2016 Chinese memes war on Facebook

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2016 Netizens from Mainland China "Invading" Facebook
Traditional Chinese 2016年中國大陸網民「出征」Facebook事件
Simplified Chinese 2016年中国大陆网民“出征”Facebook事件
Literal meaning 2016 event that netizens from mainland China "invade" Facebook
Memes War on Facebook
Traditional Chinese Facebook表情包大戰
Simplified Chinese Facebook表情包大战
Literal meaning memes war on Facebook
Di Ba invading Facebook
Chinese 帝吧出征Facebook事件
Literal meaning the event that Di Ba invades Facebook

The 2016 Chinese memes war on Facebook, also known as War of Biaoqingbao[citation needed] (表情包大战), is an online campaign to flood the Facebook pages of Taiwan president-elect Tsai Ing-wen, Apple Daily (蘋果日報) and SET News (三立新聞) with pro-China messages protesting against the Taiwan independence movement. The action was mainly organized by a popular Chinese online forum "Li Yi Tieba" (李毅吧), also called "Di Ba" (帝吧), which has a membership of 21 million netizens.[1] A large group of self-proclaimed organized "warriors" made a concerted effort to circumvent Internet controls and posted thousands of messages, in a campaign that lasted for weeks.

The conflict was initiated when a Taiwanese teenage pop star Chou Tzu-yu waved the national flag of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in a South Korean TV show. For years, People's Republic of China stated that Taiwan had been an inseparable part of China since ancient times, although Taiwan has been self-ruled since the 1949 split.[2] The Taiwan presidential election was held during the online conflict, which largely exacerbated the event. Netizens bypassed the Great Firewall of China and left messages and memes on various Facebook pages, claiming that Taiwan is part of China while also demonstrating the scenery, food, poetry and political ideologies of China.

The campaign is viewed in China as a way of cross-strait communication that later became a carnival, a so-called "fun normal incident" that showcased the young people's passion for politics.[1][3]

Background[edit]

Zhou ZiYu event caused the online conflict between Mainlander(people from Mainland of China) and Taiwanese which is known as memes war. In November 2015, Zhou ZiYu waved the flag of the Republic of China(ROC) on a Korean TV show[4] and claimed that she comes from Taiwan.[5] Although another singer Jackson Wang,who comes from HongKong remained her that it is Taiwan province of China, she ignored. On the official website of JYP entertainment, her nationality was also introduced as "TaiWan" but not China,even not ROC,[6] although Taiwan is not a country and cannot be claimed as the nationality of anyone.Republic of Korea (South Korea) and People's Republic of China established diplomatic relationship with each other on 1992 and the communique of establishment of diplomatic relationship between ROK and PRC acknowledges that South Korea admits one China policy and Taiwan is a part of China.[7]

JYP entertainment, as a Korean company, introduced Taiwan as Zhou ZiYu's nationality on its' official website, and this was considered disrespectful by the Chinese. At the same time,some Taiwan medias tried to provoke mainland of China. Taiwan SET NEWS reported the waving of flag of ROC in a defiant way---"natural beauty ZiYu waved national flag of Taiwan, people of the STRONG COUNTRY get heart-broken again",[8][9][10] although SET News claims that the flag of ROC is national flag of Taiwan and uses derogatory term to imply mainland of China, this report was not noticed by most people in mainland and almost did not provoke any reflections from mainland. After that, a Taiwanese, Huang An, who anti-Taiwan Independence reported this situation on Sina Weibo (the most popular social platform in China), and then deleted this Weibo soon because fans of Zhou ZiYu explained to him that Zhou ZiYu did not do that on purpose and she is just a 16-year-old kid.[11] Until that time, it was not even an issue in China. However, some Taiwan media did not stop provoking and insulting mainland of China, from November 2015 to December 2015, SET News published several reports about this issue and used words such as" vitreous heart of China", "people in mainland crashed","the STRONG COUNTRY got heart-brokean" as titles of those reports.[8][9][10][12][13] However, the provocation from Taiwan media still did not even noticed by most people in mainland because Zhou ZiYu hadn't had any activity in mainland China as a public figure until An Hui satellite TV invited her to perform in Spring Festival Gala.

