Everywhere in China the unthinkable happened at the weekend, especially young people gathered on the streets, squares, in universities – and saw that they were not alone. Scenes from a society in which it seethes.
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Lea Sahay and Kai Strittmatter
The fire in Urumqi last Thursday had barely been extinguished, and the dead had hardly been recovered, when the commemoration and anger of ordinary citizens began to make their way. Online first. And because the censors and the algorithms they programmed in China are vigilant and usually swallow a protest on the social media services Weibo and Wechat before even a stranger sees it, a cat-and-mouse began, as is so often the case -Game between censors and the mostly young users. And this time, those who were forbidden to speak, and their grief and indignation at the same time, soon took refuge in Dadaist sarcasm.