8:23 pm HKT Jul 29, 2014
Zhou Yongkang, pictured in 2007. Reuters
China’s social media microblogs, the country’s de facto town square, have for more than a year seethed with oblique flecks at the fate of former security chief Zhou Yongkang. Posts would slip out that he was under an official probe only to be almost instantly wiped by censors from existence.
So when Beijing said Tuesday it has launched a long-foreshadowed investigation into the most senior figure targeted to date in the government’s corruption sweep, the Chinese Internet exploded.
The Chinese-language hashtag “ZhouYongKangPutUnderInvestigation” rapidly rose to the top of microblogging service Weibo’s top trending items, scoring 4.3 million views barely two hours after the news broke. State broadcaster China Central Television’s post on the probe was reposted more than 14,000 times within an hour of the news.
Chinese bloggers, long used to coming up with clever ways to circumvent censorship rules, roped in International Tiger Day, which falls on July 29, for assistance. The term “tiger” became shorthand for Mr. Zhou, taking its cue from President Xi Jinping’s vow to bring down “tigers and flies,” meaning the biggest and smallest of wrongdoers, in his war on corruption. “For the imperial court to pick today to whack a tiger is very meaningful indeed!” a blogger wrote.
While most of the exuberance was limited to taking casual note of Mr. Zhou’s fate, some bloggers went cautiously farther in summing up the public mood of anticipation. “This is just lifting up one corner of the pot,” Ren Zhiqiang, a well-known property developer with a wide Weibo following, said on his verified blog.