After An Hui satellite published this news, more Chinese began to notice the issue about Zhou ZiYu, the provocation from Taiwan media and the nationality of Zhou ZiYu on official website of JYP. Some Chinese began to protest to An Hui satellite TV and JYP about this issue. Both of An Hui satellite TV and JYP did not reflect to the protest and JYP even used ignorance as strategy,[14][15] which caused more anger. After Zhou ZiYu arrived Beijing, Taiwan media, again, insulted people in mainland.[16] And this time, the reports of Taiwan media really provoked the anger of people in mainland China about this issue, An Hui satellite TV and some other television stations stopped the cooperation with JYP. With the event getting more serious, more and more Chinese begin to boycott JYP and Zhou ZiYu which caused that almost all cooperation of JYP in Chinese market are stopped. the shares of JYP began to drop sharply on 14 January 2016.[17] And as the video of the apology from Zhou ZiYu to China was published on 15 January 2016. In this video, Zhou ZiYu holds a paper and read the apology.[18] a Chinese celebrity, Lin GengXin reposted this video and wrote comment that " the apology comes too soon, I haven't recited the manuscript yet".[19] Then Taiwanese began to abuses him on Facebook.[20] People from mainland of China reacted to that very soon and uses huge number of memes to beat back.

Events[edit]

The most well-known online crusade is organised by Di Ba. Members of Di Ba—one of the largest message boards on the internet with more than 20 million members[21]—would organise into groups, leap over the Great Firewall to reach Facebook, and flood it with the message that Taiwan is part of China. Their war chant: 'Di Ba goes to battle. Nothing will grow.'[22] For most of the day "Di Ba's Facebook battle" has been at the top of the list of searched terms on Weibo, a Chinese microblog site similar to Twitter. Information also spread suggesting that Di Ba's battle was organized and well-prepared. Di Ba's leaders encouraged posters to be "civilized," attacking the idea of Taiwanese independence, rather than individuals or the Taiwanese people.Some posts were indeed somewhat civilized, with several posts expressing a kind of sadness over Taiwan’s rejection of China and unwillingness to unify.Screenshots showed that attackers were separated into six "columns," in the military sense: information gathering; posting; writing opinions and creating images; translation; miscellaneous Facebook tasks such as liking posts; and a vanguard to head things up.[23]

After 7p.m. Wednesday (20th Jan), numerous Chinese netizens got around China's internet controls and flooded the Facebook pages of SET News, Apple Daily and then Tsai Ing-wen with anti-Taiwan independence messages.[21] The campaign also targeted the pages of organisations including several Taiwan and Hong Kong media as well as the British Broadcasting Corporation and individuals (pop star) such as Chou Tzu-yu, Denise Ho, Lin Gengxin and Show Luo.[22]

Mainland Internet users started to post anti-Taiwan independence comments on these Facebook pages, many repeatedly with cartoon images with text on them, long excerpts from Chinese Communist Party propaganda such as 'eight honours and eight shames', declarations that Taiwan 'belongs to China', poetry with the sentimentality of the nostalgia and lament for motherland and even images of Chinese food that not native to Taiwan.[22]

Many of these comments indicates that Taiwan is a part of China, which try to underlines the Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as a united national identity.[2]

Tsai Ing-wen, as the leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) which favours independence from China, has been elected as Taiwan's first female president.[24] However, others referred to Ms. Tsai as 'Taiwan province governor'.[25]

Only eight hours after the online posters began their coordinated effort, there are more 40,000 comments posted on Ms. Tsai's official Facebook page,[21] and one day after, by Thursday, more than 4,200 Inter users were involved in this event.[26]

Use of image macros[edit]

During the event, abundant image macros (known as Chinese Biaoqingbao) has been largely used by Mainland netizens as well as the Taiwan Internet users. A series of those images depicted a cartoon with the face of a man, often Hong Kong actor Jacky Cheung in a scene from As Tears Go By. The mainland netizens attempted to deliver an altitude of disdain towards Taiwanese seeking independence through this specific expression of Cheung.

In addition, those images posted often with a theme of Taiwan's poor sense of filial piety to its 'father', mainland China.[22] For example, some images captioned with text like 'Don' talk back to your father', 'How dare you speak to your mainland father in this way!', or 'Your mainland father will fix you!'.[21] The Chinese Internet always considers mainland as the cultural and kinship origins of the Taiwan.

