June 2012

In the airtight Chinese print media world, where officials wield the power to splash the same headline across many newspaper front pages or to keep a taboo subject out of even obscure one-line advertisements, editorials are usually painless scratches over petty social occurrences. One would not expect them to engage their millions of readers on a controversial subject. But that's exactly what Global Times, circulation 2 million, did when it addressed Chinese government corruption. With one unsigned editorial, the paper sparked a heated, if apparently unintended, debate on a sensitive topic that is usually a no-go zone for such large, public discussions.

China experienced a bizarre numerological happening this week. The Shanghai Composite Index started yesterday morning at 2346.98, which, when read from right to left, shares an uncanny similarity to yesterday’s highly sensitive anniversary: twenty-three years since the June 4, 1989, crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing, an event known in Chinese as “six-four.” Just a coincidence? Six hours later, the numbers struck again: the market closed the day down 64.89 points. The reaction was instantaneous: Chinese online comments tended toward the cosmological (“Maybe God does exist?” someone wrote), but the government was not amused, and it raced to censor microblog discussion, blocking references to “Shanghai Composite Index” and the offending digits. (Censors also blocked “candle,” “tank,” “never forget,” and scores of other terms.)

A snippet from a classical poem about the pain of bidding goodbye to loved ones has experienced an unexpected resurgence in China roughly 12 centuries after it was written. The poem’s author, Li Shangyin, has censors at China’s most talked-about social media site to thank for his posthumous return to prominence.