Cat And Mouse Game To Avoid Chinese Censors

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been blocked in China for years.

And since Sunday night, Instagram has also been blacked out.

Many believe it was a move to block information about Occupy Central being seen by people in China.

If you have a virtual private network (VPN), however, you can still access these blocked websites.

Meanwhile, on authorised sites like Weibo – the Chinese version of Twitter – and Whatsapp and Facebook hybrid WeChat, you can't post things the Communist Party doesn’t like.

Key words that directly link to sensitive issues are filtered, so when you type in these words there are no useful results.

When you repeatedly write about sensitive issues your posts can be deleted and account deactivated.

In serious cases, you can be held and charged for publishing online rumours - defined as spreading information regarding China that the government might dislike.

How these issues are handled differs by issue and region.

When Sky News visited the far western region of Kashgar, things were more extreme.

At police checkpoints, officers go through your messages and posts to find out if you are an extremist or a separatist.

With Occupy Hong Kong, it has not yet come to that degree of paranoia.

However, on Tuesday a lawyer claimed a teenager was held for posting about Occupy Central.

This information couldn't be verified but there is a chance that it may be true.

It's common knowledge in China that it’s better off to keep quiet about the government.

But smart citizens use euphemisms and modified words to evade government censorship software and say what is really going on in China.

Right now on Weibo, when you type in Occupy central, you can't find any results. It's as if nothing is going on.

However, if you type in Peaceful Occupy Central, you can see posts about what has happened and what is going on right now.

To find and share what's going on, you just need to be creative.

For example, if you have an article with sensitive wording you can post it as an image.

People would be able to read it but it won’t be filtered by text-tracking software.

Only through such methods can you buy some time before the message spreads - and the authorities, inevitably, remove it.