China briefly banned the letter "N" from the internet there as part of a crackdown against dissent after the Communist Party moved to abolish term limits and make President Xi Jinping China’s president for life.
The internet quickly became the focus of dissenting “complaints” after the Sunday night announcement of the proposal, which led to a crackdown by censors, The Guardian reported.
Chinese internet users found they could not search a number of terms on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. According to The Guardian, among the terms blocked were:
• “Ten thousand years” (Chinese way of saying “Viva!” or “Long Live!”)
• “Disagree”
• “Xi Zedong” a mocking hybrid of the president’s name and Chairman Mao Zedong’s
• “Shameless”
• “Lifelong”
• “Personality cult”
• “Emigrate”
• “Immortality”
Also banned were the titles of George Orwell’s books “Animal Farm” and “1984” and the name Yuan Shikai, a Qing dynasty leader who tried to restore the monarchy to China, but was unsuccessful. References to Winnie-the-Pooh also were banned because of unflattering comparisons that had previously been made between Xi and Pooh, The Daily Beast reported.
The reason for banning the letter “N” was not immediately clear, but Chinese expert from the University of Pennsylvania Victor Mair speculated it may have come from the mathematical use of “N” as an unknown, referring to “n terms in office” as being more than two, The Daily Beast reported.
The letter “N” is no longer banned on the Chinese internet, but other terms like “I oppose” and “incapable ruler” are reportedly still banned, according to The Daily Beast.