- A Chinese influencer may have unwittingly introduced his fans to the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
- Li Jiaqi touted a tank-shaped ice cream online, a day before the event's 33rd anniversary.
- Almost immediately, Li's show was taken off-air, sparking a wave of curiosity from his fans.
One of China's biggest influencers may have unintentionally introduced his legion of fans to the heavily censored 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre — thanks to an ice cream sales pitch.
Last Friday, a day before the event's 33rd anniversary, live-streaming e-commerce star Li Jiaqi and his co-host touted an ice cream product sculpted to look like a tank, per The Wall Street Journal. Almost immediately, his live show was taken off-air, much to the confusion of his 170 million followers, the outlet reported.
—bigguguji (@bigguguji1) June 4, 2022
However, some viewers surmised that it had to do with how the ice cream's tank shape reminded people of the 1989 event — when the Chinese Communist Party sent tanks and armed troops into Beijing to crack down on pro-democracy protestors, per The Journal.
One of the most iconic images to emerge from the massacre has been the "Tank Man" photo, in which an unknown man was photographed standing in front of a column of tanks near Beijing's central Tiananmen Square.
The student-led protests for democracy and liberalization led to hundreds of deaths, which China has since written out of its history books. Discussion of the massacre has also been blocked on the country's social media sites.
Pictures of tanks also often get censored online around June 4 every year, according to The Journal.
"He has gone too far," a user on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform said of Li, adding that the influencer would likely be summoned by the authorities for interrogation, per The Journal.
On Weibo, Li said in two separate posts on Friday that the show was cut due to technical difficulties. However, the Journal reported that his next live-streaming session, scheduled for Sunday, did not air.
Fans of the 29-year-old also appeared to think that there was something more to it than a technical glitch.
On Li's Weibo page, many fans left comments demanding the truth over his show suddenly going offline. "What's going on? Is it a tax thing again?" one person wrote, referring to how another top live-streaming influencer, Viya, was fined $210 million for tax evasion last December.
In between the questions, however, some Weibo users left comments alluding to the Tiananmen Massacre. "This is so outrageous, they're even scared of the shape of ice cream. Now, even more people will know about it. Hehehe," one user wrote.
Li did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.