It is the 14th letter in the English alphabet and, in Scrabble, the springboard for more than 600 eight-letter words. Less clear is why censors took issue with the letter “N”. Mair speculated it was “probably out of fear on the part of the government that ‘N’ = ‘N terms in office’, where possibly n >2”. “The response from Chinese netizens indicates that Xi may have miscalculated how this would be received by the general public. Hence, he has asked the censors to put in overtime and things like the letter ‘N’ end up as collateral damage.”For now, censors might feel like they had the situation under control.

Source: The Irish Times February 28, 2018 15:00 UTC