China Censors Egypt News

Does no one learn from the past? Wary of a pro-democracy uprising in Egypt, the Chinese government has censored news coming out of Egypt. Sina.com and Netease.com—two of the nation’s biggest online portals—blocked keyword searches of Egypt, and the word “Egypt” has also been blocked on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. The government also has tried control the story by writing editorials in state-controlled newspapers that the protests are chaotic and the common mistake of trying to riot for democracy. Some Chinese news organizations are also using the ambivalent reaction by the U.S. as proof of American hypocrisy in foreign policy. But discussions about Egypt in Chinese chatrooms were still allowed, with some calling Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak “Mu Xiaoping,” a reference to Deng Xiaoping, the leader who quashed the Tiananmen Square protest.