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Word of the Day
anodyne
Definition: (adjective) Capable of soothing or eliminating pain.
Synonyms: analgesic, analgetic.
Usage: She was in intense pain following the surgery and wondered whether the anodyne properties of her medication would be sufficient.
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Most Memorable DNC Speeches: Trump Is Trash
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Language Log
Sino-Persian chimera
We've been on the trail of the griffin for some time: "Griffins: the implications of art history for language spread" (8/9/24), "Idle thoughts upon the Ides of March: the feathered man" (3/11/23) — very important (not so idle) observations about griffins in the pre-Classical West by Adrienne Mayor, with illuminating illustrations. Following the leads in these and other posts, I think we're getting closer to the smoking gryphon (in some traditions, e.g., Egyptian sfr/srf, it is thought to be fiery).
One name from the Middle East rings a bell with a well-known fabulous monster from classical China. That is
…the Armenian term Paskuč (Armenian: պասկուչ) that had been used to translate Greek gryp 'griffin' in the Septuagint, which H. P. Schmidt characterized as the counterpart of the simurgh. However, the cognate term Baškuč (glossed as 'griffin') also occurs in Middle Persian, attested in the Zoroastrian cosmological text Bundahishn XXIV (supposedly distinguishable from Sēnmurw which also appears in the same text). Middle Persian Paškuč is also attested in Manichaean magical texts (Manichaean Middle Persian: pškwc), and this must have meant a "griffin or a monster like a griffin" according to W. B. Henning.
(Wikipedia)
That reminds me of the 辟邪. In Mandarin, it is pronounced bìxié. I'm not confident we can say for sure it is a griffin per se, though it is a chimera of some sort. More feline than avian, I believe, though at least it has wings, and if we look at images of the bìxié 辟邪 and compare them to the Paškuč / Baškuč, we will find that there are quite a few resemblances, though, again, I'm not making a case that the bìxié 辟邪 is equal to the griffin. It would be unlikely for an imaginary, fabulous beast to retain iconographical fidelity across thousands of miles and hundreds of years. Indeed, even within a single tradition, the details of an imaginary beast vary wildly through time and space (e.g., the bìxié 辟邪 itself has many different competing versions).
As Wiktionary tells us, bìxié 辟邪 is "a chimaera-like figure common in Chinese and Persian art". ***** Reading that sentence was electrifying. So far as I know, no one has made a philological identification of the bìxié 辟邪 and the Paškuč / Baškuč. Rather, the statement that the two fabulous creatures, the Persian and the Sinitic, are related — "a chimaera-like figure common in Chinese and Persian art" — was likely to have been made by art historians based on a commonality of iconographical features and alleged traits.
zdic, the online Classical Chinese dictionary, defines bìxié 辟邪 as "to ward off evil spirits; mythical lion-like animal that wards off evil". In my estimation, this sort of definition may be styled as wàngwénshēngyì 望文生義 ("forced, superficial translation of a transcription"). My dissatisfaction with "to ward off evil spirits" is underscored by the fact that there is a completely different transcription, for which see below.
First, though, let us examine the historical phonology of bìxié 辟邪:
The Middle Sinitic reconstruction (ca. 600 AD) of the first character is bjiek; the Old Sinitic reconstruction (ca. 600 BC) of the first character is /*peɡ/ or /*beɡ/
The Middle Sinitic reconstruction (ca. 600 AD) of the second character is zjae; the Old Sinitic reconstruction (ca. 600 BC) of the second character is /*ljaː/
Hence, /*peɡ/ /*ljaː/ or /*beɡ/ /*ljaː/.
Now it gets very interesting, because there is an alternative orthography for the name of this fabulous creature, and that is píxiū 貔貅.
Middle Sinitic bjij xjuw
Old Sinitic /*bi qʰu/
This mythological animal is deeply embedded enough in Chinese lore and legend that it is even to be found in classical texts from around the time of the Han Dynasty (202 BC-[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
take
stolen money or goods
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Idiom of the Day
lay the groundwork (for something)
To create or prepare the basics or essential foundation (for something); to pave the way (for something). Watch the video
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Language Log
Internet IDs for China
China Plans to Issue Unified Internet IDs to Netizens
Singapore’s primary Chinese language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao recently reported that the Chinese government plans to issue unified internet ID numbers and certificates to members of the Chinese public in order to verify the true identity of users. This raised concerns over control of speech.
