China has what's probably the world's most complex and robust internet censorship system, that rests on two main pillars: preventing Chinese citizens' access to foreign websites and services that have been banned by Beijing, and controlling what kind of information is allowed to appear on the massive domestic social media and messaging scene.
When it comes to the latter, services like Weibo and WeChat are monitored and if need be censored through a filtering system that looks for and identifies "sensitive" words and phrases that are outlawed.
However, the complexity of the Chinese language itself, coupled with some Chinese users' determination to have their say online after all, makes this job more difficult for the authorities.
The way dissidents, journalists, or anybody else wanting to communicate anything from politically-charged criticism of the system, to using profanities, go about it is by creating what could be described as a Chinese version of rhyming slang, or simply an elaborate system of codewords, where original words and phrases are replaced by others in a systematic manner, becoming understandable only to those "in the know."
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