環球時報的消失葉 Disappearing Pages on the Global Times

Revising Reality: Erasing Memory

Liu Xiaobo's name has disappeared from the Global Times Website

It appears that the semi-official Chinese newspaper "Global Times" has erased all articles referring to Liu Xiaobo 劉曉波 from its website.
On Liang An San Di we have been mentioning the unreal opinion polls conducted to evaluate the Chinese citizens' reaction to Liu Xiaobo being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. While it is still possible to conduct searches in Google for articles published in the Global Times that mention Liu Xiaobo and then obtain numerous results, all links to such articles display the usual 404 error. The error is displayed not by a general server but by the newspaper itself.
Are criticisms of their contradictory, even fictional, reporting responsible for this? A change of strategy appears to be in place: after realizing that criticizing Liu Xiaobo in the country's media, including the prestigious and well watched CCTV's network daily news 新聞聯播，Chinese authorities slowly realized that this was possibly the worst approach in dealing with Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize.
Thanks to criticism by the State media many Chinese who had not heard of Liu Xiaobo or did not care about the Nobel Prize became then aware of his existence. Indeed, the Global Times reported that 9% the respondents polled were of the opinion that Liu should go to Norway to collect his prize. This was quite unprecented: an official press organ reporting that 9% of its population did not agree with the central authorities' decision in one of its own newspapers. Routine in many countries, but exceptional, and to be welcomed, in the Chinese media.
The Global Times then put in place a 1984 Orwell strategy: erase his name from the media. What they should have realized is that Google's search engine keeps a cache of its searches and that efforts to erase pages will even highlight the Global Times' knee-jerk reaction. And not all centrally controlled media seem to agree on this strange method of censorship. Articles published in other Government controlled media such as the China Daily that mention the Global Times's articles about Liu Xiaobo are still available on line.
This leads next to sustained speculation that there is a struggle at the top of the Chinese government about the directions to take concerning press freedom and freedom of speech in general. One side seems to defeat the other side's attempts at blocking unwelcomed reporting. Could the Global Times and the China Daily be representative of these different factions?
One thing is sure: Google will be blamed.