China’s Ministry of Public Security and the Chinese Cyberspace Administration just released a document titled “National Internet Identity Authentication Public Service Management Measures (Draft for Comments).” According to the document, the purpose of the internet ID is “to strengthen the protection of people’s personal information.”
Some scholars said that the implementation of internet identification numbers and certificates will help avoid information leakage, reduce network violence, and combat telecommunications fraud. Skeptics expressed the belief that this is yet another way for the authorities to tighten control over speech. Some netizens commented that “in the future, if the government wants to block anyone, it only needs to block an online ID to ban the user across the entire network. Isn’t it scary?”
China has fully implemented an online real-name system since 2017. There have been many suspected database leaks. Some people found that their real personal information registered with Chinese social media platforms had been leaked to the dark web.
Source: Lianhe Zaobao, July 29, 2024 (via Chinascope)
Another article on the same topic from a different source: China Plans to Issue National ID Intermediating Citizens’ Internet Access
The Chinese authorities have announced the “National Network Identity Authentication Public Service Management Measures (Draft for Comments),” jointly issued by the Ministry of Public Security and the National Internet Information Office. According to the document, the “network number” (网号) is composed of letters and numbers and is linked to each person’s individual identity. The “network certificate” (网证) refers to the network authentication credential that carries the “network number.” These pieces of information, issued by authorities at the national level, can verify a natural person’s true identity when they use internet services.
Since 2017, Beijing has mandated a comprehensive real-name registration system for Chinese users of the internet. This enables the CCP to control people’s interactions online, as users are required to use their real identity when registering accounts on any major online platform. Each online platform has thus has collected users’ critical personal information. The authorities state that the recently-announced national “network number” and “network certificate” system will allow users to verify their identity using a government-issued app, meaning that individual commercial internet platforms will no longer need to be responsible for verification of users’ identities.
Although the draft specifies that the deadline for feedback is August 25, the “National Network Identity Authentication Pilot Version” app has already been launched on several mobile app stores in China. Users can now verify their identity and obtain an electronic network identity certificate with a “network number.” This pilot includes 10 government service apps and 71 internet apps, including Taobao, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu.
Critics pointed out that there is no legal basis for the government to require people to use “real name” to access Internet, and that requiring the use of a national-level identity will make it easier for authorities to completely block a person from using the internet.
Source: BBC, August 6, 2024 https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-69244432 Briefings | | August 11, 2024 | @CSInformation/TechnologySocial Stability
Orwellian perfectionism for the refinement of censorship and control. Selected readings
* "What it's like inside the Great Firewall" (7/31/24)
* "The face of censorship" (1/11/19)
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
can (1)
to reject or criticize something or someone
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Idiom of the Day
lay (something) at the feet of (someone)
To make or hold someone, especially a group of people, responsible for something. Watch the video
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Language Log
Middle Vernacular Sinitic culture
Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-third issue: "Speaking and Writing: Studies in Vernacular Aspects of Middle Period Chinese Culture" (pdf), edited by Victor H. Mair (August, 2024).
Foreword
The three papers in this collection were written for my seminar on Middle Vernacular Sinitic (MVS). They cover a wide variety of topics, from epistolary style to social mores, to philosophy and religion. They reveal how a vernacular ethos informs the thought and life of men and women from different social classes and distinguishes them from those who adhere to a more strictly classical outlook. Although they are on quite dissimilar subjects, this trio of papers harmonize in their delineation of the implications of vernacularity for belief and perception. Taken together, they compel one to consider seriously what causes some people to tilt more to the vernacular side and others to cling to classicism. While the authors of these papers do not aim to arrive at a common conclusion on the meaning of the vernacular-classical divide, the readers who probe beneath the surface of all three papers will undoubtedly find facets that refract and reflect themes that bind them into a unified body of inquiry.
In the first paper, Jack Lu examines an enigma that has long puzzled historians of art, since the individual who is generally considered to be the greatest calligrapher in Chinese history, Wang Xizhi (fourth c.), is also famous for having written countless notes and letters in vernacular language. Not only are the notes and letters in vernacular, they are also often about the most mundane of subjects, such as the minor ailments of himself, his family members, and friends. Lu plumbs Wang’s motives for this seemingly bizarre behavior and explains how it makes a certain kind of sense.
