Issue and Opposition: The Tiananmen Square protests were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing in 1989. The students and other activists began their demonstrations on April 15. The protests were squashed brutally by the Chinese government on June 4 and protesters were arrested, assaulted, tortured, and killed by China’s People’s Liberation Army. Suppression of these protests or the Tiananmen Square Massacre is a dark chapter in Chinese history that the ruling party likes to deny despite hundreds of media reports and photographs. On the last day of the protest- 4 June- a huge crowd of students gathered in Tiananmen Square articulating their displeasure at the government’s policies, corruption, censorship, and abuses. A particular photograph taken of the scene that day shows a student standing alone in front of a Chinese tank. The juxtaposition of the lone human and the monstrous tank has come to signify the indomitable human spirit and became popular as the “tank man” picture once it was published in the media. After two decades, on the Massacre’s anniversary, Weibo users customized the “tank man’ image to use it as a protest against the anomalies of the Chinese government.
Dilemma Action: In remembrance of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the “tank man,” Weibo users created a meme of the old “tank man” picture. But there was a twist. The meme creators photoshopped the army tanks in the original picture from the frame and in their places, inserted images of huge yellow-colored toy rubber ducks.
Outcome: The Chinese government had gone to the extent of scrubbing all pictures and reports of the Tiananmen Square rally, protests, and the massacre from the internet. The tank man picture cannot be traced on the internet anymore. Thus, this action of replacing images of Chinese battle tanks with those rubber ducks- essentially a popular bath toy for children- was a master stroke by the Weibo activists. On one hand, they managed to ridicule the government while on the other hand, they exposed the government to a dilemma of action versus inaction. In the end, the Chinese government decided to act against the meme and scrubbed any mention of it from the internet in 2013. However, the image reappeared after a brief absence in 2014. The image has ever since stayed on the internet and has not been censored by the Chinese government, according to the media reports.