Jingjing and Chacha are the two words that combined form the word police in chinese and they are also the names of the cartoon characters that are used by the Chinese authorities throughout the internet to remind Chinese people that they are being watched.
Basically in China you can be sent to labour camp for “reeducation” for posting online anything against the government. Any website Chinese or not, that promotes anything that is considered inappropriate by the chinese authorities is blocked. So the list of blocked websites continues to grow; Youtube, Flickr, Facebook, Blogspot, Wikipedia are just a few examples.
However, young chinese people are familiar with ways to go around the blocks which makes the number of Chinese people accessing “forbidden” websites hard to measure. Despite the jingjing and chacha many chinese people are still finding ways to get real news from inside China and the world.
After learning all this is hard not to wonder what the future of the Chinese people will be as they get more exposure to the outside world. Who knows, maybe democracy will slowly creep in as more Chinese get exposed to the outside world.
Auladdin, Malik, Michel and Toshe
