China Bans the Word ‘Leica’ on Social Media

When a promotional video for German digicam maker Leica hit the web this week, it seemed like an ambitious announcement about the tough paintings finished via photojournalists around the sector. But the corporation is now distancing itself from the 5-minute video after Chinese social media users cried foul and the phrase “Leica” turned into banned on social media website Weibo. The trouble? The dramatic video is about in 1989, all through the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, which can be forbidden to talk about in China.

The video, titled “The Hunt,” is a fictionalized montage of diverse warfare areas around the arena. Its maximum arguable sequence suggests an English-speaking photojournalist scrambling to locate his camera and being questioned by Chinese authorities.

Tiananmen Square is by no means noted with the aid of call, but the promotional movie starts with the yr and place of the pupil-led protests displayed prominently: Beijing 1989. The film’s final shot suggests the photojournalist elevating his digicam and a mirrored image of the anonymous “Tank Man” in his lens. The real picture was taken by Jeff Widener and got here to be one of the maximum well-known pics of the 20 century.

Social Media

The promo video, which changed into posted on YouTube and Twitter, was created by Brazilian ad company F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, in line with the South China Morning Post. And at the same time, as the employer has carried out lots of work for Leica in the past, the camera corporation is now claiming that the video was now not “formally sanctioned.”

“Leica Camera AG ought to, therefore, distance itself from the content material proven inside the video and regrets any misunderstandings or false conclusions which can have been drawn,” Emily Anderson, a spokesperson for Leica, advised SCMP.

Leica has a presence in China now, not just selling cameras, but additionally thru a partnership with Huawei building lenses for its smartphones. Support for Huawei in China has to be a patriotic assignment because the tech giant fights with western countries over ability espionage allegations supporting the Chinese authorities. And some commercial enterprise proprietors in China have even given reductions to Huawei telephone owners to guide the tech giant, which itself has come to be a valuable determine inside the growing tensions between the U.S. And China.

“Do you even should collaborate with our patriotic Huawei?” one Weibo person stated about Leica, consistent with SCMP.

The U.S. Justice Department filed costs towards Huawei in January, claiming that the Chinese agency dedicated fraud, obstruction of justice, and trade secrets theft.

With the 30th anniversary of the protests going on in only a few months, at some stage in June of this yr, Chinese censors will no question be playing whack-a-mole with any content online that attempts to understand the anniversary.

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