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WeChat’s emoji makeover removes cigar image to help stub out smoking among minors

  • The change comes years after the Beijing Tobacco Control Association initiated a campaign to remove images of smoking on social media
  • China has one of the world’s highest smoking rates, with about half of all men taking up the habit and about 20 per cent of all minors having tried it

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Tencent Holdings’ WeChat and Weixin had a combined 1.2 billion monthly active users as of September 30 last year. Photo: Bloomberg
Yujie XueandIris Deng
WeChat, the ubiquitous super app known as Weixin in mainland China, has removed the image of a cigar in a popular emoji, years after an anti-smoking group warned that it complicated the fight against tobacco use among young people.
The emoji called “commando” – showing a man wearing a helmet and sunglasses, with a lit cigar between his lips – is widely used by Weixin users to describe someone at ease or chilling. Internet giant Tencent Holdings, operator of the multipurpose social media platform, said it has removed the image of the cigar from that emoji, according to its post on microblogging site Weibo on Sunday.
The makeover is expected to bolster anti-smoking initiatives in China, more than a year since the National Health Commission and seven other government agencies published tobacco control guidelines to prevent smoking among minors.

It also comes years after the Beijing Tobacco Control Association (BTCA), along with cyberspace authorities, started a campaign in 2017 to remove images of smoking on domestic social media.

The ‘commando’ emoji on Tencent Holdings’ WeChat, known as Weixin in mainland China, was revised on February 28, 2021, to remove the image of a lit cigar. Photos: Weibo
The ‘commando’ emoji on Tencent Holdings’ WeChat, known as Weixin in mainland China, was revised on February 28, 2021, to remove the image of a lit cigar. Photos: Weibo

The BTCA campaign was initiated by volunteers who raised concerns about the possible influence on minors of tobacco use depicted in emojis across domestic social media, according to association president Zhang Jianshu in a phone interview with the South China Morning Post on Monday.

“We thought it was a little inappropriate for such highly used social media platforms to have emojis with images of smoking and relate these to concepts of ‘being cool’ or ‘chilling’,” Zhang said. “Those platforms have many young users, who might consider such emojis as advocating smoking.”

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