2025-05-12
39 分钟This is The Guardian.
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This article contains some swearing.
Why would he take such a risk?
How a famous Chinese author befriended his censor.
By Mu Rong Xue Cun.
Read by Zhang Wang Li.
Some names have been changed.
It is 2013.
For four full months, Liu Lipeng engages in dereliction of duty.
Every hour, the system sends him a huge volume of posts.
but he hardly ever deletes a single word.
After 3,000 or 4,000 posts accumulate, he likely clicks his mouse and the whole lot is released.
In the jargon of censors, this is a total pass in one click, 一箭全通,
after which all the posts appear on China's version of X,
Sina Weibo, to be read by millions, then reposted and discussed.
He locks onto the Weibo management page, where many words are flagged.
Orange designates sensitive words that require careful examination,