we live on different planets: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/脉脉

Interestingly however, Ciro still received some profile views from Chinese profiles from time to time, he wonders why, do they have a permit of some sort? E.g.:

They also have a Anonymous accounts ban (2017) policy for all countries:

Related:

Ciro Santilli LinkedIn China ban
Figure 74. 3 days after Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) put up anti-CCP messages on his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cirosantilli, the account was banned in China. They are quite efficient. Zhou Fengsuo (周锋锁) had notably previously achieved this. Another report by a Peter Humphrey.
5.16.4.3. Chinese interference in Western media (中国干预西方媒体)

This lists links between owners of several US media outlets and China: https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/04/has-china-compromised-every-major-mainstream-media-entity/ "A Rundown Of Major U.S. Corporate Media’s Business Ties To China". No direct evidence that this has affected the news however.

Related:

5.16.4.3.1. China watch (2011-)

Campaign by China Daily (中国日报, CCP media) to add paid articles/ads that read like news in/distributed with Western newspapers. They appeared to be marked as China watch ads, but still, they should be crushed.

China Daily has also developed diversified cooperation with over 40 media organizations around the world, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, etc.

5.16.4.4. bandinchina GitHub repository

Contains a "List of companies who have apologized to the Chinese government and implemented censorship requests".

It only lists companies that implemented censorship outside of China however (with Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau defined as outside of China), therefore it is basically a Taiwan flag takedown + Hong Kong / Taiwan censorship list:

5.17. Chinese Interference in the Western education systems (中共对西方教育体系的干预)

Related about university interference:

China buying pre-University educational institutions:

5.17.2. University espionage (大学间谍)

Lists:

People:

5.17.3. Chinese student coordinator in Germany tells exchange students not to support democracy (2020, 德国学校开班会4反对民主)

YET UNCONFIRMED VIDEO, we have to find who that person is exactly.

The video shows what seems to be Chinese a high school dorm coordinator saying that their Chinese exchange students must stay away from ideas Democracy (民主) and freedom.

And remember that "democracy" and "freedom" are two of the Core socialist values (社会主义核心价值观)!

First ripped from uploader’s Douyin account named Michael_c118, who also appears to be the person on the video.

Original proeminent report on the West: 2020-10-04 https://twitter.com/SDeutschlands/status/1312682617888796673 by "Voice From Germany 德國之音"

https://m.yorkbbs.ca/forum/chat/5228712.aspx contains reported screenshots of the Douyin profile (no web interface it seems), include a clear face shot.

Video also commented at:

Key markings:

  • "德国学校开班会4"

  • "This man is a coordinator of Chinese high school students who study in Germany"

  • "We have to say there’s some problems in our dorm right now"

https://twitter.com/Hujo_DR/status/1312793758203748357/photo/1 is a screenshot of the Douyin profile showing a phone number, which looks like a Chinese number due to prefix 139: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_China#Mobile_phones

The screnshots posted on yorkbbs link him to "北京智享德意国际教育" (Beijing Zhixiang German/Italian International Education).

Googling "北京智享德意国际教育 linkedin" leads to UNCONFIRMED a Yun Xiao https://www.linkedin.com/in/xiaoyun79/ | https://archive.vn/CzZft which is not marked as working in the above organization, but could be the person in the video based on the profile picture (uncertain), and also works with education, thus the Google hit at his current organization (北京智晗未来教育咨询有限公司).

Searching for Google exact hits to "北京智享德意国际教育" leads to https://www.tianyancha.com/company/3283146644 which rejects foreign visits as of 2020-10-26, shows up on Google cache at on 2020-10-21 (archive).

5.18. What should pro-democracy Chinese living in China do about the dictatorship? 想要民主住在中国大陆的人应该干什么?

First of all, hide and stay safe, unless you can deal the final blow. From World at war, 1973, ep. 16:

A dictatorship is like a snake. If you put your foot on its tail as you do it, it will just bite you and nobody will be helped. You have to strike the head.
独裁就像一条蛇。 如果你在这样做的时候把脚放在它的尾巴上,它只会咬你,没有人会得到帮助。 你必须击打头部。

Once that is taken care of, a few good options are:

If you don’t manage to do either of the above, don’t do any technological work. Go work on the fields or washing dishes. Working well for Chinese companies makes the Chinese Dictatorship stronger and more deadly. See also: Embargoes make dictatorships stronger (禁运使独裁更强大).

And regardless: remind your kids that the commies are bastards every day.

Related:

Lu Xun 1930 petition
Figure 75. Petition quote by Lu Xun (鲁迅) 1926. Original quote: "请愿虽然是无论那一国度里常有的事,不至于死的事,但我们已经知道中国是例外,除非你能将’枪林弹雨’消除。" (Petitions are a common thing in any country, it is not something that results in death. But we already know that China is an exception, unless you can avoid a "barrage of bullets"."). Visible e.g. at https://www.marxists.org/chinese/reference-books/luxun/09/016.htm but also at https://www.zhihu.com/question/54231137/answer/277760001 鲁迅的文字有多一针见血? (How sharp is Lu Xun’s writing? that answerer dude has balls! A chenyu is used: https://baike.baidu.com/item/枪林弹雨/31136 枪林弹雨.

5.19. Ciro Santilli’s reply policy (三西猴的回答政策)

People get kind of passionate sometimes about politics. And some of them might also be just malicious wumaos, although it is generally not possible to distinguish between them.

If you are not a wumao, consider this:

In order to not waste too much time on those, Ciro Santilli uses the following strategy.

If the original thread post is not very interesting, try to parse it quickly and reply once, always linking to the FAQ, and then unfollow the thread. This shows that you’re still alive, and takes little effort.

Always quote reply, and always write down the ID of the OP on your reply, because discussions like this lead to a large number of comment and account deletions, which could make your reply not make much sense without the context.

After the link addressing anything that they might have said, add three randomly selected images from this repository to it. This is fundamental because the average Little pink (小粉紅, 小紅粉, 兔友) does not speak English. Therefore writing is pointless.

Meme images, however, cross the language barrier beautifully. It is even better if they have Chinese captions.

For websites that don’t accept image on comments, we just have to revert to random-links to start with.

Another way to see it is that we are creating a harder to censor Instagram channel.

You can think of them metaphorically as throwing hand grenades over the Great Firewall (GFW, 防火长城). Ciro strives to add the following elements in the image itself where applicable:

  • English explanation

  • Chinese explanation

  • date

  • location

Because the CCP censors politics, and the West does not, we can never "lose" a shitargument. Even if the Wumao (五毛) supports his country in a thread, just being in the same thread as the censored material could already be problematic for the wumao, as it is proof that they’ve seen something they should not have seen.

Therefore the only option for them is to run away.

Finally, also try to extract the email of the user from one of their repositories. When successful, Ciro takes a Wayback Machine (web.archive.org, 网站时光机) snapshot of the repository as proof of SHA, and then forks it to https://github.com/wumaoland to possibly keep their email safe in case of account deletion. You never know when this information might be useful.

