China’s Cyberspace Administration and Ministry of Education has begun what they call the Clear and Bright Campaign to prune the web in China of what they consider “irregular and uncivilized language.” The language bureaucrats aren’t just watching for criticism of President Xi, mentions of the Tiananmen Square massacre, or demonstrations in Hong Kong. They want to extinguish the seemingly innocuous phrases many Chinese have ingenuously appropriated to express dissent. ... Xiang jiao pi, which is banana peel in Mandarin, has the same acronym as the name of President Xi. The word for shrimp moss is xia tai, similar to the...