May 18, 2018

"China’s leading 'rage comics' brand, Baozou Manhua, has been silenced on multiple online platforms after one of its videos was accused of slandering revolutionary heroes and martyrs."

Sixth Tone reports.
The Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law, which came into effect on May 1, makes such conduct punishable....

In the clip, host Wang Nima dons a rage face mask and narrates: “Dong Cunrui stared at the enemy’s bunker, his eyes bursting with rays of hate. He said resolutely, ‘Commander, let me blow up the bunker. I am an eight-point youth, and this is my eight-point bunker.’” The script was a pun on a KFC sandwich available for a limited time in 2014.

Another part of the clip tampered with a line from Ye’s poem, changing “Climb out! Give you freedom!” to “Climb out! Painless induced abortion!” to mock rampant advertising for abortions....
Is there some kind of 8-point sandwich at KFC? Hard to understand the humor, but I oppose the government censorship and feel heartened to see efforts at free speech in China.

45 comments:

Darrell said...

Maybe John Oliver would be funny in China, then.

SDaly said...

In the US, the government doesn't have to punish speech. There are millions of people, multiple national media outlets, and big tech companies eager to destroy your life if you step out of line and offend groupthink.

tcrosse said...

It must be easy to be a comic in China, because the Chinese have a way of laughing even when nothing's funny.

gspencer said...

"The Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law, which came into effect on May 1"

A lot like Islam where no one, Muslim or us proud kafirs, is allowed to criticize Big Mo and "his companions." (Oops, did I just criticize Big Mo by calling him Big Mo? Well, I do allow the his the big guy)

All totalitarian regimes are alike - suppression,

narayanan said...

if only a hacker would post the Tien-An-Men photo of tank and young man on this website - both a hero and martyr - correct caption already.

https://www.google.com/search?q=tien+an+men&client=firefox-b-1&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=PtBOHE-2ws38tM%253A%252Cr0pv8ouljcHH3M%252C_&usg=__-7kstr6LIqeEgcMiLnRUQ678XVY%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjiqoqEq4_bAhUL6YMKHcdyBtgQ9QEIKzAB#imgrc=Zd_fVG-3MNDk7M:

SDaly said...

In Austria, they jail you for joke-Hitler wine. In England, they jail you for offensive tweets. Even in The Netherlands, national politicians are convicted for causing offense to Islam.

China is in good company.

tim in vermont said...

At least they aren’t writing cutting tweets! So they are ahead of us there!

Oso Negro said...

Sadly, it seems to me that the cultural value of free speech is probably doomed and will be viewed as a barbaric practice by future societies. It has ALWAYS been more convenient for rulers of any sort to have docile, compliant citizens. It will always be more convenient in the future. American law schools no longer accept free speech, which is sad, as you would think a law school would precisely value the free exchange of ideas.

Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...

An 8-point sandwich is 33.33% more anti-Semitic than a 6-point Sandwich of David.

Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...

Especially if you drink Hitler wine with your 8 point sandwich.

Etienne said...

Weight Watchers 8 point KFC meal:

"Doublicious with Grilled Filet", 380 Calories, 11 grams of fat

So your girlfriend rolls a Honda
Playin' workout tapes by Fonda
But Fonda ain't got a motor in the back of her Honda
My anaconda don't want none
Unless you've got buns, hun


Baby got Back

Jason said...

Commies gonna commie.

Bad Lieutenant said...


Etienne said...
Weight Watchers 8 point KFC meal:

Like China needs WW. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

Nonapod said...

The script was a pun on a KFC sandwich available for a limited time in 2014.

Somehow I think there's never been any menu item with "8 point" in its name. It's a pun in a different language, probably having to do with something like the mandarin for "8 point" being a homonym for a KFC menu item.

Bob R said...

If you click through the Sixth Tone article, there is a link to ads for what I presume is the 8-point sandwich - a crispy fried chicken sandwich. I don't recall seeing ads for anything like it in the US. I don't read Mandarin, so I wouldn't pick up on any puns in the characters. 2014 had lots of tainted meat scandals in China, so that might be part of the joke.

Althouse's search yielded lots of images for the the late, lamented, KFC Double Down sandwich - otherwise know as Redneck Chicken Cordon Bleu.

Sam's Hideout said...

8 is considered a lucky number in Chinese culture. 8 also shows up in Buddhism a number of times.

tim in vermont said...

