Le Washington Post a réussi à se procurer auprès d'une plate-forme blog chinoise une liste de 236 mots- clés servant de base au filtrage et à la censure du Net en Chine.

"Most words on this list can be posted on Chinese Web sites, but their presence quietly alerts editors to examine the messages that contain them and possibly take action. In tests, postings that included long sections of the list were allowed to remain on several sites, but quickly removed from others. One site also blocked the computer used to conduct the tests from posting anything else.

In addition, on most sites, at least some of the sensitive phrases cannot be posted at all. Depending on the site, filters replace the offending words with asterisks or block the entire message".

Parmi les mots filtrés, outre 18 termes à caractère pornographiques, on trouve des noms de personnes, des références à la politique chinoise, aux ethnies, aux groupes dissidents, aux sites étrangers, à Taïwan ou encore aux émeutes en banlieue !