Weibo Censors Hashtags “Taiwan Election,” “Frozen Garlic,” More

Over the weekend, discussions of Taiwan’s common election have been each censored and drowned out on Weibo. Censors eliminated the hashtags “Taiwan Election,” “Taiwan Common Election,” and “2024 Taiwan Common Election,” in addition to one other one referring to a preferred Taiwanese political chant. Earlier than it was censored, the hashtag “Taiwan Election” briefly rose to quantity 11 on Weibo’s “scorching checklist” of trending matters: 

The hashtag “frozen garlic” was also censored. Seemingly innocuous, it’s truly an approximate homophone for “get elected” within the Southern Min dialect extensively spoken in Taiwan and a inventory chant at marketing campaign rallies. 

Weibo routinely censors election discussions, even typically for China’s personal “whole-process folks’s democracy.” In 2023, Weibo quashed all commentary on Xi’s unanimous re-selection to China’s presidency throughout the Nationwide Folks’s Congress. When democracy-related dialogue is permitted on Weibo, it’s usually targeted on mockery of the American political system.

Efforts to suppress dialogue of Taiwanese democracy seemingly went past such examples of seen censorship. Many Chinese language netizens suspect that Weibo additionally aimed to “drown out” election speak by selling the frivolous hashtag “Behind the Scenes of the Weibo Awards Ceremony.” Hottest Weibo hashtags have a “host” that curates high outcomes. The dearth of a bunch for the award ceremony-related hashtag stoked suspicions about its authenticity, as did its fast rise to the highest of the “scorching checklist” simply as Taiwan started to tabulate election outcomes. 

Regardless of the censorship of hashtags, Chinese language netizens nonetheless discovered methods to debate Taiwan’s common election. After Xinhua made a Weibo submit parroting China’s Taiwan Affairs Workplace (TAO) spokesman Chen Binhua declaration that “the outcomes confirmed the Democratic Progressive Occasion can not signify mainstream public opinion on the island,” netizens had a subject day mocking the assertion in Xinhua’s remark part. One consultant remark learn, “[A]nd who’re you to dismiss the outcomes of a good election with that one phrase: ‘unrepresentative?’” Others have been much less well mannered: “[TAO is] probably the most shameless, ineffective, piece-of-trash authorities division.”