China’s internet regulator has launched a campaign to crack down on “unauthorized” use of language online, in a move experts say is a bid to stem the widespread use of slang and abbreviations by Generation Z on social media.
The Cyberspace Administration of China will take steps to “rectify the chaos of the irregular use of Mandarin and other characters on the internet,” the country’s state news agency Xinhua reported last month.
The move is part of a nationwide crackdown on language usage with the code name Clear and Bright, and will target expressions involving homophones—words that sound the same but mean different things—and distortions of “sound, form, and meaning.”
The campaign will aim to erase “nonstandard and uncivilized language and written expressions in lists of trending searches, homepages, and curated selections,” the agency reported, citing the administration.
Tip-offs will be encouraged, to enable the authorities to “clean up” unauthorized usages, it said.
The Cyberspace Administration has targeted homophones before, largely because they’re used as code to evade censorship.
“Once they block all of these slang expressions, it may only be possible to use official narratives and official definitions, so it’s a form of speech control,” Liu Lipeng, a former Sina Weibo censor who now lives in the US, told Radio Free Asia Cantonese. “It’s a complex form of manipulation of ideology, of the narrative.”
According to Liu, part of the reason behind the campaign is that the government likely fears that if such code words are allowed to evolve and spread, there will come a point when the government itself doesn’t understand them.
Such coded expressions also strengthen a sense of communication and identity within the groups who use them, he said. But it’s not always easy, because plenty of slang expressions are riffs on common words. One of Xi Jinping’s nicknames, “Personally Deployed,” appears in official documents all over the internet as well as being used as a slang reference to the party leader.
