Why Are the Chinese Enacting ‘Occupy Obama’ on Google+?

之之

BEIJING (The Blaze/AP) — Chinese are flooding a Web page of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign on Google Inc.’s social networking service with comments, after China seemingly lifted long-standing blocks.
What some are calling “Occupy Obama” began early last week when Chinese Internet surfers noticed that Google’s Plus service was widely accessible, after months of being hard to access or blocked completely. The comments on the Obama campaign’s verified account are mostly in Chinese and reached a torrent in the last few days, drawing puzzlement and complaints from some American users.
Why are they doing this? Here’s one explanation from one of the commenters: ”We have no chance to occupy our president Hu,” said a posting in English under the name Wenbin Shang from Shanghai, referring to China’s leader Hu Jintao. “He hates internet and has no account on any sns website, so we can just occupy Obama, forgive us …”
Most of the comments seemed purely for fun; some asked for green cards. Many were overtly political, calling for the end of Communist Party rule and the freeing of a blind legal advocate, Chen Guangcheng, held captive in his home. “Mr. President, we want American freedom,” said a posting under the name Zhang Mian.
The Internet offers the liveliest platform for communication in China, despite the government’s extensive monitoring and blocking of overseas sites deemed subversive as well as Facebook, Twitter and other social networking services that figured in popular protest movements. The Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States last year captivated many Chinese who appropriated the phrase for online campaigns.
PC World reports that even after the feature became what appears to be readily accessible for those in China, Joshua Kiley, an English teacher in China, told Mike Eagan, a tech buff who often writes for PC World, that Google+ is one of the easiest things in China to unblock. Kiley said that in order to do so “all you need is a couple IP’s to copy and paste into your hosts file.”

之之

US President Barack Obamas account on popular social network Google Plus has been swamped by Chinese posts, which analysts said indicates the Chinese publics wish to communicate with high-ranking leaders through new media.

美国总统奥巴马的社交网络Google+页面近日遭中国网友的评论刷屏，分析家认为这反映了国内民众希望能同高层领导通过新媒体进行交流的愿望。

The latest entries on Obamas Google Plus page over the weekend were related to the upcoming presidential election. They have attracted around 1,000 comments, mostly in simplified Chinese with some English translations.

奥巴马于1月31日让自己的Google+帐号通过了实名认证，主要是为了推广即将到来的总统大选。奥巴马的Google+页面迅速吸引了中国网友1000多条评论，多为简体汉语，也有一些英语留言。

Information released earlier on the page also received massive numbers of replies in Chinese during the past two days, although the social website has been inaccessible to Chinese Web users since its launch in June last year.

谷歌公司自去年6月推出此项社区服务系统以来，中国网友无法登陆Google+页面。但上周Google+在内地暂时解封，在过去的两天里，奥巴马的Google+页面就被中国网友的评论刷屏了。

Chinese comments on his page range from joking expressions to seemingly serious discussions on certain topics. “Its everyones obligation to promote the Chinese language,” joked a user named Joe Zhao.

中国网友的评论从调侃到关于一些议题的严肃讨论，包罗万象。一名叫Joe Zhao的网友戏称：“推广汉语，人人有责”。

One of the followers, named Eric Chen, explained that many Chinese people came here to post because they could visit the website “without depending on some special tools。” Referring to VPN or proxy needed to open facebook and twitter in mainland.

一名叫Eric Chen的关注者解释到有如此多的中国网友来评论，是因为他们可以在“不利用特殊工具”的情况下就能访问Google+。这里的特殊工具，指的是在中国大陆网友需要利用虚拟专用网络和代理服务器才能登陆facebook和twitter。

According to a BBC report, Internet users in many parts of the mainland found on February 20 they could access Google Plus, prompting some of them to suggest occupying the site. AFP reported that Google Plus appeared to be available in the mainland Sunday on some peoples mobile devices.

根据BBC新闻报道，2月20日，中国大陆的部分网友发现可以登陆Google+页面，于是他们开始了这场声势浩大的网络占领运动。法新社报道，上周日Google+页面似乎在内地的有些移动装置上也可以使用。

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