New Symbol of Protest in China Roils Censors: Blank White Papers


抗议者在公开场合和网上举行的示威中用很少的文字或白纸一张来抗议中国政府的动态清零防疫政策。


北京的示威者举着白纸抗议中国动态清零抗疫政策。

在中国受到严格审查的社交媒体上，网络警察有了一个新目标：白纸。 6park.com
On China’s heavily censored social media, a new target has emerged for internet police: blank sheets of white paper. 6park.com
  
在抗议者将白纸作为表达对中国动态清零抗疫政策不满的象征后，各平台正急于删掉显示人们手举白纸的图片。 6park.com
Platforms are rushing to remove images of people holding up the empty pages after protesters made them a symbol to express their frustration at China’s zero-Covid policies.  6park.com
  
在刚刚过去的周末，在中国几十年来规模数一数二的全国性示威活动中，示威者用很少的文字或白纸一张来抗议政府的严格抗疫政策；即使世界其他大多数国家已经放弃这种政策，中国也几乎没有退出的迹象。在多个主要城市和大学校园里，许多抗议者手举白纸，一些在线观察人士由此将其称为“白纸革命”。此前有传言称一家中国文具公司将下架所有此类白纸，但该公司已发布公告澄清此消息不实。 6park.com
Over the weekend, amid one of the largest nationwide demonstrations that China has seen in decades, demonstrators used few or no words at all to protest Beijing’s strict pandemic policies, which show little sign of ending even as most of the rest of the world moves on. Across multiple major cities and university campuses, many protesters held up blank pages, causing some online observers to coin it the “white paper revolution.” A Chinese stationery company issued a denial after rumors spread that it would suspend the sale of such paper. 6park.com
  
在热门社交媒体平台微信和微博上，一些用户发布了带有“我爱你，中国。我爱你，年轻人”字样的数字白色矩框，这种团结反抗的象征表明，与政府部门意见相左的公共空间正在缩小。 6park.com
Online, users of the ubiquitous social-media platform WeChat and Twitter-like Weibo posted digital white rectangles with the words “I love you, China. I love you, young people”—a symbol of solidarity and defiance that nodded to the shrinking public space for disagreement with authority. 6park.com
  
在中国，人们用许多富有创意的方式表达自身感受，前述行动只是其中之一；在中国，异见不被容忍，很少出现大范围的不服从行为。据社交媒体研究人员和中国网民称，即使审查人员连忙从几个社交媒体平台上撤下有关这些全国性抗议活动的视频，但周末发生的抗议活动传播速度之快、频率之高，都使审查人员很难处理上传到网上的大量内容。 6park.com
It was one of a number of creative ways people used to register their feelings in the country, where dissent isn’t tolerated and widespread displays of disobedience are rare. Even as the censors raced to pull down videos of the countrywide protests off several social-media platforms, the speed and frequency of the protests occurring over the weekend made it difficult for censors to handle the volume of content uploaded online, according to social-media researchers and Chinese internet users. 6park.com
  
微博股份有限公司(Weibo Corporation, 9898.HK, 简称：微博)和微信母公司腾讯控股有限公司(Tencent Holdings Ltd., 0700.HK, 简称﹕腾讯)没有回复记者的置评请求。 6park.com
Weibo Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., which owns WeChat, didn’t respond to requests for comment.  6park.com
  
在过去几十年里，为监管中国的网络内容，中国政府已经建立了一个复杂而严格的互联网筛查系统。即使在互联网言论普遍受到限制的情况下，在习近平担任中国国家主席之后，中国依然制定了一系列加强政府控制的规定，扩大了对网上反对官方观点的异见的审查。 6park.com
Over the past decades, Chinese authorities have put in place a system of sophisticated and stringent internet filters to police the country’s online content. Even as internet discourse has generally been limited, Chinese President Xi Jinping has presided over a series of regulations to tighten government control, expanding censorship of voices opposing official viewpoints online.  6park.com
  
许多中国社交媒体公司使用关键词筛查技术，将敏感的讨论控制在最低限度，并安排大量人工审查员团队监督和删除违规的内容。 6park.com
Many Chinese social-media companies use keyword-filtering technology to keep sensitive discussions to a minimum, and run large teams of human censors to monitor and take down offending content.  


清华大学的学生用白纸抗议学校的一项新政策。

在动态清零政策引发的不满情绪日益升温的背景下，这种审查依然在进行。根据动态清零政策，中国官员希望通过采取严格且突然的封控措施来防控新冠疫情。 6park.com
Such oversight comes amid growing unhappiness with the country’s zero-Covid policies, in which Chinese officials have sought to suppress new coronavirus cases with harsh and sudden lockdowns. 6park.com
  
在微信和抖音上用“白纸”一词进行搜索，得到的结果是折纸和艺术的视频，而不是中国抗议者手持白纸的视频。微博上有关此类抗议活动的视频已被删除。 6park.com
Searches for the term “white paper” on WeChat and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, return videos of origami and art, instead of videos of Chinese protesters carrying blank sheets of paper. Weibo had been scrubbed clean of videos of such protests.  6park.com
   6park.com
若用“上海乌鲁木齐中路”进行搜索，在仍能搜索到的帖子中，很多是中国国家或与共产党有关的媒体或政府机构官方账号发布的。这些帖子多数是几个月或几年前的。上周日，上海的乌鲁木齐中路发生了参与者情绪相当激动的抗议活动。 6park.com
A search for the term Wulumuqi Zhong Road in Shanghai, where some of the most fiery protests took place Sunday, found many of the posts still searchable were from official accounts run by state or party-linked media or government agencies. Most of the posts were several months or years old.  6park.com
  