Then, after replying, do your best never to read the inevitable reply again, and above all, never ever reply. An interesting reply never follows from a non-interesting original post. It is hard at first, but you will eventually get the hang of it.

If the user keeps generating notifications, block them as per CONTRIBUTING.md, replying to a single person multiple times is useless.

Never block users for an initial shitposts, just reply with a stupid joke instead. This approach creates more uncertainty and makes you look cooler. It also allows you to identify who the enemy is. Only block if the user is generating multiple notifications.

If a shitpost is made on most other social media except GitHub issues in this repository, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, immediately block the user on that website if you have the permission to do that, with a canned reply:

Hi <idiot’s name>, I don’t reply to China issues here, please open an issue at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues instead, cheers.

Note however that this is not possible on idiotic websites like Quora where such comments may be deleted, possibly automatically, who the fuck knows, e.g. as done at: https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-I-walked-around-Beijing-with-a-t-shirt-that-said-freedom-of-speech-is-pretty-great/answer/Ciro-Santilli/comment/143227962 In that case just link to sections of the FAQ, or mute people, or maybe just block all comments on the post to not waste time with new useless notifications.

This is because it is not worth answering anywhere else where the information will be scattered and impossible to find later on, and especially on websites that are already blocked in China. Shitposts on Stack Overflow and other non-blocked websites are encouraged however, as they further help to get the website blocked in China.

For outbursts of activity from Chinese websites, usually programming (v2ex, hacpai, pincong), only post the following canned answer and nothing else, because cowards/people who don’t know English from the website might delete your posts, so you shouldn’t waste time there with that shit:

大家你好

在我的GitHub中国FAQ repository我已经回答了好几个关于我常见的问题。

你们要是在那儿找不到一个回答,请在那个repository开一个issue,我马上就回答。

我不要再在这个网页评论。

Finally, don’t forget the golden rule from Proverbs 26:4:

Don’t answer the foolish arguments of fools, or you will become as foolish as they are.

which is now usually seen in the form of unclear attribution:

Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Where basically idiot == someone who creates posts that obviously aren’t teaching you any new useful thing, or that not praising you :-)

Alternatively, there is also the Chinese chengyu version:

对牛弹琴

which means:

Playing the qin to a cow.

which means to talk to someone who does not have intellectual conditions of understanding what you are trying to say, bibliography:

https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/733 by https://github.com/newcih is an interesting issue. OP has managed to close and change the issue title despite being blocked. Is he raising support tickets? Or can blocked people do that now? E.g. note towards https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/733#event-5930333327 how cirosantilli managed to reopen twice without any visible closes in the middle. They also have a Twitter BTW: https://twitter.com/newcih2020/status/1520405835679109120

Play qin to cow
Figure 76. Cartoon depiction of the chengyu "Playing the qin to a cow" 《对牛弹琴》. Source.
Someone is wrong on the Internet
Figure 77. XKCD 386 "Duty Calls" and the famous "Someone is wrong on the Internet" quote. It is a waste of time to be like that. Source.

5.19.1. Asymmetric information warfare (不对称信息战)

This is a term "invented" by Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) to denote the type of democracy vs dictatorship propaganda warfare that naturally emerges.

This concept is a mixture of the concepts of:

This phenomena can also be very clearly seen on the differences between the international propaganda of each side:

Pokemon political meme little pink super effective
Figure 78. It’s Super Effective! meme by Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) describing how he deals with wumaos and little pinks. Humour is the greatest weapon against dictators, and images help cross the language barrier. Composition CC BY-SA 2021, fair use on copyrighted individual elements.
Pokemon political meme little pink super effective zh
Figure 79. Chinese translation of the above.

5.19.2. Ciro Santilli censors wumaos, therefore he is no different from the Chinese government (三西猴审查五毛,因此他与中国政府没有什么不同)

Those who support political Censorship (审查) deserve to be censored themselves to get a taste of their own medicine.

Also, unlike the Chinese government, Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) does never delete messages. Only prevents more bullshit spam from the same users. This is basically an inevitable part of Asymmetric information warfare (不对称信息战).

5.19.3. china-dictatorship reply bot

The bot was taken down on September 2024: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/1330 after complaints from wumaos because GitHub forbids action reply on comment even though that was using minimal resources.

Due to the nature of Asymmetric information warfare (不对称信息战), Ciro has created a reply bot based on GitHub Actions that does the above automatically, therefore handling 99% of the work, see:

The bot works beautifully because it makes Ciro not feel the need to reply to every idiot Wumao (五毛) that comes along. Also Ciro can hide like a coward behind the bot by editing the bot’s comment, which is perfect. This reminded Ciro from something that was said in Better Call Saul S01 E01:

And they find themselves in a little room with a detective who acts like he’s their best friend.

"Talk to me," he says. "Help me clear this thing up."

"You don’t need a lawyer, only guilty people need lawyers."

And, boom, hey, that’s when it all goes south.

That’s when you want someone in your corner.

Someone who will fight tooth and nail.

Lawyers, we’re like health insurance.

You hope you never need it, but, man, oh, man, not having it? No.

The bot is basically Ciro’s lawyer, always loyally on his corner of the fighting ring.

There is only one bug with the bot as of 2021: if a Wumao (五毛) with unverified email makes several comments very fast, only the first one generates the reply, see e.g.:

Ciro is however curious how those unverified accounts can comment at all, as that seemd impossible when he last tried it with a dummy account, to be confirmed.

5.20. Who is behind this amazing FAQ? (谁是这个惊人的常见问题解答的幕后推手?)

5.20.1. Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的)

Ciro Santilli
Figure 80. Ciro testing his webcam for an Ask Ubuntu answer.
5.20.1.1. Ciro Santilli’s wife (三西猴的老婆)

Believes to be descendant of the brother of a recent Qing emperor, see also: Ciro Santilli’s claim to the Qing Dynasty throne (三西猴清朝皇帝觊觎).

For this same reason, her father, who Ciro’s wife worships, spent around 10 years in the 50’s for being branded a counter revolutionary rightist (右派) during one of Mao’s purges, possibly:

It is also for this reason that many Manchu changed their names to hide their Manchu origins, which makes reconstructing their family tree much harder, as mentioned at: https://www.scmp.com/article/982136/proud-manchu-reclaims-his-rich-heritage for the purposes of Ciro Santilli’s claim to the Qing Dynasty throne (三西猴清朝皇帝觊觎).

Ciro’s wife:

and is way smarter than Ciro.

Wumaos can say many things about her, but claiming that she is not intelligent or has no culture or would have any difficulty in obtaining a qualified worker VISA without a marriage, is a lost argument from the start, she would likely kick your butt in a raw intelligence competition.

Ciro is actually the lucky one for having found her!

