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Censored coronavirus news shows up again as emoji, Morse code and ancient Chinese
A censored interview with a whistleblower doctor in Wuhan prompts massive pushback on WeChat
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
If you happen to be browsing Chinese social media these days, you might stumble across posts that appear to be a random jumble of Chinese characters and emojis. This isn’t some modern day secret language concocted by China’s youth; it’s an elaborate way to fight censorship targeting a doctor who blew the lid on the country’s mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak.
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Ai Fen is the director of the emergency department at a hospital in Wuhan, the centre of the Covid-19 epidemic. She recently gave an interview to local state-run magazine People, in which she suggested that the authorities missed an opportunity to issue a warning about the disease.
The article was published on Tuesday on China’s social media platform WeChat. It was quickly deleted by local censors, but not before it stirred up online anger over the government’s handling of the outbreak.
The text and screenshots of the original article are still circulating on the web, but netizens in China are finding creative ways to make it more accessible to people in China and keep it going viral.
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Dozens of WeChat accounts were playing a cat-and-mouse game with censors on Wednesday by reposting the interview in seemingly every format imaginable. The obvious choices of images and PDFs were common, but people were also posting it in Morse code, braille and even using emojis.
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