China censors Web searches on Jiang Zemin; denies reports on his death

WaPo ^ | 7/6/2011 | Keith B. Richburg

[mojito]

China’s media censors began blocking Internet search terms Wednesday to try to tamp down speculation on the health of ailing former leader Jiang Zemin. On Thursday, the official news agency denied reports on his death as “pure rumor.”

Speculation has been rife on microblogging sites that Jiang, 84, was dying or had died after he failed to appear Friday alongside other top leaders for ceremonies marking the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s founding. Jiang has been rumored for years to be in ill health.

On the most popular local Twitter-like microblogging site, Sina.com, searches were blocked for terms including “301,” the name of the Beijing military hospital where China’s top leaders are treated. Also blocked was Jiang’s name, which means “river” in Chinese, as well as “brain death” and “brain dead.”

Savvy Internet users found ways around the restrictions by chatting using other common words for “river” to refer to Jiang.

At midday Thursday, Xinhua, the official Chinese government-run news agency, broke its silence on the growing speculation about Jiang and denied he had died. A brief item said: “Recent reports of some overseas media organizations about Jiang Zemin’s death from illness are ‘pure rumor’,” according to an unnamed source, the Xinhua report said.

Media outlets in Hong Kong and Japan on Thursday reported — without attribution to any source — that Jiang had died.

[mojito]

He just has a cold.

[Red Badger]

He looks soooo lifelike.............

[PGR88]

Appalling Old Waxworks

[SevenofNine]

I wonder if they going play somber classical music that usually happen when the Russia leader dies

[SevenofNine]

I wonder if they going play somber classical music that usually happen when the Russia leader dies