- A US Embassy post about giraffes inexplicably became a gathering place for online dissent in China.
- The social media post was flooded with comments last weekend complaining about China's economy.
- Now censors are swooping in, putting giraffes on target to be the Chinese internet's next endangered item.
Giraffes might just be the next thing banned on China's social media.
The animals became an overnight symbol of discontent with the Chinese economy when the US Embassy in Beijing's social media account uploaded a post on February 2 about the animals.
The post doesn't mention China and instead promotes US efforts to track down endangered giraffes in Africa using GPS technology.
But on Weibo, China's version of X, the embassy's post mysteriously went viral, with 970,000 likes and 180,000 comments as of Tuesday evening. Posts from the embassy typically garner under 30,000 likes.
Investors flooded the giraffe post last weekend with comments complaining about China's slumping stock market, as Bloomberg, CNN, and Reuters reported.
China's blue-chip index, the CSI 300, has been tumbling amid weakening confidence in consumer spending after the country endured a yearslong COVID siege. Its stock market has lost more than $6 trillion in value since 2021 and continues to slip, despite Beijing intervening nearly a dozen times in January to stall the decline.
"Anger has reached an extreme level," one user wrote, per Bloomberg on Saturday.
"The US government, please help Chinese stock investors," said another, per CNN on Monday.
"Arise! All giraffes who refuse to be slaves," another wrote, referencing the People's Republic of China's national anthem, CNN reported.
Irate commenters were copy-pasting the headline of a state media article, published on the same day as the giraffe post, that said the "entire country is filled with optimism."
"The entire giraffe community is filled with optimism," one user wrote, per CNN.
Weibo's heavy moderation and censorship often mean Chinese users rely on sarcasm and veiled references to express their discontent. Ensuing efforts to censor these references often creates a mental cat-and-mouse that can lead to absurdities like protests with blank sheets of paper or the words "him" and "that man" being banned.
Winnie the Pooh is an infamous topic of sensitivity for China because dissidents often compare leader Xi Jinping to the portly bear. At the same time, Peppa Pig became a counter-culture symbol banned from social media.
In true Weibo fashion, the giraffe gripe party was shut down. On Tuesday evening, such comments had vanished, replaced with a slew of well-wishes for US-China relations.
"The China-US friendship. Long live China," dozens of comments said.
Several vague comments expressing general unhappiness were left unscathed, but most of the discussion shifted to the mundane.
"The US has the obligation and responsibility to invest more technology and resources in protecting ecological balance," one comment with 24,000 likes said.
"Let's see if the words 'comments and stocks' will get deleted," said another comment. It received 38 replies, 36 of which could not be viewed.
Plain old giraffes haven't been outright banned from Weibo, though some giraffe-related hashtags, like #TheGiraffeIncident, have been blocked, censorship tracking site China Digital Times first reported.
"According to relevant laws, regulations, and policies, the content of this topic is not displayed," a notice on Weibo said when Business Insider checked the hashtag.
With the hashtag's main content stifled, its top post now complains about animal treatment at a zoo.
Several posts discussing the giraffe censorship remain on the platform.
"It looks like the giraffes are no longer protected," one person wrote.