Beijing ( CNN ) -- A Chinese musician famous for playing a two-stringed fiddle , a 1994 Hollywood drama about two prison inmates , a United Airlines flight bound for Washington and CNN -- what do they have in common ? If you try to search `` Abing , '' `` the Shawshank Redemption , '' `` UA898 '' and `` CNN '' on Sina Weibo , China 's equivalent of Twitter , you receive this terse message : `` According to relevant laws and policies , results are not displayed . '' These terms have joined a fast-growing list of keywords blocked by Chinese censors as they try to prevent the public from obtaining news on a prominent human rights activist who recently escaped his more than 18 months of house arrest in eastern China . Chen Guangcheng is now in the U.S. embassy in Beijing , and American and Chinese officials are scrambling to resolve his situation , his friends and supporters have said . In a video posted online Friday , the blind activist recounted the brutal treatment he and his family received during confinement . While Chen 's plight and dramatic escape have made top headlines around the world , news outlets in China , all of which are state-controlled , have mostly ignored the story . Clinton traveling to China amid tensions over Chen . Major web portals and social networking sites , though not state-owned , have to comply with strict government censorship rules -- or risk being shut down . After launching a campaign to clean up `` rampant online rumors , '' Chinese authorities in late March ordered the country 's leading micro-blogging sites -- including Sina Weibo -- to disable their comment function for three days . Outside a busy Beijing subway station Monday , CNN randomly asked more than three dozen people about Chen -- only two had heard of him and his escape . One of the two , a young man who declined to give his name , said : `` It was all over Weibo for a while before the topic was censored . '' `` It 's a typical response by officials and quite a successful strategy in making it extremely difficult to spread information beyond some small circles of activists , '' explained Jeremy Goldkorn , a leading commentator on China 's social media . `` But people interested in such things will still manage to find out . '' They also get creative in Chinese cyberspace to evade censors , especially on the popular Sina Weibo site , where a third of China 's more than 500 million internet users share news and information . With Chen Guangcheng 's name long-since banned , netizens have come up with various code words . The obvious ones , like his initials `` CGC '' or `` blind man , '' were caught by censors quickly and added to the search blacklist . Then people tried Abing , the famous early 20th Century Chinese musician who was also blind . `` The Shawshank Redemption '' was used to tell Chen 's saga as some see the parallel in the storyline of inmates -- Chen was a prisoner in his own home -- enduring great suffering before eventually breaking free . The United flight number went viral online Friday as Chen was rumored to be on that plane en route the United States . It turned out to be a false alarm . CNN , like most other international news media , has followed Chen 's story for years and provided extensive coverage on his situation since his escape . Other newly banned keywords include Chen 's home village `` Dongshigu , '' `` U.S. embassy '' and `` pearl '' -- nickname of Chen 's friend He Peirong , who drove him to Beijing and was taken into custody after the news broke . Despite the official blackout , some Chinese journalists have tried to spread the word in covert ways . On Netease , one the country 's biggest web portals , editors Monday morning posted a clip of a TV news story on the `` sudden early arrival '' of a senior U.S. official ahead of a scheduled visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later this week . One of the tags for the video was `` Chen Guangcheng . '' Within a few hours , the 25-second clip has attracted some 25,000 comments . One of the top comments reads : `` I know why he came but I ca n't say it -- or I 'd be revealing state secrets . '' I took a screenshot of the webpage showing Chen 's name and posted it on my Sina Weibo account . It was reposted several hundred times before censors removed it . Chen 's name disappeared from the video tags on the Netease page shortly after that . Since Friday , eight of my last ten Weibo posts have fallen victim to the site 's censors . Most of them are related to Chen , including reaction from supporter and Hollywood actor Christian Bale as well as links to my CNN stories . By Monday afternoon , `` StevenCNN '' -- my Weibo name -- has become a banned search term .
American censors block a growing number of keywords related to blind activist Chen . Internet users in Beijing often get around the censors by using codewords online . Chen Guangcheng is now in the U.S. embassy in Beijing after fleeing house arrest . Codewords such as `` the Shawshank Redemption , '' `` Abing , '' `` the Shawshank Redemption and `` CNN '' blocked on web .