Eventually rights will be restricted to those things that the government can provide, guaranteed income, etc. Useless Tweeters will be a thing of the past.

BarrySanders20 said...

This is the state-sponsored version of That's Not Funny. Certainly was a feature of the fascists of the 20th Century, but probably did not originate with them. Tom Friedman hardest hit.

mccullough said...

The Red Scum that runs China is corrupt. Can’t wait to see the downfall of the Politburo. Corrupt US companies buying off the Red Scum to do business are the same Woke Jagoffs over here.

Guys making billions under The Rationale that it will “increase freedom” for Chinese over time. It’s been quite awhile and the freedom ain’t coming. But the billions are enriching The Woke Jagoffs

buwaya said...

China has never had "free speech" as a cultural value.

Nonapod said...

The American ideal of Freedom of Speech is certainly seems to be an anomalous outlier in human society. One might conclude that most human beings either don't want or don't care about freedom of speech. In the case of the Chinese, they seem to generally be fairly apathetic to their government's various strictures on speech. Or at least that's the impression I have.

rhhardin said...

Rage to riches.

rhhardin said...

He who fling mud lose ground.

buwaya said...

Any Chinese government is going to be corrupt. The "Red Scum", descendants of Deng Xiaopings ideological compromise of capitalist totalitarianism, have done quite well for China in spite of that, in the Chinese context.

Could some other system or clique have done better?
Maybe.
But then it would also have to have been a system that could have taken and held power.

Oso Negro said...

Blogger buwaya said...
China has never had "free speech" as a cultural value


I was thinking more of us, Buwaya. But that said, I have worked with Chinese executives who made the stunning case for relatively more personal freedom of speech for Chinese than Americans. Before coming to the USA, they had been given a long list of topics that were not polite to discuss with Americans - religion, sex, how much money you make, etc. In China, by contrast, they felt you could talk about anything except the bosses. Oh, and you can still ask out the girls at work in China.

rehajm said...

Politburo had its 8 point regulation to curb so it’s either a direct reference on the ‘man of the people’ in the regulations or 8 point uas been adopted as a word play in reference to same, a la bona fide or legit in American english.

Nonapod said...

If government itself is really just some kind of emergent manifestation of the will of the people, what does that say about the typical person in a given country? If you have a corrupt government, does that mean that the average citizen under such a government is equally corrupt in character?

buwaya said...

The Chinese certainly have fewer cultural constraints than Americans these days.
But so do almost all other peoples anywhere, this is not unique to China.
The liberty of that sort of speech is a human universal.

Americans are less free than almost anyone else (the rest of the Anglosphere is caught up too) in this way, because of a very recent fad. The American totalitarianism is a cultural phenomenon. American culture has become intensely constrained, crabbed, and, arguably, inhuman.

Political speech is another matter.

rhhardin said...

I take human rights seriously. You know, everybody's equal, color, creed or circumstance. We're all the same on this planet. Except the Chinese.

- What?

No, they are. They're the odd ones out if you had to pick one. No, I'm not having a go. I'm just saying, you know, not their faces. I mean... No, no. But they call each other - things like Kwok...

- Stop it. You're gonna...

...and that's their choice, and they don't have to call a kid Kwok. And they... No. Some people are called Pong...

Stop, please, stop.

... and there's about a million Wangs. You can have... You have one kid, you can use all those names on one little... You could call a kid Kwok Pong Wang.

Ghost Town (2008)

buwaya said...

Good question about the inherent nature of cultures determining outcomes, over the long term.

I think there is a great deal in the idea that people get the governments they deserve. And the economic results likewise.

As for America, I hope the current cultural state is a passing "Red Guard" moment, but I doubt it will be resolved peacefully.

n.n said...

“Climb out! Give you freedom!” to “Climb out! Painless induced abortion!” to mock rampant advertising for abortions

Freedom of speech. Even PP et al does not advertise their abortion services inside of America, or perhaps it varies by district, and the parades are few and far between. I guess the Chinese are more progressive.

Political speech is another matter.

The first rule of a totalitarian society, is that you don't speak of the totalitarian society. Same thing for economics. Don't interfere with the preferences of the minority.

Nonapod said...

American culture has become intensely constrained, crabbed, and, arguably, inhuman.

Maybe on the surface it seems that way. Certainly, in the absense of actual laws restricting free speech, a subset of Americans have elected to self police unwanted speech with twitter mobs, boycotts, shaming, and general cry-bullying. I wouldn't say they've been entirely successful in these efforts since there's been no small amount of pushback. I mean, that's how you get Trump after all.

