The year of the Tiger began this week as usual in China with cascades of fireworks and, as is now also the custom, of celebratory text messages on mobile phones. Like the pyrotechnics, Chinese text messages come in a variety of colours: yellow, grey, black and now, with official endorsement, red. Yellow refers to the smutty type, and grey or black to spam messages, many of which offer products or services of various shades of legality. Recently the government has been stepping up efforts to eradicate such abuses. To steer public thinking, it is encouraging the sending of politically correct "red texts".
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