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Internet Censorship on the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest
The Chinese government censors internet materials related to the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989. According to the government’s white paper in 2010 on the subject of internet in China, the government protects “the safe flow of internet information and actively guides people to manage websites in accordance with the law and use the internet in a wholesome and correct way.” Therefore, the government prevents people on the internet from “divulging state secrets, subverting state power and jeopardizing national unification; damaging state honor” and “disrupting social order and stability. ” Law-abiding Chinese websites such as Sina Weibo censors words related to the protest in its search engine. Weibo is one of the largest Chinese microblogging services. As of October 2012, Weibo’s censored words include “Tank Man.” The government also censors words that have similar pronunciation to “June 4,” the date that the violent government’s crackdown occurred. “陆肆” (pinyin: lu si), for example, is similar in pronunciation to “June 4” (pinyin: liu si). The government forbids remembrances of the protest. Weibo’s search engine, for example, censors Hong Kong lyricist Thomas Chow’s song called 自由花 or “The Flower of Freedom.” This is because attendees of the Vindicate 4 June and Relay the Torch rally at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park sing this song every year to commemorate the victims of the massacre. The government’s internet censorship of the protest was especially strict during the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in 2009. According to a Reporters Without Borders’ article, searching photos related to the protest such as “June 4” on Baidu, the most popular Chinese search engine, would return blank results and a message stating that the “search does not comply with laws, regulations and policies.” Moreover, a large number of netizens (internet users) from China claimed that they were unable to access numerous Western web services such as Twitter, Hotmail, and Flickr days leading up to and during the anniversary. Netizens in China claimed that many Chinese web services were temporarily blocked days before and during the anniversary. Netizens reported that microblogging services including Fanfou and Xiaonei (now known as Renren) were down with similar messages that claim that their services were “under maintenance” for a few days around the anniversary date.

Reactions of Netizens in China
Western news articles claimed that Chinese netizens responded with subtle protests against the government’s temporary blockages of large web services. A news article from The Guardian, for instance, stated that Chinese websites made subtle grievances against the state’s censorship by sarcastically calling the date June 4 as the 中國網站維護日 or “Chinese Internet Maintenance Day.” Owner of the blog Wuqing.org stated, “I, too, am under maintenance.” The dictionary website Wordku.com voluntarily took its site down with the claim that this was because of the “Chinese Internet Maintenance Day.” Chinese netizens use subtle and sarcastic internet meme to criticize the government and to bypass censorship. Netizens created and posted humorous pictures or drawings that are similar to the Tank Man photo on Weibo. One of these pictures, for example, shows Florentijin Hofman’s rubber ducks sculptures replacing tanks in the Tank Man photo. On Twitter, a Beijing-based AIDS activist, Hu Jia asked netizens in mainland China to wear black t-shirts on June 4 to oppose censorship and to commemorate the date. Chinese web services such as Weibo eventually censored searches of both “black shirt” and “Big Yellow Duck” in 2009.