Shopping app blocked in China after apparent Tiananmen reference
- Censors take down social media page after June 4 post reported for ‘violating laws and regulations’
- The Xiaohongshu Weibo page remained unavailable on Monday, four days after sensitive anniversary
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According to screenshots circulating online, Xiaohongshu – a Pinterest-like platform where users share travel and shopping tips – published a post on social media platform Weibo on Friday which read, “Tell me loudly, today’s date is …!”
It was uncertain if the post referred to the 32nd anniversary of the crackdown on June 4, as the company regularly makes similar statements on Fridays to usher in the weekend. The app’s page has been replaced with a notice saying it had been taken down after “being reported for violating laws and regulations”.
The Tiananmen Square crackdown is highly sensitive to China’s Communist leadership, which has gone to exhaustive lengths to erase the movement from collective memory, omitting it from history textbooks and censoring online discussion of the incident.
Soldiers 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.
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Heavy police presence in Hong Kong stops mass commemoration of June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown
This year, authorities arrested several people in Hong Kong who attempted to commemorate the anniversary after the city’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 people who discuss the crackdown resort to cryptic puns and oblique references.
Xiaohongshu did not immediately respond to a 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 South China Morning Post is owned by Alibaba.
