Texting in China

Well-red
Chinese communism’s classic texts
Feb 18th 2010 | BEIJING | From The Economist print edition

THE year of the Tiger began this week as usual in China with cascades of fireworks and, as is now also the custom, of celebratory text messages on mobile phones. Like the pyrotechnics, Chinese text messages come in a variety of colours: yellow, grey, black and now, with official endorsement, red.

Yellow refers to the smutty type, and grey or black to spam messages, many of which offer products or services of various shades of legality. Recently the government has been stepping up efforts to eradicate such abuses. To steer public thinking, it is encouraging the sending of politically correct “red texts”.

In mid-January the state-controlled press reported that Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou were trying a text-filtering system that could distinguish between the various hues. Those caught sending yellow ones risked having their phone’s text function blocked. Restoring it would require a visit to the police and a written pledge not to text smut again.

This provoked howls of online protest. One popular social commentator, Han Han, complained on his blog that officials had not defined smut. He said he would keep sending text messages until he found out what words would get his service blocked. An article on the website of an unusually outspoken newspaper, Southern Daily, argued that such filtering was unconstitutional. Officials clarified that only those who send huge numbers of such messages need worry (over 300 an hour, an official in Guangzhou was quoted as saying).

The practice of “red-texting” is said to have begun in 2005 in Guangdong province, of which Guangzhou is the capital, when one operator, China Mobile, began organising competitions there to see who could devise the best red messages. This month a symposium for senior telecom officials in Beijing on the “red-text phenomenon” was portrayed in the state-owned press as a sign of high-level endorsement for the campaign.

The most famous red-texter is Bo Xilai, the party chief of Chongqing (see article). Last April he sent 13m-odd mobile-users a message bearing quotes from Mao Zedong such as “What really counts in the world is conscientiousness, and the Communist party is most particular about being conscientious.” Enthused, or more likely bemused, users relayed his missive, reported the local press, 16m times.