China’s communist youth idols get the thumbs down in coronavirus crisis
- Party’s youth wing tries to reach out to younger generations by launching two new animated characters
- Hours later, all of the posts are deleted
On Monday afternoon, the youth wing of China’s Communist Party was urging the 12 million followers of its Twitter-like Weibo account to show their support for two new animated cartoon characters.
“Let’s meet two new friends, the league’s virtual idols Hongqiman and Jiangshanjiao,” the Communist Youth League said, encouraging followers to turn the duo into a top trending topic.
Within a few hours, the messages and all sign of the characters in stylised traditional Chinese dress were gone.
The league deleted the post introducing the idols, and on the characters’ official Weibo page, all posts had been pulled, replaced with the message: “Sorry, still need to rest.”
“Do we need strong material support, or virtual, juvenile attempts to cheer people up?” the commenter said.