Every evening across China, the state broadcaster’s flagship news program enters hundreds of millions of homes. And night after night, TV screens show dull reports of Communist Party meetings or leaders on inspection tours full of beaming farmers and clapping workers.
The morning’s newspapers carry similar fare, so don’t bother searching for satire or political cartoons: There aren’t any. But go online, and it’s a different story. While the government’s cybercensors are quick, a growing number of Chinese Internet users prove quicker, posting humorous messages, pictures, videos and songs that mock the news of the day, the censors and the official party line.
“Some of the most cutting social criticism and criticism of the government is found in online humor,” says Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of the Danwei Web site, blocked in China, that tracks the Chinese Internet.
“The Internet is the freest place for self-expression in China, and young Chinese people are increasingly media savvy,” he says.
China’s online population topped 420 million, the world’s largest, by the end of June, reported state news agency Xinhua. The U.S.-based microblogging service Twitter is blocked in China, as is Facebook, but more than 75 million Chinese communicate using local, Twitter-like companies, the China Daily newspaper said this month.
Those microblogs are where political humor spreads the fastest, hotly pursued by the censors. China banned coverage of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony Dec. 10. The prize was awarded in absentia to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, derided as a “criminal” in the state-run press. But several microbloggers forwarded Twitter entries about “the Liu I most admire,” written in mock-essay style. “He has won major international prizes … and although he disappeared from our sight for a while, I believe his spirit will live forever,” wrote one, teeing up the punch line: “His name is Liu Xiang,” the champion hurdler…