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on the same day. dressing room in 2014. The case was tember 14, but the new account was
Wang and her team asked a Weibo seen as a landmark of China’s #MeToo immediately suspended, without
staff why the account was suspended, movement and feminist campaigns. posting anything.
but the staff did not reveal any details. Wang also suspects that their Wei- They opened Twitter and Insta-
According to China Digital Times bo account ban was related to Xian- gram accounts afterwards by migrat-
(CDT), a California-based news web- zi’s case, as the account reposted two ing contents from their previous ac-
site aggregating information censored posts supporting the plaintiff on that counts. “We don’t want to waste our
on Chinese internet, at least 47 other day. years of efforts made in building the
Weibo accounts were also suspended This is the third time Catch Up account,” Wang adds.
that day. Sisters’ account has been suspend-
The news website points out these ed since the team’s establishment in Another Victim
social media accounts might be 2016. Their previous two accounts Apart from social media accounts
banned due to the second trial of Xi- were forcefully closed respectively in related to Metoo and feminism, dis-
anzi’s case at Beijing Haidian District 2019 and April of 2021. No reason was cussions related to sexual minorities
People’s Court. given. are also considered as sensitive con-
“Users who have posted and re- “We were very angry after the first tents.
posted information regarding the trial two suspensions, but we are rather On July 6, 2021, several public ac-
or expressed support towards Xianzi calm this time. We somehow get used counts related to sexual minority is-
were censored,” CDT writes on its to it,” Wang says. sues run by students across Chinese
website in an article on September 14. The group used to create new ac- universities were suddenly suspended,
Xianzi, surnamed Zhou, accused counts using the same logo and adapt- including Purple at Tsing Hua Univer-
Zhu Jun, a famous host at China’s state ing subtle changes to the user’s name sity, Colorsworld at Peking University,
broadcaster CCTV, of sexually harass- to restart the operation. They did the and Zhihe Society at Fudan Univer-
ing the then 21-year-old intern in his same soon after the incident on Sep- sity. Their original account names
were replaced by “unnamed public ac-
counts”, which later was used by neti-
zens to refer to the suspension of all
the social media accounts by univer-
sity students.
Zhihe Society, a student associa-
tion at Fudan University in Shanghai
focusing on gender and LGBT+ is-
sues, also has similar experience. The
society’s WeChat public account “Zhi-
heSociety at Fudan University’’ was
suspended on July 6, 2021.
The account run by several Fudan
University students hosted discus-
sions which were academic in nature,
providing readers with information
including academic papers and shar-
ing sessions related to gender or sexu-
al minority topics, according to Jamie
Cai*, one of the former core members
of the society serving from September
2020 to September 2021.
“We received no notice of any
Catch Up Sisters opened an Instagram account after kind. Our public account’s main page
its Weibo account was suspended. was turned to a total blank, leaving a