High-end sports car owners in China, take note: the Chinese word for “Ferrari” is being censored from Web searches, and the circumstances appear scandalous.
Those who use the search engine Baidu or the Twitter-like service Sina Weibo to look for the Chinese characters that indicate the car manufacturer, “法拉利,” (falali) are out of luck. They instead see a message that results are unavailable due to “relevant rules and regulations.”
There’s a simple workaround for people who speak English or Italian, though. Searching for “Ferrari” in Roman characters appears to work normally.
Though it’s not explicitly confirmed, the cause for censorship is widely believed to be related to a recent car crash in which a man driving a Ferrari was killed and his two female passengers injured.
Many believe the man was an illegitimate son of Jia Qinglin, a high-ranking official in the extremely powerful Politburo Standing Committee.
The Chinese government would likely be concerned with front-page news that indicated such entitlement, since the gap between China’s rich and poor is quickly rising.
Photo via @FerrariMagazine