Censorship in China

During the week I like to watch BBC world news at 7am while I eat my breakfast just to get a quick glimpse at what is going on outside of China. I have noticed that on some days the reception can be bad and I never second-guessed it, since the internet can also be painfully slow at times. So over the past couple days these black outs have been quite frequent and they only ever last for a couple minutes. Today it happened again and the report went as follows:

“XJP visited various pubs in London while enjoying the company of so and so. Meanwhile in the House of Commons Mr. XX was addressing more serious topics concerning China such as human rights and how last year a prominent lawyer disa----------“ 

My initial thought was: “God damn it. This stupid satellite.” I ate another spoon of oatmeal when suddenly my brain started working. I finished reading 1984 a couple weeks ago and it was probably because of the book that I started thinking about it. This has happened multiple times over the past couple weeks and it has only ever been at interesting times because I remember always wanting to know what people would say the second it blacked out.

Then I thought some more. Yesterday an interview aired where Mr. Xi only answered one very vague question at a press conference before the TV again blacked out.

Immediately my heart started pumping very quickly. It’s censorship! BBC is really being censored!

I thought it was absolutely crazy. I am aware that youtube, facebook and google don’t work. That stuff is the obvious censorship. The one you know about and start to live with in your everyday life. You start to accept it. However, the subtle stuff like some agency disturbing the news broad cast and blacking out the sensitive stuff is mind blowing to me.It felt like I had caught the censorship office trying to sneak into my daily life. 

By the way. I couldn’t post any of these things is it wouldn’t be for a working VPN and it has been hard to find one that works well. In my experience it is becoming stricter.