周一下午，《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)发现一条躲过了审查、已上线一小时的帖子：浙江的一个用户发布了一盒A4白色打印纸的照片，并附上标题“我听说这个东西最近卖完了。#A4 #白纸 #新冠病毒 #自由。”A4是美国以外地区常用的一种纸张尺寸。 6park.com
The Wall Street Journal found one post on Monday afternoon that had been online for an hour that had evaded the censors: a user in Zhejiang had posted a photo of a box of A4 white printing paper, referring to a measurement of paper size commonly used outside the U.S., along with the caption: “I heard this item was recently sold out. #A4 #white paper #coronavirus #freedom.” 6park.com
  
几小时之内，这个帖子就被删除了。 6park.com
Within a few hours, the post had been removed.  6park.com
  
抖音母公司字节跳动(Bytedance Ltd.)未回复记者提问，字节跳动也是TikTok的母公司。 6park.com
Douyin’s owner Bytedance Ltd., which also owns TikTok, didn’t respond to questions. 6park.com
  
根据清华大学校友写给大学管理部门的一封支持校园示威活动的信，清华学生开始用白纸抗议，对抗禁止在大学印刷设施印刷未经核实内容的新政策。清华大学位于北京，是中国最着名的高校之一。 6park.com
At Beijing’s Tsinghua University, one of China’s most prestigious universities, students began using blank pages as protest in defiance of a new university policy barring the printing of unverified content at university printing facilities, according to a letter alumni wrote to the university administration in support of the campus demonstrations. 6park.com
   6park.com
“我们相信我们同学的反对是完全合理的，”这封校友信说，这封信有400多个签名。这封信说，健康的公开对话需要有表达的自由。 6park.com
“We believe the opposition of our classmates is completely justified,” the letter said, bearing over 400 signatures. “Healthy public dialogue requires freedom of expression.” 6park.com
  
香港抗议者也曾用白纸来表达对2020年全面实施的《国家安全法》(National Security Law)的不满，俄罗斯民众同样曾用白纸来抗议对乌战争。 6park.com
White paper was also used by protesters in Hong Kong to express discontent with the 2020 imposition of a sweeping National Security Law and by people in Russia opposing the war against Ukraine. 6park.com
  
许多无法在中国境内发布抗议内容的中国网民转向了Twitter等海外平台，导致数十个此类视频在中国境外流传。 6park.com
Many Chinese internet users who couldn’t post protest content within China chose to turn to overseas platforms such as Twitter to do so, resulting in dozens of these videos being circulated outside of the country. 6park.com
   6park.com
刘力朋(Eric Liu)是关注中国审查制度的新闻网站中国数字时代(China Digital Times)的一名分析师，在2011年至2013年期间曾在微博担任审核编辑。他表示，他在Twitter上发表的关于上周末这些抗议活动的中文帖子下的访客参与度比以前多了几倍。 6park.com
Eric Liu, an analyst with the censorship-focused news website China Digital Times and who had worked as a censor at Weibo between 2011 and 2013, said he had seen much more engagement with his Twitter posts, written in Chinese, on the protests this weekend than before. 


周日，上海的示威者抗议政府的新冠清零政策，一些评论人士由此将其称为“白纸革命”。

Twitter在中国被禁止使用，但用户可以通过VPN账户翻墙访问。 6park.com
Twitter is banned in China but can be accessed through virtual private network accounts that circumvent the nation’s Great Firewall.  6park.com
  
其他一些网民则以通常用于赞美和同意的字词来表达不满，如“是是是”、“好好好”等。在微信上，多篇简单重复“是”、“对”、“好”等汉字数百次甚至数千次的文章获得了超过10万的浏览量。 6park.com
Other internet users chose to express their frustrations online by using phrases usually meant for praise and agreement, including variations of “yes yes yes” and “good good good.” On WeChat, multiple articles simply repeating the Chinese characters for “yes,” “sure,” and “good” hundreds—even thousands—of times have garnered over 100,000 views. 6park.com
   6park.com
这样的评论充斥着中国外交部发言人赵立坚的官方微博账号的一些帖子。一些用户发布“好好好好”这样的评论，以回应赵立坚周日关于美国今年已有超四万人死于各类涉枪事件的帖子。 6park.com
Such comments flooded some of the posts of China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian’s official Weibo account. Several users responded “good good good good” to a post by Mr. Zhao on Sunday about gun-related deaths in the U.S. reaching more than 40,000 this year. 6park.com
  
周末过后，对中国动态清零政策的批评意见也依然存在。 6park.com
After the weekend, critical opinions about the country’s zero-Covid policy have also remained.  6park.com
  
一些在微信广泛流传的文章对居委会的权威性提出了质疑；居委会一直是中央政府抗疫指令的日常执行者。还有人公开批评检测机构从持续的大规模检测政策中牟利。 6park.com
Some articles widely circulated on WeChat have challenged the authority of neighborhood committees, which have been the day-to-day enforcers of the central government’s Covid directives. Others have openly criticized Covid-testing providers for profiting from the continued mass-testing policies. 6park.com
  
一位来自重庆市的网友“JustinTTTF”周日在赵立坚的账号下发帖称：我想出小区，我想去上班，我想过正常的生活。 6park.com
A user from the city of Chongqing, whose handle was “JustinTTTF,” wrote the following on Mr. Zhao’s account on Sunday: “I want to leave my apartment complex. I want to go to work. I want to live a normal life.” 6park.com
  
该帖子收到了几十条表达同情的评论。 6park.com
The post received dozens of sympathetic comments. 6park.com