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When student Nguyen Hong Nhung saw "Killer with a Festering Head" on someone's smartphone, she wanted the banned comic book too. Though Vietnam's censors had yanked it from stores, finding a digital copy wasn't exactly hard.

Nhung simply Googled the title, and with a few clicks was able to download a free bootleg copy of the book — a collection of one-panel cartoons illustrating the popular, sometimes-nonsensical rhyming phrases of Vietnamese youth slang.

Government censors had deemed some of the images violent or politically sensitive.

"The more the government tries to ban something, the more young people try to find out why," the 20-year-old said in the capital, Hanoi.

Vietnam's graying Communist Party is all about control: It censors all media, squashes protests and imprisons those who dare to speak out against its one-party system. But today, as iPhone shops rub shoulders with Buddhist pagodas, cultural authorities are finding it increasingly difficult to promote their unified sense of Vietnamese culture and identity — especially among the country's youth.

"This is a key turning point for the younger generation," said Thaveeporn Vasavakul, a Southeast Asia scholar who consults on public sector reform in Vietnam.

AP

In this Monday, Jan. 30, 2012 photo, Vietnamese youngsters play online games at Cyzone, one of the biggest game centers in Hanoi. Vietnam's graying Communist Party is all about control: It censors all media, squashes protests and imprisons those who dare to speak out against its one-party system. Censors still review books, films and foreign newspapers for sensitive content while bureaucrats try to curb, with varying success, everything from online gaming to motorbike racing. But today, as iPhone shops rub shoulders with Buddhist pagodas, cultural authorities are finding it increasingly difficult to promote their unified sense of Vietnamese culture and identity, especially among the country's youth. (AP Photo/Na Son Nguyen) Close

"Despite one-party rule you see pluralism in the cultural and political thinking. And the younger generation is standing there, looking around, and seeing a lot of options to choose from."

Propaganda posters and patriotic campaigns continue to urge young and old to emulate the ascetic lifestyle of the late President Ho Chi Minh. Censors still review books, films and foreign newspapers for sensitive content while bureaucrats try to curb — with varying success — everything from online gaming to motorbike racing.

Vietnamese youth of today are largely apolitical and chances of any mass uprisings remain remote for now, says Dang Hoang Giang, a senior researcher at the nonprofit Center for Community Support Development Studies.

However, the country's youth have a rich history of organizing and rising up, first to help overthrow the French colonialists and later to oust the Americans during the Vietnam War. Adding to Hanoi's jitters are last year's Arab Spring democracy movements that swept through North Africa and the Middle East, as well as growing protests among the poor in neighboring China.

Growing differences among Vietnam's generations worry its cultural authorities because "they are used to thinking that they have to be in the driver's seat," Giang said.

Although cultural bans have been watered down in recent years, the government's knee-jerk reaction is still to restrict youth behavior it perceives as a potential threat to the state's authority — even if such moves are ineffective.

But a 2009 ban on late-night online gaming hasn't stopped Vietnamese teens from patronizing Internet parlors where they sometimes play in the dark to avoid detection. Fines on motorbike racing have not deterred young violators, prompting police in northern Thanh Hoa province to snag speeders with fishing nets. Loose Facebook restrictions also do not prevent users from logging on to the popular U.S.-based social networking site.

The October ban of "Killer with a Festering Head" is another old-school censoring attempt that failed.

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Vietnam's Awakening Youth Circumvent Censorship