Hashtags about Chinese drills around Taiwan that were trending on China’s Sina Weibo yesterday seemingly vanished from the social media platform overnight.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) yesterday conducted military drills around Taiwan code-named “Joint Sword-2024B,” following President William Lai’s (賴清德) Double Ten National Day speech on Thursday last week.
Among the top 50 trending topics on Weibo yesterday, more than 10 were related to the drills or cross-strait relations, including phrases such as “there is only one China in the world” and “the complete unification of the motherland will be realized.”
Photo: AFP
Although it is common for trending topics to remain for more than a day, those related to the drills and cross-strait relations had already disappeared by today.
It is unclear why they disappeared so quickly.
However, as Weibo allows users with influence or money to boost topics, it is possible that they were artificially inflated and quickly disappeared from the list as actual discussion on the platform was scarce.
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