![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
Google’s Chinese Censorship
I’m sure this is old news to some people, but it’s new to me and I think worth repeating regardless. A commentor on my recent post about Google and the US government linked to two very interesting sets of search results.
First is the search results for a Google Image Search for “Tianamen Square” in the good ole USA. And second is the same search string on Google’s Chinese site. You’ll notice that in our version, the photos that appear are of the famous incident with the student protestor standing down a tank. In the Chinese version, you don’t seem to see any of that - it’s mostly just photos of people smiling and food.
Articles With Similar Themes:
Read In Sequence:
March 16th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
hi Tim, it is my understanding that the person standing in front of the tank in that famous picture was a worker that had seen the tanks rolling up after work and he choose to stand it down. in the film you see the tank try to swerve past him several times before finally rolling over him. his identity, as far as i know, is unknown. certainly the most heroic act of courage i’ve ever seen in my life. i vividly remember the day it happened when i was in first grade. it was a sunday and all the morning cartoons were cancelled for news reports.
March 16th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
what would happen if you searched the chinese version of google using a chinese character set instead of english?
just wondering . . . .
March 16th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese
The Chinese characters were taken from here.
March 17th, 2006 at 4:34 am
Though interestingly, if you search the Chinese Google with Tianamen spelled the same way you wrote it in your post (without the extra n), you do get some pictures of the protestor - including one of a Tianamen Square video game.
Check it out