Wen Jiabao, former Prime Minister of China, leaves for the fifth plenary session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 15, 2013. REUTERS / Jason Lee
Chinese internet firms have barred users from sharing an extensive article written by former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in tribute to his late mother, who censored a senior member of the ruling Communist Party, possibly because he spoke off the line.
The obituary article that Wen wrote about his recently deceased mother appeared in a small weekly called the Macau Herald on Friday and was posted on a public account in the Chinese chat app WeChat on Saturday, but was quickly restrict.
The heartfelt tribute contains details about the struggle of Wen’s mother during periods of upheaval in China, including the Second Sino-Japanese War and the political purges of the Cultural Revolution.
“In my opinion, China should be a country full of justice and fairness, always with respect for the will of the people, humanity and human nature,” said Wen’s article, which did not discuss China’s current political environment.
China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) has sought to tighten control over how netizens discuss history on the country’s heavily controlled internet in the run – up to the party’s 100th anniversary in July.
Under President Xi Jinping, the space for disagreement in China narrowed, while censorship expanded.
Wu Qiang, an independent political analyst in Beijing, said the article represented an “alternative voice from within the party” that was out of step with the efforts of the past few years to stifle discord.
“The power of this article from Wen is that it challenges it, and that is the main reason why it was banned from sharing,” he said, noting that the party was sensitive around its commemoration.
Last week, an arm of China’s cyber regulator launched a hotline for netizens to report ‘illegal’ comments that ‘distorted’ the Party’s historic achievements and attacked the country’s leadership. read more
When users try to share Wen’s article, a notification appears stating that the content violates WeChat’s requirements and that it cannot be shared, a common censorship measure in China that is a step below the purification of articles .
On Weibo, the Chinese social media site similar to Twitter, the article was mentioned little, and comments and sharing features were eliminated. Links to articles about Wen’s tribute posted on Weibo returned ‘404’ messages on Tuesday morning indicating that they had been removed.
The operators of WeChat and Weibo, as well as China’s Internet regulator, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Former Chinese leaders and high-profile politicians rarely cultivate public personas or share detailed biographical information during their retirement, and are expected to gracefully slip out of the spotlight.
Since the adoption of power in 2012, Xi’s signature policy has been enshrined in the party constitution and term restriction, which has placed him on the same level as the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong, in the pantheon of his leaders .
Wen, who was prime minister under former Chinese leader Hu Jintao, was a leading figure behind the country’s economic policies in the 2000s, leaving office in 2013 when he was succeeded by current prime minister Li Keqiang.
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