China History
Noteworthy Weibo Post by Embassy of Germany in China About What Happened in 1989
A Weibo post by the Embassy of Germany in China focuses on what happened in both countries in 1989, but the China part is blacked-out.
On October 28, the Weibo account of the Embassy of Germany in China posted the hashtag “50 Years of China-German Diplomatic Relations” (#德中建交五十周年#) accompanied by an image with photos and text.
Two photos next to each other showed on the left side the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and on the right side a blacked-out image.
The text says:
“1989: In East Germany, the German Democratic Republic under socialist rule, more and more people protested for democracy and civil rights. This led to the peace draft of November 1989 and the Fall of the Berlin Wall at the border between the two German states.” [rest of the text fully blacked out]
Georg Fahrion, Beijing-based China correspondent at German news website Der Spiegel, wrote about the noteworthy post on Twitter:
“The German embassy in Beijing Weibo account trolling China supreme: In 1989, this is what happened in our capital. What happened in yours in 1989, say, on June 4th?”
The German embassy in Beijing Weibo account trolling China supreme: In 1989, this is what happened in our capital. What happened in yours in 1989, say, on June 4th? pic.twitter.com/sFh9QaxaTh
— Georg Fahrion (@schorselysees) October 29, 2022
“How peculiar,” some netizens responded. “What does this have to do with Sino-German diplomatic relations? I feel like you are purposely being ambiguous,” one top comment said.
“Did you think this was funny?” another person wrote.
This entire month, the Weibo account of the German Embassy in China (@德国驻华大使馆), which has over 375,000 followers, has been posting historical photos, highlighting important years and events during the past fifty years of Sino-German diplomatic relations.
On October 11, they made the first Weibo post within the “50 Years of Sino-German Diplomatic Relations” series, starting with the year 1972.
“Looking back: 50 years, 50 moments. 50 years ago, on October 11, the Federal Republic of Germany and the People’s Republic of China officially established diplomatic relations. To commemorate this occasion, we are launching a series of Weibo posts: 50 moments in 50 years. For the next 50 days, we will take you through one event each day that has had a profound impact on German-Chinese relations.”
“1972: The Federal Republic of Germany and the People’s Republic of China formally establish diplomatic relations. On October 11, Foreign Minister Scheel and Foreign Minister Ji Pengfei sign a joint communiqué in Beijing establishing diplomatic relations. Foreign Minister Ji Pengfei knew Germany very well: he had been the head of the diplomatic mission since the early 1950s and was appointed as China’s first ambassador to the GDR in 1953. Shortly after the establishment of diplomatic relations, the West German Embassy in Beijing was officially opened on December 1, 1972.”
In other following posts by the German Embassy in China, they commemmorate overall uncontroversial historical moments that have been important to the bilateral relations.
They include, among others, a 1974 Max Planck Society delegation to China led by then President Reimar Lüst; the 1975 Beijing visit by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt; the 1976 death of Mao Zedong and how his thinking had been influenced by the German socialist revolutionary Karl Marx; the 1978 opening of the German Embassy School in Beijing; the 1979 visit to Germany by Hua Guofeng; the 1980 arrival of the pandas BaoBao and TianTian to Berlin; the 1983 debut of Volkwagen Santana on the Chinese market; the 1984 China visit by Helmut Kohl; and the 1986 visit of East German leader Erich Honecker to Beijing.
Especially in light of this previous series of seemingly friendly, mild, and non-provocative posts, the October 28 post on the year 1989 stands out.
The post obviously means to point out the year 1989 as an important one for both China and Germany, as they both faced widespread pro-democracy demonstrations.
While the Tiananmen protests, which started in April, were forcibly suppressed on June 4th, the authorities in Germany eventually chose not to use military force against protesting citizens, eventually resulting in the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of that year.
There is a clear transnational connection between what happened in China and the GRD in 1989, which is something that the German Embassy in Beijing undoubtedly wanted to point out. (If you want to read more about this transnational connection between the Tiananmen and Leipzig demonstrations, you can read “Tiananmen Square, Leipzig, and the ‘Chinese Solution’: Revisiting the Wende from an Asian-German Perspective” here.)
But since the topic of the Tiananmen protests is commonly censored in China and is not something that can be freely discussed on Chinese social media, the post by the German Embassy was left partly, and explicitly, blacked out.
The move could be perceived as a statement against Chinese censorship by making the self-censorship explicit for everyone to see. It is unlikely that the post was censored by the Weibo platform: images that are censored by Weibo usually come up as blank spaces, and if a post is censored, it never comes up with blacked-out sentences but instead is removed altogether.
It is also possible that the German embassy in Beijing did not self-censor, but instead posted an image of a book or webpage that was already censored.
In either case, the move could be seen as a provocative one in a media environment where any mention regarding the June 4th protests, direct or indirect, is always censored. One popular Chinese book about everything that happened in China in the 1980s did not include a single mention of the protests.
Although this post was not censored, the comment section was limited and viewing new comments was “temporarily not possible” at time of writing.