The fake "the woman makes the man" Obama story comes to mind https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/spousal-success-story/ (Obama would never say that in public):

One night President Obama and his wife Michelle decided to do something out of routine and go for a casual dinner at a restaurant that wasn’t too luxurious. When they were seated, the owner of the restaurant asked the President’s Secret Service if he could please speak to the First Lady in private. They obliged and Michelle had a conversation with the owner.

Following this conversation President Obama asked Michelle, "Why was he so interested in talking to you?" She mentioned that in her teenage years, he had been madly in love with her. President Obama then said, "So if you had married him, you would now be the owner of this lovely restaurant," to which Michelle responded, "No. If I had married him, he would now be the President."

Less "China-related" remarks at: https://cirosantilli.com/ciro-santilli-s-wife

5.21. How do different websites view Ciro Santilli’s profile? (不同的网站如何看来 Ciro Santilli 的个人资料?)

5.21.1. Stack Overflow

For non-programmers, Stack Overflow is by far the leading programmer question and answer forum of the Internet.

A programmer’s daily job involves asking Google about 50 times a day "how to do X", and 90% of the time or more the best answer will be found on the Stack Overflow result that will be one of the top 3 results.

This makes Stack Overflow a fundamental tool of every programmer’s daily jobs.

The current community consensus says that keyword attacks are allowed:

However, you can’t say "Public figure X is disgusting as a person" so Wumao (五毛)s, could you please report Ciro making fun of Xi Jinping X and see what they do about it?

Reposts:

The Chinese law doesn’t allow Ciro’s profile unfortunately: Real username law (2015)

Since you will fail through Stack Overflow moderation, please consider instead making a report on the CAC report website (12321.cn, 12377.cn, 12339, 中央网信办举报网站).

Some non-political China related stuff on Stack Overflow:

5.21.1.1. Stack Overflow forbids criticizing the character of genocidal political leaders like Xi Jinping

Edit: as was made clearer later on at Stack Overflow mods refuse to clarify if anti-CCP imagery is allowed or not (2021), they just generally refuse to say clearly what is allowed or not.

Ciro was actually quite shocked by this.

He thought more people on Stack Overflow would have sided with him and favored stronger freedom of speech.

But this event made him notice that people in Stack Overflow simply didn’t push back against Ciro’s anti Xi Jinping campaign because they don’t know who the fuck Xi Jinping is, or they don’t care, or they are completely hypocrite and allow criticizing Xi Jinping but not Trump.

But they do know who Trump is, and "offending Trump" makes their feeble little feelings be hurt, and they must maintain their sacred "political correctness" at all costs, even when talking about politicians. Including that the cost of freedom.

This therefore morally justifies the take-down attempts made by hundreds of Wumao (五毛)s against Ciro’s anti Xi Jinping content.

First by initiative of Stack Overflow employee Cesar Manara (Brazilian), the sentence:

I think Trump is disgusting as a person

was removed from Ciro’s profile and notified.

In response, Ciro created a meta thread to confirm that the community agreed, and they did: Can I say on my profile that I find that an (ex) president of a country or other major political public figure is “disgusting as a person”? and the community agreed with the removal: it reached only 5 upvotes and 25 downvotes. Ciro’s profile at the time was linked to Trump’s ban on social media: trump-ban-is-bad.md.

There was no yes/no answer by anyone, because the of cowardice and hypocrisy:

  • saying "you can" would imply you can criticize Trump

  • saying "you can’t" would imply they support genocide

So their brains just tilted, and they clicked the "delete" button as the only possible resolution. The overly speedy deletion of posts was then raised as an issue two days later for an unrelated post: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/405585/can-we-slow-down-on-the-deletes-on-meta-folks

Then Ciro created an answer to "Does the Be Nice policy require SE users to “be nice” to people who are not SE users (e.g. public figures)?" which is a superset of the previous ones referred by them. That post is reproduced at https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/198#issuecomment-787047242 It cites the case in which the law was tested, but it was single-handedly by journeyman-geek (from Singapore) without any justification.

Ciro then finally updated his profile picture to contain Real photo of Xi Jinping edited to look like Winnie the Pooh. Source., archive at: https://archive.vn/iV1L8 to test the Winnie-the-Pooh case which people simply refused to answer. Let’s see show that goes. As Ciro learned however, only wumaos will continue to complain, and due to hypocrisy their complaints will be ignored.

Other users who publicly went against freedom of speech in that case (in the name of "political correctness"):

Freedom of speech in social media is truly threatened by the Censorship of "politically incorrect speech" (审查政治不正确言论).

5.21.1.2. Stack Overflow political image answer placeholder (2021)

Of course, once again, just like mentioned at Stack Overflow forbids criticizing the character of genocidal political leaders like Xi Jinping, people prefer to:

No archives unfortunately, but:

The full moderation team at the time can be seen publicly at https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators (archive) and it also contains:

Deletion message:

Hello,

We’re writing in reference to your Graphic Design Stack Exchange account:

We think you are already aware of what we are going to say, but we are going to say it anyway. Stack Exchange is an apolitical platform, and we like to keep politics as for away from our content as possible. Our little nook on the net is about Graphic Design, which has nothing to do with politics (even though it is used in the political arena all the time).

We acknowledge that politic profiles are somewhat allowed as per https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/267368/are-political-avatars-and-profiles-ok, although we do question the usefulness of 'campaigning' through a Stack Exchange profile.

We want to draw the line however at political content. There is no need to use images or other content that might be controversial or cause emotional distress, while another image or content would serve the same function. That is why we deleted you answer on this question.

We want to welcome you on our site and encourage you to keep contributing with answers. Your other answers are fine, and judging by the amount of votes, mostly well-received by the community. You may repost the answer if you can swap out the images for more neutral ones.

At the same time we want to warn you that this type of content will not be tolerated in the future and further infractions may lead to more severe consequences.

Thanks for your understanding an cooperation, we wish you a pleasant experience on GDSE.

Regards,

Graphic Design Stack Exchange Moderation Team

Ciro’s reply:

Hi,

Is this a policy specific to graphic design website, or is it network wide, and is there an open meta question for it?

The mods then changed their discourse to mention spam rules rather than only on the "people will feel bad" aspect:

Be inclusive and respectful.

Exposing others to images of violent and traumatic events is not respectful to those on whom those images have a strong effect. This is only acceptable if the topic of the question make this inevitable, which also suffices to warn of those who are triggered by those images: Images about violent events are to be expected in a question about such events, not in a question about concatenating two images.

Rules against spam:

A post should be marked as spam only if it advertises a product, service, or similar and is unsolicited or lacks disclosure. […] Unsolicited means that mentioning the product serves no purpose other than promotion. […]

You were promoting a political position and including the promotional content (instead of a neutral picture) served no purpose other than promotion. It’s analogous to using a picture advertising a product as an example.

OK, the spam argument would likely win.

Ciro then hacked the images to his "The world is perfect" kitsch placeholder, and mods approved it, so here we go.

