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Is 王 a sensitive word now?


AlexL

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Hi all,

Is it just me, or does searching for any phrase with "王“ on Google in China give you an error? I was trying to find information on a local 王力宏 concert via Google and kept getting shutdown. I realized that any phrase with 王 in it was blocked. Any idea why this might be? Has 王 turned into a 敏感词?

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Hi there,

Thanks for the responses! I did end up using Baidu and found the information fine. I'm just wondering why 王 is blocked now! What is the information that's considered sensitive? Any ideas?

edit: I should add that it's still blocked for me. But if it's unblocked for rezaf maybe my computer is just special...

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Could it have something to do with ex-student leader Wang Dan? I seem to remember he was refused entry to HK a couple of months ago and continues to be seen as very sensitive, even though he's a figure from years ago. What with everything that is happening with Ai Weiwei it appears that there is some sort of crackdown going on. Would seem odd to block the surname though!

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Maybe they are playing with google

This certainly wouldn't surprise me... I've had issues accessing www.google.com (my homepage) fairly regularly for the past couple of weeks. Its usually only resetting my connection for a few minutes at a time, so only an inconvenience, but the issues are conveniently unique to Google...

What if you try to query Google over HTTPS?

I used this by default back home, but have yet to see it load inside China...

Unfortunately, this erratic behaviour is, more-or-less, par for the course with the GFW... Other than the few obvious, permanent blocks, most keyword triggers I hit seem to be arbitrary, often intermittent and usually for sites which aren't political in the least. :blink:

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hahaha true... :P I was meaning that, if 王 is blocked for the reasons speculated above, 刘 also being blocked is anything but surprising.

The one thing which truly intrigues me, though, is that only Google is affected... No others, domestic and foreign alike, seem to be hit. It would be pretty ballsy for the GFW to run Google through a more stringent filtering regime than normal, or mess with its connectivity like this, since it would substantiate the recent allegations of it purposely being singled out and disrupted. That said, I'm even more skeptical that Google has a problem, with their website, causing this...

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