Blogger Shows Off Tank Cake For Tiananmen Anniversary, Then Disappears From Social Media

The disappearance of a star Chinese blogger, who had dared to show a tank-shaped cake live on Weibo on the eve of the Tiananmen anniversary, sparked a wave of comments on the country’s second social platform on Monday. The blogger, who attracted millions of fans under the name “Li Jiaqi”, had his live broadcast abruptly cut off on Friday when he had just shown a tank-shaped chocolate ice cream cake, a few hours before the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown.

Some hashtags about the disappearance of the star blogger, who hasn’t posted anything since Friday, were published on Weibo more than 100 million times on Monday. “Li Jiaqi” – born in 1992 and who did not appear on Sunday when his show was highly anticipated – became famous for his record lipstick sales and his posts aimed at young and female audiences.

A tense birthday

On June 4, 1989, the communist regime sent tanks and troops to quell peaceful protesters who had for weeks occupied Beijing’s iconic central square demanding political change and an end to systemic corruption.

The crushing of the Tiananmen Square movement left hundreds dead, more than a thousand according to some estimates. Since then, the Chinese authorities have been trying to erase Tiananmen from the collective memory: history textbooks do not mention it and online discussions on the subject are systematically censored.

“A lot of people don’t know the story behind this cake,” noted one of the blogger’s fans on Weibo on Monday. In Beijing, the authorities have installed facial recognition devices in the streets leading to the square and the police carried out fussy identity checks on Saturday.