The timing of this post is especially noteworthy because German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is scheduled to visit China next week as the first Western European leader to go to Beijing since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2021, the UK embassy in China posted a virtual candle on Weibo on June 4th to commemorate the Tiananmen protests. That gesture instantly backfired, as some people suggested the candle was lit because the Queen had passed away (read here).
The Germany post was discussed elsewhere on Weibo, although some had to be creative in their description, talking about that one post about “the year that follows after 1988.” “They’re being foolish,” others wrote.
For more articles about embassies on Weibo, check here. To read more of our articles related to Tiananmen on social media, read here.
By Manya Koetse
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Chapter Dive
Red Carpet, Pandas, and Power: How China Read the Trump-Xi Summit
On Chinese social media, Washington’s red-carpet reception wasn’t just diplomacy but read as recognition of China’s restored status on the global stage.
Originally published in the Eye on Digital China newsletter on Sunday, September 27, 2026. Want to receive the next edition in your inbox? Become a paid subscriber here.
The past week was all about the Trump-Xi meeting in Washington. On mainstream Chinese social media feeds, much of the focus wasn’t on what was discussed, who gained what, or what was promised. It was about: How was China welcomed? How far did they go? How exceptional was the reception? And what does this say about China’s status as a major power on the world stage today?
Symbolic moments mattered more than strategic talks. Within that framework, President Trump, along with First Lady Melania Trump, hit the right notes.
The US visit by Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan began on Wednesday (Sep 23), with Donald Trump and the First Lady personally welcoming them at Joint Base Andrews, a highly unusual move. Presidents typically receive foreign leaders at the White House; in recent decades, airport welcomes at Andrews have been reserved almost exclusively for popes. The last comparable presidential welcome was Kennedy’s 1962 greeting of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a particularly close US ally at the time.
Wednesday’s welcome came with a red carpet, which members of the US military meticulously inspected and cleaned on their hands and knees right before Xi and Peng’s arrival. A photo of that scene was widely shared on Chinese social media, where many netizens seemed both bemused and struck by the sight of Americans quite literally bending over backward for their Chinese guests, with one popular Weibo account (@提刀探花在缅北) writing: “This is a scene that we will remember for decades.”
Red-carpet preparation at Joint Base Andrews
At the White House welcome ceremony on Thursday (Sep 24), where both leaders delivered remarks, Trump touched on the history of war and mentioned the American volunteer fighter group in China — the Flying Tigers — saying:
🗣️ “If we focus on our common interest, I’m confident there is much we can achieve. Throughout history, the pursuit of those common interests has connected our people across the vast oceans, across big, tremendous distances and many differences, and even made us allies in World War II. Look at the greatness we had together fighting in World War II.”
After the Washington summit concluded, Trump posted on Truth Social, calling the meeting one of “Friendship, Strength, and Success, for both China and the U.S.A.,” and adding that he looked forward to the next US-China meeting in November.
Historical Memory at the White House
But why did the special treatment given to the Chinese delegation in the US seem to matter so much in China, especially considering the ubiquitous anti-American sentiment of recent years? Not only did official media highlight it, but it also resonated strongly with netizens and became the defining story about this meeting on social media.
It goes much deeper than flattery.
Narratives of “never…
Chapter Dive
Evil Unbound (731): How a Chinese Anti-Japanese War Film Backfired
731 was China’s most anticipated war movie of the year — how could it fail so miserably to live up to public expectations?
🔥 This is premium content and also appeared in the Weibo Watch newsletter. Subscribe to stay in the loop.
731 and 918, those were the numbers dominating Chinese social media over the past week. Both numbers carry heavy historical weight, but the recent discussions surrounding them reveal two parallel worlds of the official narrative vs the audience experience of a controversial new World War II film.
It was “9.18” on Thursday, when China commemorated the 94th anniversary of the September 18th Incident (九一八事变). On that day in 1931, a small explosion on a Japanese-owned railway near Shenyang (Mukden) was used as a pretext to invade Manchuria.
While many older Chinese were taught in school that the war began in 1937, recent state-led campaigns increasingly emphasize 1931 as the true beginning of China’s “14-year-long war” (1931–1945). Over the past decade, the 918 commemorations have become more prominent online, shaping public memory through nationalistic messaging.
This year, the commemoration had an extra dimension, as it wove the release of Evil Unbound (English title), also known as 731, into the patriotic media narratives around 918.
Patriotic film poster putting 918 and 731 together.
The much-anticipated war movie 731depicts the atrocities of Japan’s Unit 731 (731部队), notorious for conducting horrific biological warfare experiments in Harbin during World War II under Major General Shiro Ishii (石井四郎), a former army surgeon and biologist with a particular interest in historical plagues. Under his command, Japan’s biological warfare and human experimentation in China were carried out on a larger scale than anywhere…
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Melanie Faber
October 31, 2022 at 7:09 pm
In Germany we think that these two events in 1989 are indeed connected, at least from the German point of view. We speculate whether what happened at Tian’anmen prevented a similar tragedy in Germany because nobody wanted to repeat something like that.