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Dissing Huawei on Chinese social media is a bad idea
Chinese netizens angry over US Huawei ban lash out at internet celebrity
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Imagine being banned from buying phones from one of the largest US retail stores for Tweeting something bad about Apple. This week, this implausible fate struck a web celeb. The difference was that it happened in China on the microblogging platform Weibo, and it wasn’t Apple at the center of the dispute. It was Huawei.
On Monday, internet celebrity Luo Yufeng, better known as Sister Feng, published a post saying “Huawei should have collapsed earlier.” The comment caused an unexpected outpouring of anger.
The post came in the wake of Huawei getting put on a US trade blacklist last week, which has put one of China’s largest tech companies in a precarious position. The company is now cut off from US software, including Google services for its Android smartphones, which could be a critical blow to Huawei’s international smartphone business.
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After the post went viral, Chinese electronics retailer Suning solemnly announced on Weibo that it will no longer sell phones to Ms. Luo.
“Dignity must not be trampled upon,” Suning announced on its official Weibo account for mobile phone sales. The post has since been deleted.
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This is not the first time Luo’s bluster has gotten her into trouble. The now US-based manicurist is known for calling herself the brightest human being in the past three centuries and the smartest person for the next 300 years, among other controversial statements. At one point, she was called the most hated reality star in China by the New York Post.
The internet star first rose to fame (infamy?) in 2009 after posting an ad in Shanghai for a boyfriend, which included some extremely high demands like having graduated from a top Chinese university, working at a Fortune 500 company and no prior girlfriends. For some online commentators, this seemed like a tall order from someone they thought was a short, plain-looking woman making US$146 a month.
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