On March 11, China’s legislature passed the amendment of the constitution, making it possible for President Xi Jinping to continue office after 2023. The constitutional change was passed during China’s annual sitting of the National People’s Congress, and only had two opposing votes amongst the 2964 ballot papers.
The passing of the amendments to the Chinese constitution was already expected since February 25, when official media announced the proposal of some important “structural reforms” to the constitution of the PRC, including the removal of an article addressing that the PRC’s president and vice-president shall serve no more than two consecutive terms.
On Weibo, the ‘breaking news’ was shared by official media and received thousands of comments within minutes.
“I’m a witness to history,” one commenter replied to the news. Other people said this is the “beginning of a new era.”
Similar to the day the proposal for the end of the two-term-limit to Chinese presidency was first announced, Weibo’s censorship systems and online content management teams are going into overdrive. Although it is visible that there are thousands of comments to various posts about the news, the comments themselves are not showing up.
A Weibo press release on the amendment by Xinhua News received thousands of comments, but none were showing up .
Also on Toutiao.com, a popular news aggregation platform, the Xinhua press release on the amendment received hundreds of responses, but none of them were visible.
In response to the news and tight control over comments on it, many netizens on Weibo just respond with two characters for “ha ha” (呵呵 hēhē), which are often used to imply a self-mocking or sarcastic laugh.
By Manya Koetse
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