"I am just speculating"
[This blog post by China's top blogger was deleted by the blog hosting service Sina.com.]
(Bullock.cn) I am just speculating. By Han Han. January 17, 2010.
2010: China begins an Internet clean-up campaign with the slogan: "If you stop beating someone for 3 days, he/she may get on the roof and remove tiles." (Note: 三天不打，上房揭瓦 is a Chinese saying. When applied to children, the notion is that you beat your child in order to make him/her behave (as in respecting authority, maintaining discipline and being a good citizen) and, conversely, if you don't beat your child, he/she will misbehave. It also applies to wife-beating.)
2010: The relevant department expands the list of banned terms. The Chinese word for "file" (which has the same sound as Party) and the English letter "D" disappear in mainland China. Dangdang was changed to Angang, while Douban became Ouban.
2010 June: The government inaugurates the "Protect the Children" campaign. Children's Day is elevated to the same status as National Day. It is also announced that all information that is unfavorable to the healthy development of children and adolescents will be strictly prohibited. At the same time, the Shanghai World Expo introduces the slogan "World Expo, World Expo, catch ten thousand adulterous couples in bed" in order to conduct online and offline anti-pornography (anti-"yellow") campaigns simultaneously. The government makes it clear that anything and everything connected to pornography shall be censored because they stand for obscenity and feudalism. Elementary school students are mobilized to march in the streets to demonstrate against anything pornographic ("yellow").
2010 July: The Elementary School Students Patriotic Committee finds out that the five yellow-colored five-pointed stars on the national flag are inconsistent with contemporary progressive ideas. The relevant department decides to change the five-pointed stars from yellow to red.
2010 August: The government discovers that the red five-pointed stars are the same color as the background, so that it is hard to find them. Representatives of elementary school students propose the five-pointed stars be changed into green color, to represent green scarves and Green Dam.
2010: Based upon the recommendations of the Elementary School Students Loving Care Committee and representatives of elementary school students, the government tightens the censorship standards on photographs, with guiding principles such as "erect nipples equal bare nipples."
2010: All Internet forum masters are formally given public service worker status.
2010: The government introduces a brand new Internet Great Wall. This Great Wall system is based upon the collective wisdom of innumerable of experts from all walks of life in China. They work together at a military base. The satellite photos of their work site was misinterpreted by people inside and outside of China as those of an aircraft carrier under construction.
2011 January: The government allocates 100 billion yuan to hire Internet commentators from its next round of economic stimulation package. The pay for Internet commentators rises from 50 cents per post to 1 yuan per post. The target for 2011 is to have 100 billion positive posts. The Fifty-cent Gang members at the various forums weep in gratitude because their long, arduous work over the years has finally allowed them to join the big team. From there on, the ratio of Internet commentators versus normal people is about 50:50 at the large Internet forums.
2011: Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter announce that they are re-entering China and opening up registration. At the same time, the aforementioned websites announce from the United States that they are not developing any businesses in China. But their announcements are instantly censored, so that nobody in China knows.
2011: All those who register at the aforementioned websites are systematically tracked down by the Great Wall system. Their computers are re-installed. Afterwards, if the users want to visit a general-purpose website, they can only reach People.com.cn and Xinhua; if they want to visit a forum, they can only go to Strong Nation Forum and Tiexue Forum; if they want to visit a video site, they can only go to CCTV 1. Once the system is re-installed this way, there is no way to undo the settings.
2011: The price of computers goes up by 100%. Computer scalpers proliferate. When users buy new computers, they find that they can only access the aforementioned websites.
2011: Housing prices go up by 100%. At the real estate transaction websites, the housing unit must be identified as either "full Internet access" or "restricted Internet access."
2011: Southern Metropolis Daily and Southern Weekend are renamed Male Metropolis Daily and Male Weekend, and reclassified as marital agency newspapers. The ratio of Internet commentators and ordinary people there reaches 9 to 1.
2011: A certain city leader comes under human flesh search.
2011: In the second round of Internet clean-up, all search engines are closed. The major portals and the newspapers publish articles with titles such as "Searching made us lazy people," "Internet searching seriously detrimental to ability of elementary school students to use their brains" and so on. The leaders say, "we never use Internet searching. The situation today says clearly that Internet search has a hundred bad points and nothing good whatsoever."
2011: Baidu is acquired by Pepsi Cola and becomes an official beverage website.
2012: Sina.com reports that a certain village leader received 500 yuan in bribes. This news story is rated as the top news story in China for the year 2012 with more than 500 million page views. Many people read it repeatedly. Even after censorship, there are more than 1 million comments. Many people think that this was a new high point in watchdog journalism. But according to the Internet polling, 90% of netizens still think that the news story should not have been published because it destroys social stability and may lead to ethnic splits.
2012: Elementary school students denounce Sina.com for having an erect nipple. Sina.com is shut down for re-organization.
2012: All forums stop accepting registrations or comments. The Chinese Writers Association and the Chinese Literary Union take over the Internet to become Internet content providers. The Internet goes back from Web 3.0 to Web 0.3. The Internet is read-only with no comments being allowed.
