Toad, Emojis, ‘Grandpa’: Chinese Bypass Censors To Remember Jiang Zemin, Credited For Country’s Development

China’s top leadership never had individual social media accounts and posts about them are heavily filtered routinely so as a result there has been intense censorship of Jiang Zemin online. 

Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin passed away at the age of 96

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Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, who was known to put the country on the path of high-speed development, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 96. To commemorate the leader, Chinese devised unique ways to bypass the censors on the local social media platform which tend to show only 250 posts, mostly by government media accounts, when searched “Jiang Zemin”, reported BBC. 

Members of China’s top leadership never had individual social media accounts and posts about them are heavily filtered routinely so as to avoid people from posting anything critical of the Chinese Communist Party government. 

As a result, there has long been intense censorship of Jiang Zemin online. 

To dodge the censors and leave comments about the leader — mostly positive — social media users in China came up with the idea of using certain emojis, keywords and Roman scripts. 

Historically, toad-related nicknames have become popular ways of referencing Zemin, like "Uncle Toad". Users posted pictures of amphibious creatures to speak about him nostalgically. 

For years, social media platforms have tried to clamp down on toad- and frog-related messages. Very few such messages can consequently be found on the platforms today. 

To circumvent this censorship, people made croaking sounds to leave messages about the former leader. 

"Ribbit. Rest in peace," says one user, for example, stated the report.  

Another way that people adopted to bypass censorship was posting a book cover that he features on, titled: "The man who changed China". Some used the glasses emoji hinting towards his large, trademark glasses and some used just a candle emoji to commemorate him.

With the leader of the country such a strong presence in people's lives, a wildly popular nickname for Jiang when news broke of his death was "Grandpa Jiang". But a search for this today brings up the message "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, results for 'Grandpa Jiang' cannot be displayed."

So, people started to use just “grandpa” as it has not been censored. 

Some users on the local social media chose to write in Roman script rather than Chinese script as the former is likely to be less censored to remember the former leader.