An official microblog of the US consulate in Shanghai that was a favourite among mainland internet users for its chatty tone was abruptly taken offline yesterday in the midst of ongoing Sino-US tensions. .
From yesterday morning, visitors found they could no longer access the consulate's account on Sina Weibo, the mainland's biggest Twitter-like social-networking service. Users were instead redirected to a page saying that the account 'cannot be accessed temporarily'.
At the same time, searches for 'US consulate' and 'US general consulate in Shanghai' returned only a message that said, 'according to relevant regulations and policies, search results cannot be displayed', a standard response to banned terms.
'This morning we discovered the consulate Shanghai's official Sina Weibo page was not accessible,' embassy spokesman Nolan Barkhouse said. 'We are working to find out why and we plan to resume normal operations as soon as possible.' As of yesterday, other such US government accounts, as well as the Shanghai consulate's account on the Tencent microblogging site, were still active.
The episode comes amid a period of particular tension between Beijing and Washington, with wrangles over trade policies, human rights and geopolitics in East Asia.
The account's suspension sent social media abuzz, as the consulate's Sina Weibo feed, like that of its counterpart in Hong Kong, was known for a clever and light-heated tone that lent it popularity.
A recent story by the Nanfang People's Weekly described the weibo accounts of the US consulates in Shanghai and Hong Kong as 'two the best-known official weibo accounts by foreign bodies that you cannot miss'.