Xinyan Chen, in the second paper, delves into the elusive notion of yuàn 媛, which started out more than two thousand years ago with the meaning of “beautiful woman,” developed during the early middle ages into the idea of a woman who is both beautiful and admirable, but somehow during the modern period has taken on the rather negative nuance of a privileged, pampered woman. Chen focuses particularly on yuàn 媛 as portrayed in A New Account of Tales of the World (Shishuo xinyu 世說新語), a remarkable work of social anecdotes and commentary of the second-fourth centuries that was compiled and edited during the first half of the fifth century and is conspicuous for the large proportion of vernacular usages it has for that period.
The third paper, by Ming Sun, is about the core Chan / Zen concept of the negation of language, particularly written language. Of course, this presents a contradiction in terms, since the Chan masters who promoted this doctrine could not but talk and write about it. Sun investigates ineffability from a range of standpoints: philosophical, religious, literary, and so forth. Early on in the paper, the author introduces us to some of the means Chan masters adopted for dealing with the problem language in a system of thought that was skeptical of the efficacy of language in arriving at truth: Chan poetry (chanshi 禪詩), public cases (gong’an 公案), recorded sayings (yulu 語錄), incisive dialogue (jifeng 機鋒), beating and shouting (banghe 棒喝), and even silence.
Coming to grips with exquisite mundanity, virtuous beauty, and ultimate truth— all within the realm of linguistic vernacularity—ensures that readers of this collection will come away from it with the gray matter between their ears buzzing.
—–
All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.
To view our catalog, visit http://www.sino-platonic.org/
Selected readings
* "The linguistic origins and affiliations of Zen" (11/13/21
* "The esthetics of East Asian writing" (4/7/12)
* "All-purpose word for 'glamorous woman'" (10/16/21)
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Learn English Through Football
Newspaper Headline: Tunnel bust-up over red card
In this football language post we explain the newspaper headline, 'Tunnel bust-up over red card from the Telegraph newspaper from the Newcastle versus Southampton game in the Premier League.
The post Newspaper Headline: Tunnel bust-up over red card appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
start out
to begin a life or a career in a particular way
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Word of the Day
superannuated
Definition: (adjective) Retired or ineffective because of advanced age.
Synonyms: over-the-hill, overaged.
Usage: The company has a pension plan that provides financial assistance to some of its superannuated employees.
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Language Log
Scone geography
Matthew Smith, "The scone pronunciation map of Britain", YouGov 8/16/2024:
The debate on whether you should pronounce ‘scone’ to rhyme with ‘gone’ or with ‘bone’ has been going on forever. There is evidence of people making light of the distinction as far back as 1913, with a poem in Punch Magazine:
I asked the maid in dulcet tone,
To order me a buttered scone,
The silly girl has been and gone,
And ordered me a buttered scone.
Neither side looks likely to win the argument any time soon however, with a recent YouGov study of more than 54,000 Britons finding that 51% say they pronounce the word to rhyme with ‘gone’ but 45% saying they pronounce it to rhyme with ‘bone’.
The resulting map: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/YouGovSconeMap.webp The Wiktionary entry offers a cornucopia of etymological possibilities:
Originally Scots, possibly from Middle Low German schö̂ne (“fine flour bread”), or from Greek σκόνη (skóni, “dust”) or Middle Dutch schoonbroot (“fine bread; a kind of flat angular loaf”), from schoon (“fine”) + broot (“bread”); alternatively, Scottish Gaelic sgonn (“lump, mouthful”).
…but only only one pronunciation — the "gone" version:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
The OED etymology omits the Greek and Gaelic option: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/OED_scone_etymology.png But the OED pronunciation gives (versions of) the two British pronunciations, rendered in IPA as /skəʊn/ and /skɒn/:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
The OED also gives the same pair for U.S. English, rendered as /skoʊn/ and /skɑn/:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
And one version each for Scottish English (/skɔn/), Australian English (/skɔn/), and New Zealand English (/skɒn/):
Your browser does not support the audio element.
(As usual, I'm skeptical of the accuracy/value of the IPA versions, though there's certainly a bit of content there…)
You can read the YouGov article for more geographical details — but there's some additional culinary geography fun:
A map that perhaps makes more sense at first glance is our county map showing what order people add jam and cream to their scones. This topic is hotly disputed, with proponents of the so-called ‘Cornish method’ insisting that jam should go on first, while the rival ‘Devon method’ advocates the application of cream ahead of jam.
Fittingly, both counties are the most likely in the country to practice the method that bears their name. However, while the Cornish method is by far the most common choice in Cornwall (80%), the same is not true in Devon, where people are in fact split on whether they go cream first (49%) or jam first (46%). http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/YouGovSconeMethodMap.webp Given the distinctly red tone of the map above, it is no surprise to see that the overall national results show a heavy lead for jam-firsters, which is practiced by 62% of Britons compared to 28% for the cream-first opponents.
