SHANGHAI, China — My friend has been censored by the Chinese government.

Casey Newton, Medill ’02 and former editor in chief of this rag, launched a Web site last week on the World Wide Web. Or, more accurately in Casey’s case, the World Wide-except-for-China Web.

As millions of Americans had the pleasure of perusing Casey’s collection of misadventures and hi-jinks at www.newtcase.com, I was left looking at a page full of Chinese characters presumably telling me that viewing Casey’s Web site would be detrimental to the Maoist Chinese state.

Casey’s Web site isn’t the only one to receive such treatment. The Chinese government is infamous for blocking access to Internet sites it deems inappropriate for its citizens. According to research done by Harvard Law School Prof. Jonathan Zittrain and student Benjamin Edelman, China has blocked access to tens of thousands of Web sites, ranging from obvious candidates, such as Free Tibet sites and anti-Communism sites, to less obvious ones, such as the site for the movie Deep Impact. Ironically, the government did not block the Web site listing all the blocked Web sites. Hey, no one ever said autocratic imperious regimes were perfect.

After receiving no explanation from Chinese authorities, I tried to figure out why Casey’s site would garner such suspicion from Beijing. My first thought was that the government had been keeping its eye on Casey since the summer of 2001, when his Northwestern pubweb site published a few stories that I wrote, which included tales of Chinese corruption and Coolio sightings.

That seemed a little far-fetched, though. Luckily, Casey had a few insights of his own.

“Of course www.newtcase.com poses a threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s seat of power,” he wrote in an e-mail (the entire contents of which can be found on his site). “Like many Americans who start small, personal Web sites devoted to their own misadventures, my primary goal has always been to erode popular support for the Chinese government and ultimately topple it.”

Some of the problems between China and Casey seem like they should be easy to overcome. For instance, they both believe in birth control. But as the Chinese government tries to achieve this by limiting families to one child, Casey does it by sleeping with other men.

Don’t feel too sorry for Casey, though. For one thing, he’s a Lakers fan. For another, he’s dealt with censorship before. In high school, his principal forced him to apologize for a piece he wrote in which he said the school’s football team sucked. And during his sophomore year at NU, he wrote a column for his dorm newsletter sarcastically suggesting that someone write a letter telling the parents of an Associated Student Government official that they raised a lousy son. Some fool took him up on the offer, and Casey was put on probation for the rest of his NU career.

Those experiences taught Casey a lesson he’s been able to apply to his current situation.

“Whether you’re dealing with academic bureaucrats or the People’s Republic of China, the lesson is the same: Words are the most powerful things on the face of the earth,” Casey said. “If you don’t watch what you say, you get in trouble; if China doesn’t watch what its citizens say, its archaic power structure is doomed.”