Ciro was planning the following meta post, but gave up on it:

Can I use political images as placeholders for questions involving images when it does not affect the validity of the answer?

For example when answering the following ImageMagick question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20737061/merge-images-side-by-sidehorizontally/63575228#63575228 I used an image with political content.

The choice of the placeholder was completely arbitrary, and does not affect the answer in any way.

But today admins of Graphic Design Stack Exchange https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/83446/gimp-how-to-combine-two-images-side-by-side/145543#145543 deleted the post saying it is not allowed on the Graphic Design website.

We want to draw the line however at political content. There is no need to use images or other content that might be controversial or cause emotional distress, while another image or content would serve the same function. That is why we deleted you answer on this question.

The admins mention that on profiles it is OK linking to: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/267368/are-political-avatars-and-profiles-ok but on answers it is not.

So I would like to clarify if:

  • is this a policy specific to Graphic Design or if it applies to the entire network.

  • if it applies to the entire network:

    • Can I use images of myself, Ciro Santilli, or is that currently considered political content?

    • At https://stackoverflow.com/a/57389607/895245 I needed several images, and I had used a list of USA presidents in chronological order without much thought. Do I have to modify that answer to use another set of images?

and planned answer:

Any images that can be used on a profile picture should also usable as a placeholder

When you answer a question, you should have a very wide choice of what to use as a placeholder.

Politics is a perfectly legal topic, just like flowers, animals, and scenery.

The "can it be used on the profile picture" test should already filter out any content that is deemed unacceptable due to legal concerns.

Another issue is that it is extremely difficult and possibly unfair to classify what is political or not.

Suppose that Ciro Santilli became famous enough outside of programming circles such that he starts to be considered a political subject.

Would his images then start to be considered political content?

But that would be discriminatory against certain people and not others.

Freedom of speech is extremely valuable, and we should be very careful about restricting it.

There are people literally unfairly dying, right now, because they don’t have it.

Do you really want to reduce yours?

The only way to prevent history from repeating itself, is to remember it.

Related spam meta posts:

Let’s see how: https://askubuntu.com/questions/380847/is-it-possible-to-translate-words-via-terminal/1309774 will do, which uses the Yue Xin (岳昕) letter as a translation placeholder.

The world is perfect Stack Overflow
Figure 82. "The world is perfect" as used to update Ciro Santilli’s deleted answer. Instead of redoing the tutorial from scratch, Ciro just pasted the new image on top of the old one Stack Exchange censored: Ciro Santilli’s CC BY-SA Tank Man image. Borders of the censored image were intentionally left over however as a reminder that Stack Exchange censors. This is a work of art.
Tank Man drawing censored by Ciro Santilli CC BY SA
Figure 83. Politically correct version of Ciro Santilli’s CC By-SA Tank Man image. This is how Stack Exchange wants the world to remember Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 (六四事件).
At one point in Richard Feynman’s talk "Los Alamos from below", he describes how external letter censorship was implemented at Los Alamos, and how he went to thoroughly test the limits of what would be censored or not.
5.21.1.3. Stack Overflow mods refuse to clarify if anti-CCP imagery is allowed or not (2021)

This one again highlights the hypocrisy of many people in the West: we decide who is good and who is evil. The CCP is now evil, so you can criticize it, even if it shocks Chinese people. Ah, Nazism shocks us, even though it is an event from the past, so that you can’t do. You can only shock the Chinese people, not us.

Or: we like human rights. But not potentially disturbing someone at work even slightly is more important.

We refuse to make a public decision.

In response, Ciro wrote the following essay on his profile page: stack-exchange-lost-freedom-of-speech.md.

The following quote from Ron Maimon comes to mind:

Unfortunately, when you’re in a minority, the only way to correct the consensus view is to just shout it, and repeat it, until people go and look and check for themselves. The reason is that it creates an adversarial atmosphere where the people have to pick sides, and they don’t like to pick sides, they would rather have everyone be happy. So when you have to pick sides, what do you do? You either butt out, you just leave it alone, you run away. Or you sit and review the evidence until you know which side to pick.

Notable people who went against in the comments:

First close voters:

First reopen voters:

The interesting thing is that none of them had the courage to actually say "forbid Tiananmen", "forbid Falun Gong". But they all said "forbid not suitable for work". But they won’t clarify if "not suitable for work" includes "not suitable for work in China".

On 2021-05-29 Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) added almost all images from this page to his Stack Overflow account as shown at: https://archive.ph/nZLgI

Hello,

We’re writing in reference to your Meta Stack Exchange account:

We note that you were previously contacted for part of your profile being offensive. It has been brought to our attention that a significant part of your profile is filled with shock pictures, nazi imagery and similar images.

We’d note that people do use this site at work, and while users have some freedom over the content of their profile, there are fairly obvious lines that shouldn’t be crossed.

We do not recommend that you restore the content we removed - specifically the images without checking back with us.

We have temporarily suspended your account; you may return after 7 days.

Regards, Meta Stack Exchange Moderation Team

As can be publicly seen at https://web.archive.org/web/20210506210320/https://stackexchange.com/about/moderators the list of moderators of that website at the time was:

Ciro replied:

Hello,

Could you clarify if the following types of images are OK or not:

  • people imprisoned in Xinjiang concentration camps

  • Tiananmen square protests

  • making fun of Xi Jinping

  • Falun Gong persecution

supposing that they show no explicit gore or violence?

All the above are considered highly shocking to many Chinese people, due in part to their strict censorship rules, and not suitable for the workplace in China.

I have been using such images for many years to criticize what I believe are terrible events in China, and the decision so far has been that I was allowed to use them.

The intent of the Nazi images is clearly to compare both regimes to criticize the Chinese Government, which I believe is following the same path as the Nazis (e.g. Concentration Camps in Xinjiang, no freedom of speech, etc.), to help prevent such abuses from happening again in the future.

I just want to clearly understand the rationale of of why anti-CCP images are OK, but anti-Nazi ones aren’t, so I can follow your rules correctly and save everyone’s time in the future by correctly deciding which images are OK or not.

Cheers.

On their next reply, they tried to dodge a directly reply, but suggested that anti-CCP imagery is forbidden:

Could you clarify if the following types of images are OK or not:

Its not the 'topic' but rather the content.

All the above are considered highly shocking to many Chinese people, due in part to their strict censorship rules, and not suitable for the workplace in China.

Well if your intent is to shock - don’t. These are your words, not ours - and hopefully reflects a better understanding of what’s not acceptable.

I just want to clearly understand the rationale of of why anti-CCP images are OK, but anti-Nazi ones aren’t, so I can follow your rules correctly and save everyone’s time in the future by correctly deciding which images are OK or not.

We never said that. We gave specific examples of objectionable content. If you realise something isn’t suitable - that it is something shocking, and not suitable for the workplace, as you seem to realise, it shouldn’t be on your profile.

In short, we believe you have a very clear idea, from your own response, of what’s not acceptable, and we hope you exercise better judgement in this regard in future.

