五毛党 Fifty Cent Party

Contrary to the title, this post has nothing to do with the cool American rapper who I'm going to get down with on my birfday.

The wumaodang, or fifty cent party (link blocked in China), are a group of Chinese probably numbering in the thousands who go onto Internet chat rooms and BBS pages to write posts that support the communist party. They get paid fifty cents for each post that criticizes other subversive netizens.

Today, as I was wandering around tianya, an Internet portal, I saw that some Chinese internet users abbreviate the term wumaodang 'wmd,' probably to avoid the censors. I don't think the Chinese are aware what this means in English, but I thought it was pretty funny since my sophomore year policy debate topic was on WMDs, a/k/a weapons of mass destruction.

我今天发现有些中国网民会把五毛党写成wmd。英文里也有这个简称：WMD就是大规模销毁武器的意思。中国网民实在太厉害了。