Lin Yuwei and Wu Yanni, China’s entrants in the women’s 100m hurdles final, embraced after the race at the Asian Games in Hangzhou. Lin won gold in the race with a time of 12.74 seconds. A photograph of the two women in profile showed Lin’s lane number, 6, next to Wu’s lane number, 4.
“6/4” is a common reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre in the early hours of 4 June 1989. Discussion of the killings and the protests that preceded them are strictly controlled in China, with a wide range of references routinely scrubbed from China’s internet.
Posts on Chinese social media app Weibo that mention the two athletes hugging showed grey squares where the photograph should have been.
Is this worse than them censoring actual references to Tiananmen Square? This is relatively harmless photo of athletes hugging, sure it’s a feel good photo but it doesn’t really matter to most Chinese people if they see it. Whereas things that actually are related to Tiananmen Square would make a much greater positive impact on Chinese people otherwise blind to their government’s shortcomings.
Worse is subjective, but I’d say this is definitely more oppressive.
It is most likely an example of how far they are going already ro suppress anything that could possibly be related and it just happened to be noticed this time.
So the same thing really, but worse than what is generally known.
This is an actual reference to Tiananmen Square. And if it wasn’t before the censorship, it certainly is now.
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