Ciro’s Reply:

We never said that. We gave specific examples of objectionable content. If you realise something isn’t suitable - that it is something shocking, and not suitable for the workplace, as you seem to realise, it shouldn’t be on your profile.

My intent is to convey extremely important information, not to shock.

However, in dictatorships like China, extremely important information is forbidden for unfair reasons, and therefore shocking.

We never said that. We gave specific examples of objectionable content. If you realise something isn’t suitable - that it is something shocking, and not suitable for the workplace, as you seem to realise, it shouldn’t be on your profile.

You forbade any Nazi imagery clearly, including to criticize the Nazis, so that is clear and I will never again add Nazi imagery.

All anti-CCP content is extremely shocking to many Chinese people (but not others). And it is not suitable for the workplace for anyone there, that is unquestionable.

Therefore, from your reply, I understand that anti-CCP content is not allowed because it is not suitable for the workplace in China, as it is shocking.

Is this understand correct? Can you please confirm very clearly and directly: do you forbid all anti-CCP imagery or not? And if it is just a partial ban, what is allowed and what is not more precisely?

My understanding from top answers at: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/349131/users-political-display-name-triggering-government-action-against-users-who-vie is that such criticism of the CCP is allowed on the website, even though it is clearly not suitable for the workplace in China.

Sorry to ask this further, but I need a clearer guideline so I can follow it.

5.21.1.4. Other openly dissident users on Stack Overflow (Stack Overflow 上的其他公开持不同政见的用户)

For non-Stack Overflow specific ones see: Chinese dissidents (中国持不同政见者)

Notable ones only here (high rep or innovative criticism):

Users who had GFW references but removed it:

Misc interesting stuff:

5.21.1.4.1. Stack Overflow anti-dissident users (Stack Overflow 反异见用户)

5.21.2. GitHub

GitHub’s site policy can be seen at: https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy

If you believe this page violates those policies, see: How to report a user on GitHub (GitHub上怎么举报用户?).

China’s GitHub censorship history is documented at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China, some events:

Related:

5.21.2.2. How to report a user on GitHub (GitHub上怎么举报用户?)

Click the report abuse button on Ciro’s profile, which links to: https://github.com/contact/report-abuse?report=cirosantilli+%28user%29 or you can just contacat support@github.com

If you do so, please feel free to also open an issue on this repository saying why you believe the site policy has been violated.

It will be fun to watch you try, and fail.

This is because you do not understand how important the concept of freedom of speech is in the West, and how amazing it feels when you are right, and it protects you.

In order to get this repository in gov-takedown, your best bet is to use the CAC report website (12321.cn, 12377.cn, 12339, 中央网信办举报网站).

admin.github.com hits to cirosantilli.com:

  • 2021-05-21

  • 2019-09

admin.github.com hits to GitHub repository:

  • 2021-05-30 6 from 1 user

Bibliography:

How to report an user on GitHub
Figure 84. How to report an user on GitHhub.
5.21.2.4. GitHub gov-takedowns (由其各自政府在某个国家审查的仓库的GitHub官方列表)

This official GitHub repository tracks which repositories are blocked in specific countries.

GitHub has absolute transparency about Government takedowns, which is awesome: https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns/tree/master/China

This makes that repo into a list of fun things.

As of 2019-05 there had only been only two takedowns by China however, compared to dozens by Russia (俄罗斯). The Chinese commies are not big fans of transparency it seems.

As of 2020-03, besides the Zhao takedown, all other takedowns happened in 2019, and most seem to be Falun Gong (法轮功, Qigong new religion/cult)/The Epoch Times (明慧网, Falun Gong media) sponsored ways to climb the wall.

The message GitHub shows on the blocked countries is:

Repository unavailable in your location

This repository is currently disabled in your location. For more details please see the takedown notice.

Here are some examples of people reacting to the blocking of https://github.com/programthink/zhao/issues/38 as per https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns/blob/78775b09e64d85f08547287cab204b48b2491192/China/2016/2016-06-08-programthink-zhao.md from China (and likely on the entire repository, which appears to be the block granularity implemented):

To check China only takedowns such as this, we cannot use Great Fire Analyzer, which reports the page as accessible: the only tool Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) could find so far to capture a page from China a bit like Web Archive was: geoscreenshot

GitHub Programthink Zhao issue 38 China geoscreenshot 2020 09 31
Figure 85. geoscreenshot of https://github.com/programthink/zhao/issues/38 from Programthink (编程随想, Ruan Xiaohuan, 阮晓寰, programmer on GitHub) taken on 2020-09-31 from China. The "Repository unavailable in your location" message shows, since this repository is in gov-takedowns/china.
5.21.2.4.1. Strategy if this repo gets added to GitHub gov-takedowns (如果此 repo 被添加到 GitHub gov-takedowns 中的策略)

If this happens, we well proceed to create alternative repos china-dictatorship-2, china-dictatorship-3, etc. and it would be fun to see how that gets handled.

Ciro then later renamed it to https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorhsip-2 with an intentional typo to make the censorship noise even greater.

Can Github add an entire user to gov-takedowns? We shall find out.

Ciro also created a separate org for it to also prevent simple username blocks: https://github.com/coding-stuffs/china-dictatorshrip

But remember that we also have: Mirrors of this page (此网页的镜像), and that this can be easily rendered as a single HTML page and uploaded to any static website host.

5.21.2.5. GitHub "This repository may contain objectionable content" (此仓库可能包含令人反感的内容)

GitHub has a veru little known feature called:

This repository may contain objectionable content

TODO exact Chinese phrase on UI.

When GitHub admins set this on a repository, it has the following effects:

  • the repository cannot be seen by logged off users! Trying to do that results in a redirect. This puts such repositories at great disadvantage on search engine optimization

  • the first time you visit the repository, they ask you if you want to continue

This is not a transparent mechanism, as it does not clearly state why the repository has objectionable content.

Known repositories with that enabled:

TODO: Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) once saw that message when visiting: https://github.com/Yanqiu-gui/-/issues/5 on 2021-05-19 for the first time, but not on the following ones.

How does that message get added exactly?

And you are forced you to login to view that repository!

Incredible, a hidden undocumented semi-hide-repo feature.

Here’s an archive: https://archive.ph/VJQdD That click wall also prevents archives of the repository therefore.

5.21.2.6. GitHub censorship guidelines (GitHub 审查指南)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118 GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard' (2015)

5.21.2.7. Gitee

For our mirror there, see: Gitee censorship (Gitee 审查).

Linked to "Open Source China" (开源中国) according to TechCrunch:

The project will be carried out by a consortium led by Open Source China, the Shenzhen-based firm behind its namesake open-source community and Gitee.

At https://gitee.com/mirrors they mirrors 21 thousand repositories as of 2021, updating them daily, with the goal of having "higher download speeds" in mainland China. Not that their speed is shit because of censorships of course.