2013: The Elementary School Students Healthy Development Committee denounces Sina.com for having another erect nipple.
2014: Sina.com ("new wave" in Chinese) is acquired by Mountain Dew ("powerful wave" in Chinese) and becomes an official beverage website.
2015: The government cuts off the Internet altogether. A universal online computer is introduced. This is the only way to go online. This computer does not have a keyboard. You are only given a mouse. The slogan for the re-organization project is "You only have a mouse -- what can you do?"
2016: The number of Internet users in China drops down to 1 million. All websites are merged into a single website. It does not matter what URL you enter because you will be directed to that website. All updates are synchronized to the People's Daily. In the same year, the Internet industry disappears in China. This causes 5 million people in the Internet-related industry to lose their jobs either directly or indirectly. The disappearance of e-mail means that the previously closed but now revived Postal Office hires 100,000 of them. But 4.9 million people still have no jobs. At the same time, almost 1 million Fifty-cent Gang members lose their jobs. The Fifty-cent Gang members complain that they worked like dogs for their whole lives but now they don't even get pensions.
2016: The People's Daily writes: One industry was sacrificed in return for the stability of the nation, but it was worthwhile.
2016: <Network News> comments that the nation faced the risk of break-up if the Internet industry had continued. The anti-China forces outside the nation and the splittists inside China were using the Internet to incite the masses. Fortunately, the relevant departments took strong measure and prevented the situation from worsening.
2016: Zhou Jiugeng is vindicated. He gets out of jail and becomes the Minister of Information Industry. Meanwhile Yu Qiuyu is appointed as the Minister of Culture.
2016: The 1 million jobless Fifty-cent Gang members have no other skills and therefore could not find new jobs. They could not feed themselves. Several tens of thousands of Fifty-cent Gang members gather in Beijing. During Children's Day, 150,000 Fifty-cent Gang members sit down in front of the government headquarters office to conduct a silent hunger strike. They ask the government to arrange jobs for them, give them credit for their prior work, and grant them public service worker status retroactively. The People's Daily writes that the government never had the job position of Internet commentator. Therefore, all those Fifty-cent Gang members wrote on their own. The Fifty-cent Gang members are unable to show any labor contract to prove that they had an worker-employer relationship with the government.
The spokesperson for the Fifty-cent Gang members say that they were underground agents who had done great work to secure national stability.
The government gives the Fifty-cent gang members three days to leave Beijing or face arrest. People's Daily writes that if one praises the government, one should not apply pressure on the government. Praising the government cannot be a condition for obtaining money. Praises should be uncompensated.
2016: The Fifty-cent Gang members continue their hunger strike. The citizens say that they fully support the hunger strike by the Fifty-cent Gang members. They also do not provide any food to hunger strikers and they block off all possible channels that can bring food in. Thus, they make sure that the Fifty-cent Gang members will stick to their hunger strike.
The next day, Minister of Culture Yu Qiuyu visits the scene of the hunger strike and reads the "Tearful advice to the Fifty-cent Gang." The Fifty-cent Gang members say that Minister Yu's speech is too profound for them to understand.
2016: The Fifty-cent Gang is accused of the crimes of illegal assembly, illegal marching, illegal demonstration, attacking the government, violently resisting against the law, smearing the government, endangering public security, disrupting social order, spitting in public, etc. The organizers are arrested. But the government says that they will be lenient towards blind followers who don't know the truth and offer them an opportunity to reinvigorate themselves: they give 50 cents to each of them to feed their hunger. <Network News> comments on the scene: Fifty-cent Gang members see fifty cents and break out in tears.
2016: The Fifty-cent Gang crisis is peacefully resolved, once again showing the ability of the Party and the government to maintain stability. The Fifty-cent Gang leader tells the CCTV reporter on camera: "I am so sorry about before."
2017: Unemployment figures continue to rise drastically. The collapse of the Internet industry leads to a serious economic recession. The government says that the manufacturing industry will be the backbone of the nation once more. China will use all its natural resources to export at low prices.
2017: Hostile anti-China forces overseas get together and mislead the United Nations and various nations to pass a resolution to forbid the importing of Chinese goods anywhere in the world in order to express their opposition to the shutdown of the Internet in China. The Chinese government issues strong condemnations. They say that the administration of the Internet in China is an internal matter which other countries have no right to interfere with. The other countries counter that it is also an internal matter for them to ban Chinese goods and China has no right to interfere with that either.
2019: It is the military parade on the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the nation. On that day, the government announces that China will lock down its national borders and concentrate on strengthening itself so that all reactionary forces will tremble in fear. On that day, China makes a statement to the rest of the world: "If you stop beating someone for 3 days, he/she may get on the roof and remove tiles." Many nations say that they don't know how to translate this sentence.
2020: ...
2020: Earth is destroyed. The descendants of the Mayans say that it is normal to see a margin of error of plus or minus ten years on such events.