But I'd agrue that even with all this apparent strife, it's still really only surface level. A majority of Americans are pretty optimistic. For most Americans, quality of life is very high and getting better. And certainly in my limited anecdotal experience, regular people treat each other pretty well offline at least.

But all this might not be immediately apparent if all you do is pay attention to social media and the news.

buwaya said...

Maybe its because I live in San Francisco and deal mainly with the local professional-managerial class, but I do find a tremendous caution and unnatural constraint even in in-person, casual speech.

buwaya said...

I need to get out of this place more often. Out in Asia last year I breathed the air of liberty. And I mean Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila. Thats an odd thing to say I know.

Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...

"Police Raid Home Of Man Who Posted Pictures Of His Mushroom Dinner On Facebook"

Nonapod said...

Yeah, I live out in deplorable country where people seem genuinely happy day-to-day. I don't doubt San Fran is a bit different.

David in Cal said...

KFC is big in China. I recall one right at base of the Great Wall.

Jupiter said...

buwaya said...
"Maybe its because I live in San Francisco and deal mainly with the local professional-managerial class, but I do find a tremendous caution and unnatural constraint even in in-person, casual speech."

It started with the CRA, which used a pretended concern for the welfare of what were then called Negroes to nationalize every single bit of property used in commerce. It used to be your business. Now it's the Government's business, and you will run it to suit them or they will give it to someone else who will.

Balfegor said...

Re: SDaly:

In the US, the government doesn't have to punish speech. There are millions of people, multiple national media outlets, and big tech companies eager to destroy your life if you step out of line and offend groupthink.

My impression (based almost entirely on the news) is that Chinese internet mobs are just as vicious as American internet mobs. And I'm sure Weibo and Tencent and the other big tech companies are happy to help suppress "outrageous" speech with or without government prodding.

That said, I do feel considerably free-er back in Japan (where I am right now) than in the US, although a large part of this is just that things are orderly. Obviously, there's lots of things I could say that would be rude, so I don't (I get more license than other people since I'm obviously a foreigner, but not that much license). But I don't have to smile and nod my head when people go on about micro-aggressions, to take one example, because no one is going on about micro-aggressions. There's lots of dumb rhetoric people have to mouth as members of large institutions -- it's just different dumb rhetoric from the US, so there's a feeling of liberation when I'm over here. If I were a Japanese salaryman, I'd probably find a sojourn in the US equally liberating.

madAsHell said...

If you have a corrupt government,

What other kind is there??

Balfegor said...

Re: buwaya:
Maybe its because I live in San Francisco and deal mainly with the local professional-managerial class, but I do find a tremendous caution and unnatural constraint even in in-person, casual speech.

I know what you are talking about -- I think it's a professional-managerial class thing, not necessarily a San Francisco thing, although maybe the unwritten rules are stricter there (SF is certainly more of an intellectual monoculture even than DC). Particularly if you are a manager, you have to watch what you say in private as well, because someone could point your private conversations and use them to attack your organisation. It's all very well, I suppose, since from my early youth in America, my parents taught me that I must never be frank or truthful about what I think in front of outsiders, so I can't say I wasn't warned. On the other hand, I have never thought myself particularly good at concealing my opinions.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Well, there's good news from even in the heart of Silicon Valley.
I recently attended a panel discussion at Adobe, put on by AEN (a support network for Asians working in high tech). The "bamboo ceiling" was the topic.
One woman on the panel (chinese, ex engineer, ex wall street) responded to some questions about multiculturalism by saying that it was the newcomer employees job to learn to fit in, and recommending extensive reading in english, fiction and nonfiction, to improve communication skills.
I thought she was going to get heavy pushback, but just the opposite - in the after-session she was surrounded by young peop!e wanting to hear more.

traditionalguy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

In a Police State, the Police are the terrorists. And the job of police terrorists is to use fear to crush rebellion.But punishing wrong doers is expected and causes no fear among the good folks. So the police MUST punish good folks for any off the wall obviously innocent act mis-labled rebellious thought.

That was Joe Stalin's brillant method of control. He purged the good folks to a Gulag on made up chatges. Then everybody knows to fear you.

Compare and contrast with the FBI and DOJ methods.

Earnest Prole said...

In the old days you would simply disappear -- or worse, one of your family members.