However, there is a glimmer of hope in the long run for cream-firsters. Breaking the results down by age shows that the Cornish method’s dominance diminishes as the public get younger. While fully 80% of the over-70s dollop jam on their scone first, this falls to 48% among the under-30s.
It's probably my ignorance, but I feel that there's less of such detailed geographical socio-food-istics than there could be. (And is there even a word for it?) What I've seen for e.g. U.S. barbecue-sauce variation is not nearly as geographically or statistically elaborated, and is aimed at cooks rather than at social scientists… The YouGov article even shows the cream-jam order by age as well as geography — though not by gender, educational background, etc. :-)…
[h/t Jesse Sheidlower]
Update — Another socio-food-istic point is that U.S. scones are made to be eaten by themselves, without either jam or cream — I don't believe I've ever seen anyone n the U.S. putting jam and cream on a scone, in whatever order.
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
weigh up
to consider the good and bad points before making a decision
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Language Log
Personification
Most rhetorical devices have classical Greek names, arriving in English through Latin and French: analepsis, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, … But there are some common cases, like personification, where the English word is entirely Latinate, although the Greeks certainly used knew and used the technique. The OED's etymology is "Formed within English, by derivation", and the earliest OED citation is from 1728.
This came up because I started a post about Elle Cordova's use of personification in her clever skit “Subatomic particles hang out in the Universe Saloon”:
(For a less artistic approach to the subject of the Universe Saloon chain, see Steve Nadis, "Diminishing Dark Energy May Evade the ‘Swampland’ of Impossible Universes", Quanta Magazine 8/19/2024.)
Someone in the comments section will probably tell us what term or phrase the Greeks used for "personification". But meanwhile, I'll share with you something interesting that I found in looking for the history of other rhetorical terminology, starting with metaphor. Quintilian wrote about mĕtaphŏra in Book 8 of his Institutio Oratoria, and like other Latin authors, he transliterated the word directly from the Greek model μεταφορά, which literally meant "transport" (and still does). But I think his proposed constraint on the use of metaphors was an original peeve:
At ego id agendo nec pastorem populi auctore Homero dixerim, nec volucres per aera nare, licet hoc Vergilius id apibus ac Daedalo speciosissime sit usus. metaphora enim aut vacantem occupare locum debet aut, si id alienum venit, plus valere eo quod expellet.
For my own part I should not regard a phrase like “the shepherd of the people” as admissible in pleading, although it has the authority of Homer, nor would I venture to say that winged creatures “swim through the air,” despite the fact that this metaphor has been most effectively employed by Virgil to describe the flight of bees and of Daedalus. For metaphor should always either occupy a place already vacant, or if it fills the room of something else, should be more impressive than that which it displaces.
Personification can be seen as a kind of metaphor — a bartender giving beer to a customer == the Higgs boson giving mass to a quark. But under whatever name, it's a technique that Elle Cordova has used effectively in this and other skits, in ways that Quintilian wouldn't have objected to. I covered an earlier example in “ICYMI: Aptos replaces Calibri”, 3/2/2024.
Update — Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française has personnification, said to be
xviiie siècle. Dérivé de personnifier.
…which raises the question of who copied whom, but doesn't otherwise help.
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9 AD' 25-220 AD).
Earliest extant attestations are in the Book of Rites and Lost Book of Zhou:
前有摯獸，則載貔貅。
When there is a ferocious beast (of prey) in front, the flag with a pixiu / leopard('s skin) on it should be displayed.
山之深也，虎豹貔貅何為可服？
The mountains being thus deep, how can tigers, leopards, and pixiu be tamed?
(Wiktionary)
There's even a whole Wikipedia article on the píxiū 貔貅. Don't pay too much attention to the fantastic iconographical details, because — when it comes to strange / legendary / mythological creatures — the Chinese just love to pile on the weirdness.
Both of the characters used to write this name have Kangxi radical 153 zhì 豸 added on. That's not important (ostensibly means "badger", "legless insect", or "legendary beast"). What's important are the phonetic components (the "spellers") on the right side of the characters. The word was probably originally written without the radicals, just the phonetic components. This is very common in the development of the Chinese script (radicals [semantic classifiers / indicators] added later to disambiguate homophones).