Mirrors containing Ciro’s keywords or related interesting stuff:

As of 2021, it requires login to see:

Lol.

News:

5.21.2.7.1. Gitee censorship (Gitee 审查)

After posting our Mirrors of this page (此网页的镜像) there, it was blocked in 12 hours:

The block email is:

通知

仓库 cirosantilli/China Dictatorship 已被锁定

原因: 根据相关法律法规和政策,本仓库暂停访问。

Other known blocked china-dictatorship forks:

5.21.2.8. GitHub-Chinese-Top-Charts (GitHub中文排行榜)

Automatically generated list of repos with Chinese characters in their descriptions with the most upvotes per programming language.

At https://github.com/kon9chunkit/GitHub-Chinese-Top-Charts/issues/177 a Wumao (五毛) asked "为什么一些奇怪的项目也能进榜单?" (Why can some weird projects appear in the project list?)

5.21.3. Zhihu (知乎, censored Quora clone, 审查 Quora 克隆)

The Chinese Quora clone, but highly censored: Zhihu censorship (知乎审查).

The Zhihu 404 page image. When they take the posts down as of 2020, it shows the 404 page which reads "你似乎来到了没有知识存在的荒原" (you seem to have come to a wasteland about which does does not exist any knowledge), and shows this symbol. Source.

i mage::https://web.archive.org/web/20200614114535im_/https://static.zhihu.com/heifetz/assets/liukanshan_wire.e7247fbf.svg[height=500]

5.21.4. Zhihu censorship (知乎审查)

More general censorship discussion at: Censorship (审查).

Examples of Zhihu censorship:

Other discussions:

5.21.4.1. Ciro Santilli’s Zhihu purge 2019-11-03 (三西猴被知乎抹去)

On this day, not only the posts made by Ciro himself were deleted: he had never asked any questions or made any Zhuanlan posts himself, only replied to those. But that content made by other users was still removed. Therefore, this is not just a simple user ban, but active censorship.

Ciro received an email from account@mail.zhihu.com:

您好,Ciro Santilli,很抱歉您的回答受到了牵连,您回答过的问题「github.com@cirosantilli 是谁维护的,为什么会收集邮箱地址?」因「违反互联网相关法律法规」已被删除。

followed by Ciro’s answer to github.com@cirosantilli 是谁维护的,为什么会收集邮箱地址?. Ciro could not login anymore, the login screen showed:

帐号已停用,请联系:user@zhihu.com

So likely someone must have used the fact that this was an edgy personally information release subject issue, and then someone from Zhihu decided to purge Ciro and anyone posts that ever talked about him.

Ciro’s blocked account:

Furthermore, all questions related to Ciro, including the posts criticizing him such as https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/25600138 (archive), were taken down. This made Ciro laugh: in China, you can’t even criticize that which is censored, or your post also gets taken down.

Ciro then created an anonymous Zhihu account after this event.

Interestingly however, the following answer came up later on: Answer to the Zhihu question "How do you evaluate Ted Chiang’s 'Evil Chinese Characters' essay?" "如何评价姜峯楠(Ted Chiang)在纽约客上的随笔《坏汉字》?"的回答 and stayed up for at least 5 months, which indicates that Zhihu did a one-off removal, and did not set up a filter for Ciro’s name.

5.21.4.1.1. Ciro Santilli’s Zhihu ban 2018-06-25

As a result, since that time I will be answering Zhihu questions as issues in this repo with the zhihu label: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues?q=label%3Azhihu+

I have however never posted anything politically sensitive on Zhihu, unless my name and profile picture have reached that distinction, and therefore the ban is clearly an unfair per-person ban.

But of course, all is fair in love and war, and politics.

Posting any sensitive content on Chinese websites is a waste of time, since it only means that they will be removed and you will waste time creating a new account, I will never do that.

The only significant content I ever posted on Zhihu is the answer to: https://www.zhihu.com/question/46957710/answer/122827944 which is purely technical, and trivial replies on threads that other people have started about me. Have those people been blocked like me?

My posts are still up and it does not appear to be possible for people to see that I have been banned, but whenever I try to take any action on the website a popup appears saying:

由于严重违反 知乎社区管理规定 ,该帐号已被永久禁言

This includes liking, commenting, answering, asking or trying to update my profile to say that I have been blocked.

This message also shows on my public page for everyone to see: https://www.zhihu.com/people/cirosantilli/activities but they use some JavaScript scheme complicated enough that archive.is cannot capture it.

I still get notifications however, but I am unable to reply to them, especially given that all Chinese accounts, unlike mine, have no personal identifiable information due to the understandable fear Chinese citizens have of their own government, even though such accounts might be illegal in theory: Anonymous accounts ban (2017).

The only action that I can take now is to report abusive comments people make to me.

Obviously, the only effect of such ban is that I will create an anonymous account under Tor with a second cell phone if I wish to contribute in the future, and China will have less information about my political interests than before.

The private messages the website sends while banning you are:

知乎管理员 :您好,根据用户举报,您的帐号发布了「政治敏感」内容,帐号已根据知乎社区规范被永久禁言。处理详情可查看社区服务中心。具体规范请查看知乎社区管理规定。 6月25日 16:37 回复 | 删除

知乎管理员 :您好,根据用户举报,您的部分个人信息由于不符合知乎用户信息管理规范已被重置。用户名可以在设置页面中修改,修改后会自动进入审核等待通过;其他个人信息可以在个人主页中编辑。感谢您对知乎社区的理解和支持。 6月25日 16:37 回复 | 删除

The ban came soon after I posted a link to my GitHub repo as a comment at: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/ice-employee-list-github-linkedin/ maybe they are related.

5.21.4.1.2. Who reported Ciro Santilli on Zhihu (谁在知乎上举报了 Ciro Santilli)

At the same time the ban happened I received a public comment from user "Eureka" https://www.zhihu.com/people/crb912/activities | https://archive.is/1F3t6 on this thread: https://www.zhihu.com/question/46957710 | https://archive.is/PVOLd saying:

你滥用了github, 也滥用了Stackover。这个一个纯粹计算机、编程和知识分享的地方,请不要带入政治性的色彩。请不要这么做, 维护社区的非政治性、中立和技术性纯粹,是每个热爱cs的人应尽的义务。

I am unable to get a URL that shows the comment on archive.is, so I have no proof of this claim. If you trust me, then here is a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/YCiEEax

Since I expect the ban lists to be private, I find it extremely likely that this was the user who reported me, unless both were simultaneously triggered by a third event which I have not seen. So correct me if I’m wrong here.

Users with the same user id crb912, related "Eureka" username or same profile picture, can be found at:

By Googling the email found on the GitHub repos, we find: http://www.360doc.com/content/15/0809/11/25724933_490492490.shtml | https://archive.is/2UnGL which might, at last, contain a photo of my nemesis.

My public message to the reporter whomever he may be:

While you have also raised issues that were raised a thousand times before, and clearly answered in the FAQ, at least you were able to take some actual action leading to an actual ban, and I respect you for that.

