The Peoples Daily the main state-owned newspaper of Chinas communist party is getting a new headquarters building. It is massive, imposing, and, uh, currently shaped like a colossal penis.
Now, as construction workers try to finish the engineering, the countrys censors are working overtime to stop Chinese people on social media from laughing at the expense of the very paper in charge of controlling the countrys message. The nearly 500-foot tower wont be finished until this time next year, but thewar on mocking it has already begun.
You see, China likes its censorship (they even censored Men in Black 3 for talking about the countrys censors) and the government tries hard to rule the Internet with an iron fist. The communist censors even have control over monitoring Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, effectively controlling what goes viral. So, yeah, making fun of that thing up there on social media wasnt going fly, especially since it was the new home of the state-run media.
Agence France Presse is reporting that censors on Weib are cracking down on the Peoples Daily toilet humor. The IB Times adds:
A search on Sina Weibo for “People’s Daily” and “building” results in a message that says the keywords have been blocked “in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results cannot be displayed”.
Of course, some clever Weibo users have snuck around the censors by way of the double entendre. It seems the Peoples Daily is going to rise up, there’s hope for the Chinese dream, reads one message that got through filters, according to the AFP. Another: Of course the national mouthpiece should be imposing.
The Times of India introduced the story like this: The new 150-meter tall headquarters of the Peoples Daily, the main organ of the Communist Party.
Is that the best they can do? What headline would you give to this story?
From The Atlantic Wire.