The fact that this same creature has alternative near-homophonic orthographical forms is highly significant. It is a principle of my Sinological philology that such disyllabic terms with orthographical variants are usually an indication that they are transcriptional and borrowed from a non-Sinitic source.
If the bìxié 辟邪 / píxiū 貔貅 is related to the baškuč / paškuč, as we have been told, it is likely to have been brought by East Iranian speakers. In a detailed philological study of baškuč / paškuč, David Buyaner, concludes:
Bearing in mind the role played by the speakers of various Eastern-Iranian dialects[19] settled on the Great Silk Road in the transmission of folklore narratives of eastern origin to the West, we can conclude with a good deal of likelihood that the bird name *pasku(n)č was borrowed from some Eastern-Iranian source (probably Khotanese) into Parthian and that from there it penetrated Persian and the non-Iranian languages of the Caucasus and Mesopotamia.
[19]Mostly Sogdians, but not only.
See Buyaner's "On the Etymology of Middle Persian baškuč (Winged Monster)," Studia Iranica, 34 (2005), 19-30, available here and here.
A similar vector may have been operative in the transmission of the baškuč / paškuč eastward. Selected readings
* "What is the difference between a dragon and a /lʊŋ³⁵/?" (2/10/24)
* "A (troop / troupe of) dragon(s) tromping / flying" (12/4/23)
* "'Lord of Heaven' in ancient Sino-Iranian" (5/28/24)
* “Zoroastrianism between Iranic and Sinitic” (11/18/22)
* "So spoke Zoroaster: camels and ancient Sinitic reconstructions" (1/13/21)
* "Zoroastrianism and Mazdaism: Evidence from Sogdian and Pahlavi" (1/15/21)
* "Indo-European religion, Scythian philosophy, and the date of Zoroaster: a linguistic quibble" (10/9/20) — with an extensive bibliography
[Thanks to Martin Schwartz]
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: absolve
This word has appeared in 48 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
set back (2)
If something has set you back fifty dollars, it has cost you fifty dollars.
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Word of the Day
scathing
Definition: (adjective) Bitterly denunciatory; harshly critical.
Synonyms: vituperative.
Usage: This scathing remark caused the Prince to hide his face for shame, and Steve to erect his head in the proud consciousness that this shot was not meant for him.
Discuss
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Best Presidency Ever: The Emotional Wall
Trump needs money... for therapy.
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Throwback to our #BestPresidencyEver series (Episode 1, Part 1) from 2020. Click the link in our bio to watch the rest of episode 1 & hopefully break down both physical & emotional barriers.
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: honorarium
This word has appeared in two articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
take off (1)
to remove a piece of clothing, or the top of a container
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Word of the Day
pathos
Definition: (noun) A quality, as of an experience or a work of art, that arouses feelings of pity, sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow.
Synonyms: poignancy.
Usage: The documentary film captured the pathos of the refugee's situation, and there was not a dry eye in the theater when the movie ended.
Discuss
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Language Log
More problems
Following up on J.D. Vance's reduced pronunciation of "problems", I looked through a 100-instance random sample of that word in real-life contexts, taken from the 23,147 phrases containing it in the previously-described NPR podcast corpus. About half of those examples exhibit lenition of the medial /bl/ consonant cluster, to the point where its IPA transcription would need to change, often all the way to deletion. This pattern follows the general treatment in American English of intervocalic consonant sequences that are not followed by a stressed vowel within the same word.
One of the examples is especially interesting. In a passage from All Things Considered (11/16/2012), the word "problems" occurs twice in the same phrase, in the middle of a discussion of Bengazi and the resignation of David Petraeus (at around 6:30.58 in the audio):
CORNISH: He argued that they struck it from the transcripts so as not to tip off terrorist groups that the intelligence community was on to them. But E.J.?
DIONNE: I'm not feeling quite so French as David is. I think, boy, did you open up – did these various activities and affairs not only on the part of Petraeus open up a real series of problems, you also have problems raised with the FBI, the shirtless FBI agent, and did – what in the world was his role in this? So I think the whole thing is very unfortunate.
In terms of Bengazi […]
[Since this is Language Log, not Scandals-Of-Yore Log, you'll need to read or listen to the podcast to remind yourself of the surrounding story line(s).]
Here's the phrasal context for the two versions of "problems":
[…] of problems.
You also have problems raised with the FBI, the shirtless uh FBI […]
Your browser does not support the audio element.
