“Coup” Banned on China Microblogs as Rumors Fly
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Created: 2012-03-20 16:25 EST
Screenshot of a photo posted on Weibo by Li Delin, who is on the editorial board of Securities Market Weekly. Li reported army vehicles on Changan Street in Beijing.
Monday evening and early Tuesday morning Beijing time, rumors began to appear on China’s popular Twitter-like microblogs that a possible coup attempt had occurred in Beijing.
The earlier messages related to military police gathered at Chang’an Avenue, a major thoroughfare in Beijing. Li Delin, an editor of the magazine Securities Market Weekly, wrote about seeing military vehicles, plainclothes police, and even iron fences set up on some intersections on Chang’an.
Other posts claimed that gunfire had been heard, and words like “Chang’an” and “gunshots” began to be censored on microblogs like Sina Weibo.
Rumors began to fly about military forces entering Beijing. Some netizens linked the rumors with the recently demoted Communist official Bo Xilai. They claimed that the military presence was due to infighting over Bo’s fate between Communist Party leader Hu Jintao’s faction, and former leader Jiang Zemin’s faction, including head of the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee Zhou Yongkang.
Those rumors have not been substantiated. And at least some of the photos circulating of military vehicles in Beijing Monday night were later discredited. They were actually photos from a rehearsal for a National Day parade in 2010.
Tuesday was quiet in Beijing during the day, with media reporting that things seemed to be business as usual. Tuesday evening Beijing time, the word “coup” was finally censored on Sina Weibo.
The fact that the rumors of a coup gained traction so quickly after Bo Xilai was ousted from his position last week shows that Chinese netizens are closely watching the unfolding political drama.
But this was not the first time that rumors on Chinese microblogs became “news.” Last month, false rumors broke out that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had died. In January, Weibo rumors of a coup attempt in North Korea also made the news.
This time, the reports of a possible coup in Beijing may have even affected the foreign exchange markets—according to The Economic Voice, “Rumors of a military coup in Beijing has sent the USD higher once more and the Aussie dollar tumbling even further.”
Great posts.
To what effect did Bo’s anti-triad Chongqing campaign, headed by his police chief, Wang Lijun have in all this?
Loan sharking, gambling and prostitution businesses run by the triads are said to have been worth nearly $5 billion a year.
Bo and Lijun jailed hundreds of triad members and over 1,500 triad-corrupted officials.
Also, why would Lijun flee to Beijing, he could have tiptoed in found refuge in at least 4 embassies in Chongqing?
Did Lijun cut a deal with the Politburo conservatives to rat out Bo and perhaps tell all about Bo’s rumored property holding overseas, rumored to have been created by Taiwan business interests and triad families untouched by Bo and Lijun’s crime-fighting?
I think this is a showcase battle between Beijing conservatives, that want the Politburo to operate under collective leadership, and Maoist and leftist reformers championed by Bo.
Interesting that the leftist websites wyzxsx.com and Maoflag.net have been offline for “maintenance” since Bo was sacked.