I hope that one day you will redirect that cunning and initiative towards taking down the root cause of the problem, which are the Chinese communist Party and their Firewall themselves.

All Zhihu posts related to Ciro Santilli were deleted following Ciro Santilli’s Zhihu purge 2019-11-03 (三西猴被知乎抹去). Some had been deleted before.

A random control question that shows that archive.org 404’s are actually deleted questions: https://www.zhihu.com/question/316700165 (archive).

Mentions not yet deleted as of writing:

5.21.4.2.1. Answer to the Zhihu question "How do you evaluate Ted Chiang’s 'Evil Chinese Characters' essay?" "如何评价姜峯楠(Ted Chiang)在纽约客上的随笔《坏汉字》?"的回答

Contains reactions to the post: Evil Chinese Characters by Ted Chiang (坏汉字由Ted Chiang), and this answer says that even though Ciro Santilli is amazingly smart, he cannot be bothered to learn Chinese characters, quoting Ciro’s comments from: Does Ciro Santilli speak Chinese? (三西猴会说中文吗?).

This post was interesting because it happened after Ciro Santilli’s Zhihu purge 2019-11-03 (三西猴被知乎抹去), which indicates that Zhihu did not setup an automated "Ciro Santilli" filter.

5.21.4.2.2. github.com@cirosantilli 是谁维护的,为什么会收集邮箱地址?

Asked in 2016-09 after Ciro published: https://github.com/cirosantilli/all-github-commit-emails

Deleted after Ciro Santilli’s Zhihu purge 2019-11-03 (三西猴被知乎抹去). Ciro’s answer before deletion:

你用的git config user.email当然是公开的:谁都会git clone就知道了。

问题就是git repository很大,我们不会都clone.

但是github有一个API,收集很多信息,包括邮件。

然后,Google用了那个API给他们的https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/…​信息。

BigQuery对程序员很容易提取信息,是我用的。

我发表邮件以后,两个东西变化了:

  1. Google 把邮件从BigQuery删除

  2. GitHub 更新他们的隐私声明GitHub Privacy Statement

这就是我的木比:保护人们的隐私权

我的README.md更详细地解释。

5.21.5. Quora

Quora is a generally shitty website, with mechanisms that allow wumaos to quench freedom of speech.

Quora is a major platform for Astroturfing.

Ironically, as usual, is it also blocked in China:

Examples of activity related to Ciro Santilli:

Quora is also shitty because wumaos can downvote your answer privately regardless of reputation and make it become collapsed as "Answer may need improvement", which means it goes to the bottom and readers have to click an "expand collapsed answers" button to see it, so that very few people will ever see it.

Then have to appeal and wait for moderators to evaluate it.

Ciro appealed in 2020-03-10 and the answer was reinstated on day later, but by then the question was already not being suggested as much to readers, and the other wumao answers (which criticize the USA rather than answering the question about China).

While there is some probability that the answers themselves are not wumaos, their upvoters almost certainly are and must be investigated.

Other shitty aspects of Quora include:

  • block Wayback Machine (web.archive.org, 网站时光机) archives with their robots.txt, gotta use archive.today (archive.is)

  • automatically add random topics that you don’t care about to your suggestions, with no easy way to prevent that.

  • questions cannot have more than one sentence. There used to be a question body, but it was replaced with a "link for context". Ridiculous.

As a result, on the few occasions that Ciro posts on Quora, all content will also be mirrored here. Ciro’s China Quora answers include:

Some wumaos:

Related posts:

5.21.6. PTT Bulletin Board System (Taiwanese message board, 批踢踢實業坊)

Popular Taiwanese forum system and server from 1995, pre HTML, works from telnet terminal, so likely very programmer heavy, and obviously anti-CCP, as of 2020 often shows Falun Gong (法轮功, Qigong new religion/cult) ads.

Archaic, fucking impossible to learn how to use. Ciro Santilli hasn’t managed yet, so if you want a reply from him, open an issue on this repo instead. Some tips:

  • on the web UI rendering replies can be either likes (推 as in 推荐), dislikes (噓, hush!) or neutral (right arrow)

  • per-page threads are basically flat. You can however reply to another post with a "Re:" post. One application of this seems to be to post images which might only be allowed on the thread starters, e.g.: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/joke/M.1602324724.A.CA0.html is a "Re:" to https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/joke/M.1602211516.A.3FB.html It is not clear if Re: and original posts are interlinked in any way.

TODO: can anyone comment, without having a Taiwanese university address? This suggests no: https://www.reddit.com/r/taiwan/comments/1etbvb/anyone_on_pttcc_advice_suggestions/ Also asked at:

A source informed Ciro that now only NTU alumni can have an account.

Maybe the email requirement is the only way to prevent wumaos from flooding the website.

Normal people see it on a web viewer hosted on: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/index.html

However it is fucking impossible to web archive that web interface because there is a cookie I’m 18-years-old confirmation before the first connection.

This shows how to connect for the first time: https://www.ptt.cc/index.firstbbs.html

One attempt is:

luit -encoding big5 telnet ptt.cc

But the main page says:

"本站目前暫停開放新帳號註冊。" "This site is currently suspended for new account registration."

And you try new it says: "目前無法註冊帳號![按任意鍵繼續]" "Account cannot be registered at this time."

OK, ptt2 went further:

luit -encoding big5 telnet ptt2.cc

Then there is a registration process that seem to require you to prove that you work at Taiwanese university, but not sure it is mandatory to post.

But I couldn’t find Gossiping there either, which is the only board that matters, so not sure it is on this server.

5.21.7. LIHKG (連登, Hong Kong Reddit clone)

Hong Kong (香港) Reddit clone. Requires a Hong Kong IP or university address to login, a bit in the spirit of PTT Bulletin Board System (Taiwanese message board, 批踢踢實業坊) to avoid Wumao (五毛) invasion.

If it goes down, they created: https://www.reddit.com/r/LIHKG/ on Reddit.

TODO meaning of "LI"?

5.21.8. Google (谷歌)

Related subjects:

5.21.8.1. Google mirrors (谷歌镜像)

Do the names mean anything? Are they owned? The fact that they are Alexa top 1000 domains is just so funny, Google redirects for China.

Alexa top 1000 domains and blocked in China as per GreatFire (自由微博):

Other mirrors:

No HTTPS?!?! Brains?!?!

Lists of mirrors:

5.21.8.1.1. library.ac.cn

https://library.ac.cn/ large list of university Google/Google Scholar/Wikipedia/Twitter mirrors maintained by Chinese university students under an unified system. Each one asks for verification that you are from that university via some little known fact about the university:

Website now points to: https://github.com/librarycloud/iwiki

Related URLs:

6. Anti-CCP information sources (反中共信息来源)

https://www.reddit.com/r/China is what Ciro uses daily for news, see also: Reddit

In other sections:

Not in other sections:

6.1. Reddit

As of 2020, Reddit is Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的)'s best bet at finding good anti CCP news, notably r/China Reddit sub. Unfortunately, it does require daily monitoring due to: https://ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/view-top-posts-of-previous-months-or-years-in-reddit, you can’t just check the best events of the previous months easily.