The first pronunciation of "problems" is pretty much the dictionary version:
Your browser does not support the audio element. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Problems6X1aa.png Although of course all the articulations are overlapped, we can point to time-regions corresponding to traditional phonetic segments:
1. [p] closure
2. [p] release and aspiration
3. [ɹ] transition into the stressed [ɐ] vowel
4. the [ɐ] vowel
5. the [b] closure
6. [b] release into the [l]
7. reduced [ə]-like vowel
8. [m] nasal murmur
9. [z] frication
But the second version of "problems" is phonetically rather different:
Your browser does not support the audio element. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Problems6X1b.png An IPA approximation would be something like [ˈpɹɐmz], though as usual there's more going on than the symbol-sequence suggests.
Why the difference? There are at least two relevant factors:
* The first "problems" is phrase-final, and therefore pronounced in a longer and more leisurely way;
* The second "problems" is shorter not only because it's phrase-medial, but also because it's a repetition of a recently-used word (see e.g. Fowler 1988).
We should also note that E.J. Dionne's turn shows the same sort of false starts and rapid repetitions that the earlier post observed in J.D. Vance's speech:
I'm not feeling quite so French as David is.
I- I think, boy, did you open up a-
did- did these
various activities and affairs not only
on the part of Petraeus open up a real series
of problems, you also have problems raised with the FBI, the shirtless uh FBI
agent, and did-
what- what w- in the world was his role in this? So
I- I think the whole thing is very unfortunate.
Your browser does not support the audio element.
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
jitters
nervousness, anxiety
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Idiom of the Day
lay (oneself) out
To put in a great deal of effort; to inconvenience oneself or go through a lot of trouble. Watch the video
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Language Log
'Tis the summer season for choking off VPNs
"The mysterious slowdown of VPNs in China", Drum Tower, The Economist (newsletter), Gabriel Crossley (China correspondent) (8/15/24)
Every summer Communist Party bigwigs leave Beijing and go to recharge in the resort town of Beidaihe on the coast. This coincides with the silly season for China watchers. There is little hard news, so rumours fly. Some are baseless speculations about the health of Xi Jinping, China’s supreme leader. Others are more well-founded, such as a report that Hu Xijin, a prominent nationalist commentator, has been muzzled on social media (probably for accidentally overstepping the party line). And some are true but harder to explain: like the fact that virtual private networks (VPNs) are getting slower.
A VPN is a piece of software which makes it appear as if a computer or mobile phone is located in another country. They are an unfortunate necessity for many of us who live in China, because the government blocks online content it does not like (using a system known as the “great firewall”). VPN users can evade the censors and view blacklisted websites such as Facebook, Google and X.
But this summer popular VPNs became less reliable. Foreigners who live here are complaining. So are many Chinese. On Weibo, a social-media site, netizens said their “ladders” over the great firewall (as VPNs are known) seemed to have broken. A tracking tool run by GreatFire, a censorship watchdog, suggests the problem is widespread. Over the last 60 days, a VPN from a company called Astrill has been running 47% slower than in the previous 60 days. Another, run by ExpressVPN, a big provider of the software, has been 70% slower. It is probably the Chinese government disrupting the networks.
Technically it is illegal to use a VPN in China without official permission. But things are usually less strict in practice because the government finds VPNs useful too. Without them foreigners would be less likely to visit and local businesses would struggle to find overseas customers. So in the past officials struck a balance. They only throttled VPNs during important events, such as the meeting of China’s legislature every spring.
No such events are happening now. So the timing of this crackdown is a puzzle. In general, though, China’s censorship regime is getting tighter. Subjects that were once safe to talk about in a critical way online, such as the state of the economy, are now deemed sensitive. Perhaps the government has started to think the risks of VPNs outweigh the benefits, says a co-founder of GreatFire. If anyone knows the answer to the puzzle, they are probably sunning themselves on a beach in Beidaihe.
This is a significant phenomenon.
It reminds me of the years after the Tiananmen Massacre before the internet was widely used and people relied on fax machines to spread urgent news, all the fax machines were required to be turned off in the weeks before and after 6/4. Selected readings
* "China VPN redux" (7/17/24) — with lengthy bibliography
* "Beidaihe: Use by Communist Party" — the summer retreats (aka "summer summits") of the top leaders of the CCP are highly secretive, and strange — sometimes extremely dangerous and destructive — things happen before or after they take place (e.g., the demise of Marshal Lin Biao, on September 13, 1971 and the mega explosions with the force of tactical nuclear weapons that occurred at Tianjin on August 12, 2015, especially when it is known that contentious issues are in the air.
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]
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