Online Discussion Amid Censorship

Amid the Bo Xilai scandal that is currently rocking China's government, netziens in China are finding ways to discuss and dissect the news even as the Communist Party steps up its censorship of all online material related to Bo Xilai. The scandal of late involves prominent Bo Xilai (who was slated for a high government position) who was recently removed from his post after failing to adequately address the Wang Lijun incident. Furthermore, his wife was just investigated into the death of a British national who was caught up in this affair.

Netizens are using methods to bypass government filtering on micro-blogs and web forums, using keywords that represent figures in the scandal instead of using their real names - which are heavily targeted and taken down by online censoring. While the government continues its censorship over the issue, the BBC notes that it appears that most of the posts "praise" the actions of Beijing. Beijing released a commentary urging the people to support the government's actions as this controversy is investigated and cleared by the government. Wang Feng of the Brookings-Tsinghua Centre for Public Policy said "for the last 30 years this is the biggest scandal we can think of" calling it "unprecedented" in Chinese modern history.