BEIJING – A Chinese shopping app has been blocked on social media over a post on the anniversary of the deadly Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, as Beijing’s censorship kicked into gear around the sensitive date.
The Weibo page of Xiaohongshu, a Pinterest-like platform where users share travel and shopping tips, published a post on Friday saying “Tell me loudly, today’s date is....!”, according to screenshots shared online.
The date was the 32nd anniversary of the crackdown.
However, it is uncertain if the post refers to Tiananmen, as the company regularly makes similar statements on Friday ushering in the weekend.
The Tencent- and Alibaba-backed app’s Weibo page remains unavailable today, replaced with a notice saying it has been taken down after “being reported for violating laws and regulations”.
The Tiananmen Square crackdown is highly sensitive to China’s Communist Party leadership.
It has gone to exhaustive lengths to erase the movement from collective memory, omitting the incident from history textbooks and censoring online discussions on the matter.
Soldiers marched into the capital city and opened fire on residents and student protesters on June 4, 1989, crushing a weeks-long wave of demonstrations calling for political change and curbs to official corruption.
Hundreds – by some estimates, more than 1,000 – were killed.
This year, authorities arrested several people in Hong Kong who attempted to commemorate the anniversary after the financial hub’s annual vigil was banned.
Public commemorations of June 4 are forbidden in mainland China, and social media searches for the date of the crackdown are routinely blocked.
Users of the WeChat payment and chat app were unable to send candle emojis around the date of the anniversary, and the few who discussed the crackdown resorted to cryptic puns and oblique references.
Xiaohongshu did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
The app, which has a huge millennial following and is backed by rival tech giants Tencent and Alibaba, features a shopping function that allows brands and influencers to sell products directly to followers.
The Shanghai-based firm’s value exceeded US$3 billion (RM12.38 billion) after a US$300 million investment round including Alibaba and Tencent in 2018, according to another investor, Tiantu Capital. – AFP, June 7, 2021
