Jason Q. Ng is a research fellow at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs, where he co-authored, with Lotus Ruan, Jeffrey Knockel, and Masashi Crete-Nishihata, the report “One App, Two Systems: How WeChat Uses One Censorship Policy in China and Another Internationally.” Ng wrote the book Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter (And Why). He is also a research consultant at China Digital Times, where he helps develop censorship monitoring tools. His research and writing have been featured in publications including Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal’s “China Real Time” blog, The Atlantic, BBC World Service, VICE, and Foreign Affairs. Ng was previously a 2013 Google Policy Fellow and has worked as a book editor at The New Press and Metropolitan Books. He graduated from Brown University and studied East Asian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Last Updated: December 1, 2016

Conversation

11.28.16

Should Facebook Self-Censor to Enter the Chinese Market?

Kaiser Kuo, Clay Shirky & more
The social network Facebook has reportedly developed software to suppress posts from users’ feeds in targeted geographic areas, a feature created to help the giant social media network gain access to China, where it is blocked. Facebook Chief...

Conversation

04.01.15

New Chinese Cyberattacks: What’s to Be Done?

Steve Dickinson, Jason Q. Ng & more
Starting last week, hackers foiled a handful of software providers that promote freedom of information by helping web surfers in China reach the open Internet. The attacks that drastically slowed the anti-censorship services of San Francisco-based...

Conversation

12.03.14

Can China Conquer the Internet?

David Bandurski, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
Lu Wei, China’s new Internet Czar, recently tried to get the world to agree to a model of information control designed by the Chinese Communist Party. Regular contributors comment below and we encourage readers to share their views on our Facebook...

Viewpoint

03.13.14

How Chinese Internet Censorship Works, Sometimes

Jason Q. Ng
Earlier this week, Chinese Internet services blocked searches for the phrase mìshū bāng (秘书帮). Roughly translated as “secretaries gang,” the term relates to the speculation surrounding government probes into public officials linked to former...

Books

09.12.13

Blocked on Weibo

Jason Q. Ng
Though often described with foreboding buzzwords such as “The Great Firewall” and the “censorship regime,” Internet regulation in China is rarely either obvious or straightforward. This was the  inspiration for China specialist Jason Q. Ng to write an innovative computer script that would make it possible to deduce just which  terms are  suppressed on  China’s most important social media site, Sina Weibo. The  remarkable and groundbreaking result is Blocked on Weibo, which began as a highly  praised blog and has been expanded here  to list over 150 forbidden keywords, as well as offer possible explanations why the Chinese government would find these terms sensitive.As Ng explains, Weibo (roughly the equivalent of Twitter), with over 500 million registered accounts, censors hundreds of words and phrases, ranging from fairly obvious terms, including “tank” (a reference to the “Tank Man” who stared down the Chinese army in Tiananmen Square) and  the names of top government officials (if they can’t be found online, they can’t be criticized), to deeply obscure references, including “hairy bacon” (a coded insult referring to Mao’s embalmed body).With dozens of phrases that could get a Chinese Internet user invited  to the  local  police station “for a cup of tea” (a euphemism for being detained by the  authorities), Blocked  on Weibo offers an invaluable guide to sensitive topics in modern-day China as well as a fascinating tour of recent Chinese history.  —The New Press{chop}