Today, I read of China's amazing decision to ban time travel on television - or in full - "Fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking" - which eliminates viewings of Back to the Future, or 12 Monkeys or Timecop, among others. (Of course, Chinese people everywhere should thank the government for preventing them from being embroiled in Lost - which basically contains every single element which the government wants to ban).

So, while plodding around the internet in the wake of this decision I found a Washington Post 2006 list of banned keywords on Chinese internet. Now, it's a super long list with tons of political figures and things like that, but here are a couple that I felt stood out as highlights (being aware that as a not-as-political-astute-as-I-should-be citizen, I may be missing some obvious political implications from one of these):

"Indonesia" - I'm honestly curious about what Indonesia did to raise ire in China so much more than every single other country on Earth

"Night talk of the Forbidden City" - Only at night? talking during the day is far less dangerous?

"News Blockade" - well this just starts some levels - the Chinese people can't even look up the fact that they can't get news

"Armageddon" - I'm not sure if this refers to the movie, or the place of the final conflict between divine good and divine evil, but I don't think the Chinese government can prevent the power of either just by banning it online.

"Hire a killer to murder one's wife" - well, I suppose if you're working on the premise that you're going to ban any combination of words, this is as good as any

"Bug" - this one I assume is the recording device and the not the member of the animal kingdom, but this could still cause a serious problem for Chinese entomologists