BEIJING: The Chinese government has put a ban on the letter N, George Orwell’s satirical novel ‘Animal Farm’ and the use of phrase ‘Xi Zedong’ in the country’s latest crackdown on online content.
There is no concrete reason as to why the letter N, or Orwell’s novel and the ‘Xi Zedong’ have been banned from the internet. According to speculations however, the letter N might have been banned since it is said to be used as a sign of dissent.
Moreover, the government has also blocked search terms such as ‘disagree’, ‘personality cult’, ‘lifelong’, ‘immortality’, ’emigrate’ and ‘shameless’ on Sino Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
China has a strict internet censorship policy, which has seen mainstream social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube face bans since the authorities believe that foreign websites and social media are a threat to national security.