Chinese app binned by Beijing after asking what day it is on anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre
- Reference: 1623129028
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/08/chinese_app_xiaohongshu_censored_by_beijing/
- Source link:
One answer to that question is that June 4th is the anniversary of the [1]1989 Tiananmen Square massacre , an event Beijing prefers not to discuss — online or in the real world. Friday June 4th 2021 was also just another Friday and therefore the last day of the working week, an occasion that Xiaohongshu often marks by posing weekend-oriented questions on social media.
Xiaohongshu's post to Weibo, China's Twitter analog, was quickly removed, but first caught the eye of government internet watchdog The Cyberspace Administration of China, which reportedly started an investigation into Xiaohongshu. According to [2]The Wall Street Journal , Xiaohongshu denies its post was political.
[3]
That's a plausible argument given that discussing the the events of 1989 is not the done thing inside China, and information about the suppression of pro-democracy protests is not easily available. Xiaohongshu staff may genuinely have blundered into this mess.
[4]
[5]
To understand [6]Xiaohongshu , which translates as Little Red Book, imagine a mashup between Amazon and Instagram where mostly female Gen Z users review products and share their shopping experiences through short videos and photos. The company bills itself as an online tour guide for shoppers and operates RED Mall, on which it sells products from around the world to its Chinese user base.
[7]Tiananmen Square Tank Man vanishes from Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, other search engines — even in America
[8]Biden expands Chinese tech and military blocklist to 59 companies
[9]Beijing gives Ant Group the blessing to operate a consumer finance company
[10]Ganja believe it? Police make hash of suspected weed farm raid, pot Bitcoin mine instead
The app, backed by Chinese web giants Alibaba and Tencent, hit 100 million monthly active users in 2020. Its currently out-of-commission Weibo account had 14 million followers.
This is not the first time Beijing has acted against the e-commerce company. In 2019 it was briefly shutdown, [11]potentially due to questionable and fake products and content flooding the site with promotions for face-lifting drugs and the use of human placentas for aesthetic purposes.
social e-commerce app Xiaohongshu/RED got taken down from major Chinese appstores yesterday [12]pic.twitter.com/W87CFOAYbh — lotus (@lotus_ruan) [13]July 30, 2019
In April 2021 the company was named among 34 apps China's government [14]deemed as anti-competitive and therefore had 30 days to remedy its behaviour and prove compliance.
Xiaohongshu was [15]rumored to be laying groundwork for an IPO in the US this year, with a value predicted to surpass $US10 billion. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/04/search_engine_tiananmen/
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-internet-regulators-investigate-startup-after-tiananmen-square-anniversary-post-11622970523
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YL8-wvc20Agw9Ve16USZMwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YL8-wvc20Agw9Ve16USZMwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YL8-wvc20Agw9Ve16USZMwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.xiaohongshu.com/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/04/search_engine_tiananmen/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/04/biden_expands_blocklist/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/04/beijing_gives_ant_the_blessing/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/30/cannabis_raid_smokes_out_bitcoin_mine/
[11] https://www.chinabriefs.io/blog/2019/8/17/trouble-at-xiaohongshu-red?utm_content=bufferbf496&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
[12] https://t.co/W87CFOAYbh
[13] https://twitter.com/lotus_ruan/status/1156228411930624000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/14/china_34_web_platform_crackdown/
[15] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinas-6-billion-social-e-commerce-app-hires-cfo-as-it-eyes-us-ipo
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Incident
Yeah, apologies: it's fixed. Was a bit more than an incident.
C.
They're weirdly touchy
At this point, the Chinese government is not making much sense. Everybody, inside the country and out, knows that the government murdered a bunch of protestors and they know when that happened. Everybody knows that the government's actions are designed to minimize something, and the Streisand effect is strong with this one. I have to wonder exactly why they consider it so important to hide the event when it's far too late to deny its existence. I shouldn't advise dictatorships on propaganda, but at this point it makes more sense for them to just embrace the evil or at least lie about some details rather than trying to lie about the whole thing. The rest of their propaganda, both internal and external, is at least a bit more disguised. It's a weird decision for this to be the only thing about which they take the North Korea route.
Re: They're weirdly touchy
I don't think it is the only thing they are touchy about. Taiwan is another hot topic.
I think we can find an explanation in the recent relaxation of the policy on the number of children. It used to be one only, then it was relaxed to two children, and now they've relaxed it to three. Why relax to three? Surely at this point they could just allow any number of children, right? There are very few people who want more than three anyway.
But the reason they don't want to allow any number of children, or they don't want people to talk about Tiananmen, is that it would mean accepting losing control. Admitting a mistake. Having egg on their face. And that is not their way. They think it would make them look weak.
Re: They're weirdly touchy
But the reason they don't want to allow any number of children, or they don't want people to talk about Tiananmen, is that it would mean accepting losing control. Admitting a mistake. Having egg on their face. And that is not their way. They think it would make them look weak.
The thing is, Chairman Mao thought that more kids would be good; so under his wise and benevolent control the population of the country doubled from 500million to a billion in 25 years, and somebody then sat down with a calculator and spotted that rate of growth would lead to ~2 billion by 2000, ~4 billion by 2025, and ~8 billion by 2050.
This presents certain rather obvious problems with food, housing etc so they then panicked and went from one extreme to the other with population control and have managed to keep the population down to 1.3 billion at the expense of China sitting on the worlds biggest demographic time bomb as the older people die off, which they can currently hear ticking.
Don't you just love it when people do things without knowing what they're doing because you tried as hard as you could to suppress the knowledge?
The notion that that this sort of antics is just educating the new generations that something horrible did in fact happen on that date is pretty golden.
Is Barbra Streisand known in China ?
Or is talking about her eponymous effect discouraged ?
Re: Is Barbra Streisand known in China ?
What about Winnie the Pooh?
Re: Is Barbra Streisand known in China ?
Apparently Winne-the-Pooh's birthday is 4th June! Need to celebrate!
A shotgun to the foot moment
The vast majority of under 30's (probably under 40's to be honest) in China have no idea about the Tianamen Square Massacre, because the Communist Party has been very good at quashing all reference to it (within China). So now you have the actions of some old men who still fear the event, giving all of the younger generations a reason to go searching to find out what happened on that date to upset the "great leaders".
We can only hope that a few Chinese people get their eyes finally opened by this event...
Mr Foot meet Mr Shotgun...
Re: A shotgun to the foot moment
In some not-so democratic countries, the "Mr Foot meet Mr Shotgun..." moment may carry a different meaning: Now that you are aware of the shotgun, tread softly, because that shotgun will remain pointed at your feet and the feet of anybody else who steps out of line.
Respect through fear. It's not nice, but it works.
Re: A shotgun to the foot moment
Ok, interesting I had not heard of that interpretation. I meant it in the "shooting yourself in the foot" interpretation... Sorry if that wasnt clear...
Isn't it ironic ?
I imagine this from the point of view of the marketing department. They are likely young men and women, full of enthusiasm in a company that has a lot of impact.
They brainstorm something for June 4th and set it in motion, and all of a sudden Beijing come crashing around them, bringing all their efforts to naught.
I'm betting they are all thinking "but why ?".
And now they're going to find out, one way or the other.
So Beijing is basically educating it's people on the exact thing it wants to suppress.
Tanks a lot!
I'd almost forgotten the Tiananmen Square Massacre
"Incident"? - Really El Reg?