Subs with lots of anti-commie info:

Related:

Non-China specific but relevant:

TODO review:

6.1.1. r/China Reddit sub

That catches all the important news.

A large part of the posts has controversial material.

Has some noise of course as well, but less than other media I find.

Highly worth your feed.

6.1.2. r/chonglangTV Reddit sub

15k users 2020-03.

Banned 2022-03 for some likely very lightweight "doxxing" that had already been published everywhere. https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/reddit-03042022114155.html from Radio Free Asia (RFA, 自由亚洲电台, USA government media) gives more context, translation;

The reason why chonglangTV was blocked was "disclosure of personal information". It is suspected that they have something to do with a "patriotic pink" named "Xu Hao" (徐好) who claimed to be an employee of a bank in Shanghai. "Xu Hao" claimed that he used his power to intercept multiple donations to Ukraine, and was later "opened the box" by netizens. (i.e. starting with personal information).

Other threads:

Chinese language, pretty good content, anti-CCP samples:

6.1.3. Pro dictatorship Reddit subs

6.1.3.1. r/sino

The ban message is:

You have been permanently banned from participating in r/Sino. You can still view and subscribe to r/Sino, but you won’t be able to post or comment.

Try r/westerner TRASH doesn’t get by mods here. Tiananmen Square is vindicated by China’s development. Anti terror system in Xinjiang is working. End result for HK is the same since 1997, regardless of rioters. Scientology-esque FLG/Shen Yun cult show has failed for decades, if you believe their claims, it’s all of them losing badly.

Dec 31 China informed WHO about mysterious pneumonia. Jan 11 Chinese reveal virus genome Jan 23 Wuhan quarantine - businessinsider/sciencemag

You had the genome and saw the lengths China went to. Don’t blame others for failing months later.

US accused of 'modern piracy' after diversion of masks meant for Europe - theguardian

Democracies Are Better at Fighting Outbreaks - theatlantic XD

The US leads in coronavirus cases, but not pandemic response - sciencemag XD

Beliefs of founder cultleader of Falun Gong from own lectures on official falundafa site https://redd.it/42wlvf

6.1.3.2. r/GenZedong

Ciro commented linking to https://cirosantilli.com/why-ciro-santilli-refers-to-himself-in-the-third-person and was autobanned immediately with message:

You have been banned due to participation in anti-communist subreddits. This action was performed automatically by a bot.

Hong Kong is China. Mao already freed Tibet in 1950. The Xinjiang counter-terrorism program is both effective and humane, unlike the US War on Terror which is neither. Long Live President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China!

It appears that the word cirosantilli.com is itself banned?

Sub description:

This is a Dengist subreddit in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information leading to the arrest of Hillary Rodham Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This subreddit is not ironic, we are Marxist-Leninists.

The Reddit was quarantined in March 2022: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitLiberalsSay/comments/tkurmc/breaking_news_rgenzedong_has_been_quarantined/ Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) is against this quarantine BTW. We shouldn’t ban any discussion forum, at least not until we have an anonymous way to verify the nationality of people: Unjust social media censorship in the West (西方不公正的社交媒体审查).

6.4. Twitter (推特)

Particularly interesting ones:

News:

Unfair censorship:

Trump silenced by Twitter by Kuang Biao
Figure 86. Cartoon showing Donald Trump’s mouth sewn shut in a "Twitter" shape by Kuang Biao (邝飚) (2021) after Trump was banned from Twitter. You know it’s bad when the artists who normally criticize the CCP start to criticize you. Rebel Pepper (变态辣椒, RFA cartoonist)'s "I can’t Tweet" comes to mind, although it was about The West is racist against black people (西方人对黑人有种族主义) instad. Source.

6.4.1. The Great Translation Movement (大翻译运动官方推号)

but he just doesn’t have the knowledge/time/patience to do it as well as that Twitter channel.

6.4.1.1. Many people in the West don’t fully appreciate the danger of China 许多西方人没有完全意识到中国的危险

The Great Translation Movement (大翻译运动官方推号) is a good movement because many people in the West do not fully appreciate the level of dictatorship in China.

E.g. a well educated friend of Ciro once asked him circa 2020 which one he thought was worse: the terrible president of Brazil at the time, Jair Bolsonaro, or Xi Jinping (习近平, 2012-∞, Heil卐!)!

It is of course impossible to compare individuals in completely different situations, but how can you not point the finger to the major dictator! It is like asking who do you hate the most, Hitler or Donald Trump! That question was an eye opener.

6.4.2. GFWfrog (墙国蛙蛤蛤)

The username is a reference to a frog that jumps over the Great Firewall (GFW, 防火长城).

Or perhaps it is also a reference to Taiwan frog (台蛙蛙).

Amazing selection of Chinese-only anti-CCP content.

6.6. Tumblr

6.8. Wenxuecity (文学城)

Some US funded site for Chinese students abroad, apparently not censored e.g. https://bbs.wenxuecity.com/currentevent/3205740.html Blocked according to GreatFire (自由微博): https://en.greatfire.org/search/all/wenxuecity.com, so good sign.

Backlinks to this page (连接到这个网页的网页), so far only because they use github images, not actual mentions:

7. Separatism (分离主义, Taiwan 台湾, Xinjiang 新疆, Hong Kong 香港)

If a large number of people in a given region want to leave an country strongly or have greater autonomy, Ciro Santilli (三西猴, anti-CCP fanatic, 反中共狂热, stupid cunt, 傻屄, CIA agent, CIA特工, 肏你妈的) believes that they should be allowed to do so.

Rationale:

What makes Ciro the maddest is the censorship. If you are going to put people in jail, write a clear law about it, and let international reporters come to see the situation.

But why do you do something and then hide it? Maybe because you are not doing the right thing?

Ciro also believes that although terrorists must be fought with all our strength, they must also be given some degree respect (interspersed simultaneously with humour). He sometimes prefers the term "warriors" or "fighters", because their actions are largely indistinguishable from many ideological or purely greed based actions that larger nation states have done many times over and over. It is just a war, plain and simple.

The reason why they kill mostly civilians is that they don’t have the means to kill the presidents those civilians elected. An amazing scene from The Battle of Algiers (1966) comes to mind. After the head of the Algerian independence movement and terrorist, Larbi Ben M’hidi is arrested, the French military let him be interviewed by the press on 4 March 1967 https://youtu.be/uHWZkiBuKGY?t=5312 (TODO real words? Cannot find source):

Translation:

Journalist: Don’t you think that it is cowardly to use the handbags and pushchairs of your women to transport your bombs? Those bombs that make so many innocent victims? [Earlier in the movie, we saw women carriying bombs into the French areas of Algiers thro