A very tense climate has developed between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chinese President Xi Jinping since their exchange captured on the last day of the G20, in Indonesia.
The journalist Wenhao Ma media Voice of America noticed that the name of the Canadian leader was no longer put forward on the Weibo platform, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
The Prime Minister no longer seems to be prioritized in the search bar when entering his name.
The nickname that the Chinese gave to Justin Trudeau, or “Little potato (small potato)”, does not give any more result. The English word “potato” also seems to have been banned.
Wenhao looked for other world leaders on the site. The results are filtered, “but not as much as those of Trudeau”.
“I can’t prove that Trudeau’s censorship is linked to the G20 exchange,” he wrote. It is however obvious that he benefits from a different treatment”.
Russian media reported the exchange between Xi Jinping and Justin Trudeau on Weibo. The publication would have disappeared five minutes later.
It is difficult to prove that the order to censor the Canadian Prime Minister came from the Chinese government. “Social networks in China will sometimes censor words to avoid arousing public opinion,” explains the journalist.
Other Internet users claimed that they had found Justin Trudeau on other social networks in China. However, the G20 exchange is nowhere to be found.
“I see that several people have searched for the discussion between Xi Jinping and Justin Trudeau on Douyin (TikTok), but it does not appear anywhere,” noted Manya Koetsethe editor-in-chief of the media What’s on Weibo