HONG KONG: An online snafu involving China’s most popular e-commerce livestreamer and a cake decorated to look like a tank has raised questions among some Chinese over the crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Beijing‘s tiananmen Square in 1989.
Ordering People’s Liberation Army soldiers to shoot at unarmed civilians is a sensitive topic that has long been heavily censored by the ruling Communist Party.
li jiqiChina’s most popular e-commerce livestreamer, known for selling everything from lipstick to frying pans in its online shows, where viewers can buy items directly at a discount.
He gained popularity in 2018, earning the nickname “Lipstick King” after trying on 380 lipsticks during a seven-hour stream, and selling 15,000 lipsticks in just five minutes during an online shopping festival.
But last Friday, Lee’s online show, which draws thousands of viewers, was cut short after a woman appeared on camera showing a tiny white cake decorated with wafers and cookies, a military man. To look like a tank, as per the screenshots posted on social media platforms.
The sudden ending left thousands of his fans confused. Li briefly became a trending search term in Chinese social media.
The show was on June 3, the eve of the anniversary of June 4, 1989, a crackdown on thousands of students who had gathered in the sprawling plaza in the center of Beijing to demand more democracy. Hundreds if not thousands of protesters are believed to have died.
One of the most famous photographs of military action, commonly known as ‘Tank Man’, shows a man holding plastic bags in front of a row of tanks, which line Beijing’s main east-west route. , is seen blocking their approach to the avenue. of eternal peace, or Chang‘An avenue. All such photos are censored in China.
Shortly after his stream ended on Friday, Lee posted on his Weibo platform similar to Twitter, saying that the stream ended early due to a “technical error”. The replay of the stream was also not uploaded.
Neither Alibaba nor Lee’s agency, MeiOne, have responded to requests for comment.
His absence has sparked speculation among Chinese online, many of which arose after 1989, and because almost all mention of the action is censored inside China, not much is known about what happened then.
Keywords and phrases associated with the event are censored. A search for “tiananmen june 4” or “tianmen 1989” returns no results on search engines and social media platforms in China.
“Who can tell me what happened to Li Jiaqi?” A user on Weibo said. “I can’t find any information.”
As of Monday, Chinese censors had erased all photos of the tank-shaped cake and any clips live-streamed from the Chinese Internet. Lee has not appeared in any other livestream sessions since.
People aware of the Tiananmen Square massacre, using covert signs on June 4 to evade censors, questioned if Lee was aware of the sensibility of showing tanks in shows like his.
A Weibo user with the handle maxwell_2000 commented, “It has become Li Jiaqi’s fault for not knowing about an incident that he is not allowed to know, and now he has to prove that he is indeed the cause of that incident.” didn’t know about which he was unaware.” , alluding to the catch-22 nature of the situation.
The apparent attempt to dissuade people from watching the show has led some to say that they were learning about the Tiananmen Crackdown for the first time.
“I didn’t know before, but now I think I know,” said one user on Weibo, where the self using vague language to refer to sensitive topics to avoid censors and prevent account suspensions. Sensor posts are common.
The apparent censoring of Lee’s show has had the opposite effect of attracting more attention to it and the 1989 incident in Tiananmen Square. Sean RenFounder and Managing Director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai.
“For many Chinese users, taking Lee offline at this point may have the opposite effect of drawing attention to a phenomenon that no one in China usually talks about,” Rein said.
Ordering People’s Liberation Army soldiers to shoot at unarmed civilians is a sensitive topic that has long been heavily censored by the ruling Communist Party.
li jiqiChina’s most popular e-commerce livestreamer, known for selling everything from lipstick to frying pans in its online shows, where viewers can buy items directly at a discount.
He gained popularity in 2018, earning the nickname “Lipstick King” after trying on 380 lipsticks during a seven-hour stream, and selling 15,000 lipsticks in just five minutes during an online shopping festival.
But last Friday, Lee’s online show, which draws thousands of viewers, was cut short after a woman appeared on camera showing a tiny white cake decorated with wafers and cookies, a military man. To look like a tank, as per the screenshots posted on social media platforms.
The sudden ending left thousands of his fans confused. Li briefly became a trending search term in Chinese social media.
The show was on June 3, the eve of the anniversary of June 4, 1989, a crackdown on thousands of students who had gathered in the sprawling plaza in the center of Beijing to demand more democracy. Hundreds if not thousands of protesters are believed to have died.
One of the most famous photographs of military action, commonly known as ‘Tank Man’, shows a man holding plastic bags in front of a row of tanks, which line Beijing’s main east-west route. , is seen blocking their approach to the avenue. of eternal peace, or Chang‘An avenue. All such photos are censored in China.
Shortly after his stream ended on Friday, Lee posted on his Weibo platform similar to Twitter, saying that the stream ended early due to a “technical error”. The replay of the stream was also not uploaded.
Neither Alibaba nor Lee’s agency, MeiOne, have responded to requests for comment.
His absence has sparked speculation among Chinese online, many of which arose after 1989, and because almost all mention of the action is censored inside China, not much is known about what happened then.
Keywords and phrases associated with the event are censored. A search for “tiananmen june 4” or “tianmen 1989” returns no results on search engines and social media platforms in China.
“Who can tell me what happened to Li Jiaqi?” A user on Weibo said. “I can’t find any information.”
As of Monday, Chinese censors had erased all photos of the tank-shaped cake and any clips live-streamed from the Chinese Internet. Lee has not appeared in any other livestream sessions since.
People aware of the Tiananmen Square massacre, using covert signs on June 4 to evade censors, questioned if Lee was aware of the sensibility of showing tanks in shows like his.
A Weibo user with the handle maxwell_2000 commented, “It has become Li Jiaqi’s fault for not knowing about an incident that he is not allowed to know, and now he has to prove that he is indeed the cause of that incident.” didn’t know about which he was unaware.” , alluding to the catch-22 nature of the situation.
The apparent attempt to dissuade people from watching the show has led some to say that they were learning about the Tiananmen Crackdown for the first time.
“I didn’t know before, but now I think I know,” said one user on Weibo, where the self using vague language to refer to sensitive topics to avoid censors and prevent account suspensions. Sensor posts are common.
The apparent censoring of Lee’s show has had the opposite effect of attracting more attention to it and the 1989 incident in Tiananmen Square. Sean RenFounder and Managing Director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai.
“For many Chinese users, taking Lee offline at this point may have the opposite effect of drawing attention to a phenomenon that no one in China usually talks about,” Rein said.