mainland forums disappoint me

[Quest]

For example: I saw a thread that had a 100% support rate(out of some 200+ posts) for Chairman Mao, every post praised him like he was God. I was wondering how is that possible, so I tried to leave a message telling them part of the "truth" that I know, it wasn't even bad.... but my post never showed up then I did a test -- I wrote a message saying "Chairman mao was the greatest leader in China!" the post came up in 2 seconds

now I know why you only see unanimous opinions at those sites!

by the way it was 新华社's forums

[wushijiao]

I saw a thread that had a 100% support rate(out of some 200+ posts) for Chairman Mao, every post praised him like he was God.

What? Mao isn't a god? My Mao altar and goat sacrafices have been for naught?

Actually,according to Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn's book "China Wakes", there is some religious cult that uses Mao as their God, making him the first athiest to become a diety. Kind of cool.

Kristof also talks about the same thing you did: how no attacks are allowed on the nation's leaders on the Internet. Even my friend's site dedicated to our former school's breaches of contact (less than 200 hits) was banned in China.

But maybe you could find a more obscure forum, or word it more mysteriously or symbolically.

[ala]

You just went to some bad forums. There are some good ones. This one is okay: http://www.webjb.org/webjb/sanxian/ (not always though).

Xinhuashe, People's Daily are forums you want to avoid since they are both very leftist. Xinhuashe is like Hu Jintao's right hand.

[holyman]

For example: I saw a thread that had a 100% support rate(out of some 200+ posts) for Chairman Mao, every post praised him like he was God. I was wondering how is that possible, so I tried to leave a message telling them part of the "truth" that I know, it wasn't even bad.... but my post never showed up then I did a test -- I wrote a message saying "Chairman mao was the greatest leader in China!" the post came up in 2 seconds

now I know why you only see unanimous opinions at those sites!

by the way it was 新华社's forums

i had different experiences. i often criticise mao, ccp and chinese nationalism on xinhua forum, openly and half openly, even recently on his population problems, and most of them showed up. of course in certain threads my posts caused them to be locked, or make them delete. it all depends on the mods. there are a number of mods at any time, some are more liberal while some arent.

there are also chances they overlooked certain posts. sometimes i posted, it didnt show up, then i post the same content again, and it appeared.

[Quest]

6 out of 10 posts were blocked.

[keith]

typical is it not?

[Quest]

They were talking about how to get rid of corruption in China. I said "election + media exposure would be the best cure."

I would think that's innocent enough, but it got blocked...

[holyman]

oh, u touched the hot stuff...

system changes should be mentioned in a mild manner. anyway they can always argue that they have 'elections', at a 'higher level', of course.

[roddy]

I wouldn't be suprised if the people with the fingers on the buttons don't even have clear guidelines themselves - they're probably just told 'don't let anything bad on' without being told what is 'bad' - so they just block anything they're not sure of to avoid getting into trouble.

Bit like me, really

Roddy

[bhchao]

Try typing something anti-Japanese. The post will probably show up immediately.

[holyman]

thats a good one. works well with anti-american, anti-singapore or anti-korean posts.

[bathrobe]

Those fora are a joke.

I've seen boards that are filled with scurrilous anti-Japanese filth -- gutter language. I then posted something that was critical of the Chinese and it was gone within a day. I posted repeatedly, even criticising the forum for leaving juvenile anti-Japanese rubbish on the board but deleting serious posts that didn't agree with the Chinese official viewpoint. All of them were deleted.

The Chinese moderators don't seem to realise that they are defeating their own cause. (Or maybe they do. Perhaps they are secretly protesting against the ridiculous censorship that they are forced to carry out!) At any rate, until we see a change in the policy of the Chinese authorities towards such fora, you can't take seriously much of the stuff that comes out of China.