Moreover, there are a bunch of these image macros have text of the phrase of 'for X use only', such as 'for attacking Taiwanese independence only', 'for father's use only' as well as 'made in China', which appears to preserve a kind of 'copyright'. According to the mainlanders, it is a measure taken after Taiwanese's plagiarising their images.[27] However, many western media read this as a declaration of Chinese integrity of the sovereignty and its superiority as origin.[22] There is a familiar argument, presented by many Chinese netizens, that Taiwan has a same cultural background of mainland China. For example, here is a comment on Mr.Tsai's Facebook page (in Chinese):

Those who support Taiwanese independence, stop acting so superior. What things do you have that are your own? Isn't your so-called Taiwanese [language] from Fujian province? Didn't your food culture come from Chinese culture? What reason do you have to be superior?[28]

Chinese memes, also known as 表情包 (pinyin: Biaoqingbao) in Chinese, are one representation of the phenomenon of Internet memes.[29] Similar to the global memes, 'a virally transmitted cultural symbol or social idea';[30] Chinese memes, as indicated by the literal translation of the term as "expression package", are used for various expressive purposes, which has become an increasingly popular culture and gained steady popularity with various Chinese social media software and platforms. A such meme is usually constituted by a graphic (usually taken from celebrities' pictures, famous films and TVs, etc.) and a caption (excerpted from well-recognizable quotations or improvised by the user). It's usually used to express certain emotions.[31] Specifically, in 2015, the one of top Chinese memes, called Ye Liangchen's edition. Ye Liangchen is a guy who became popular in Weibo in September 2015 by a set of screenshots of conversation records. In those screenshots, Ye Liangchen tried to intervene the public hygiene issue of a quail-roost, and his words is extreme emotional and arrogant, which is not usually appealed in people's daily dialogue. For example, 'All you need to remember is, I am Ye Liangchen'; 'Don't push me to go find you; I'm a local resident, I got at least 100 way to kick you out'; 'I don't mind your provocation, if you assume you have that ability'.[32]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Facebook trolling, military drills: China responds to Taiwan's new president". 
  2. ^ a b "Chinese flood Taiwan president-elect's Facebook, demanding return to China". 
  3. ^ "亲自参加两岸Facebook"表情包大战"是一种什么样的体验？". 
  4. ^ "%E5%91%A8%E5%AD%90%E7%91%9C%20%E6%8C%A5%E8%88%9E%E5%9B%BD%E6%97%97的搜索结果_百度图片搜索". image.baidu.com. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  5. ^ "【中字】 160108 回头看我 Jackson 子瑜cut_土豆_高清视频在线观看". www.tudou.com. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  6. ^ "JYP%E5%AE%98%E7%BD%91 %E5%91%A8%E5%AD%90%E7%91%9C %E5%9B%BD%E7%B1%8D - Google Search". www.google.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  7. ^ "中韩建交联合公报（1992年8月24日）". news.xinhuanet.com. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  8. ^ a b "「天然美女」子瑜錄影揮台國旗 網友：強國人玻璃心又碎了 | 娛樂 | 三立新聞網 SETN.COM". Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  9. ^ a b "挺台灣！周子瑜舉國旗惹怒強國人 韓網友：不然要拿什麼？ | 娛樂 | 三立新聞網 SETN.COM". Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  10. ^ a b "玻璃心再進階！周子瑜揮台灣國旗 強國人：沒差那只是區旗 | 娛樂 | 三立新聞網 SETN.COM". Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  11. ^ "%E9%BB%84%E5%AE%89 %E5%91%A8%E5%AD%90%E7%91%9C%E7%B2%89%E4%B8%9D%E7%A7%81%E4%BF%A1 - Google Search". www.google.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  12. ^ "影／大陸網友又崩潰！「台灣NO.1」老外玩家出新招 | 新奇 | 三立新聞網 SETN.COM". Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  13. ^ "2015台灣最紅的妞就是她！周子瑜爆紅南韓震碎玻璃心 | 娛樂 | 三立新聞網 SETN.COM". Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  14. ^ "JYP 事件回顾_切尔西吧_百度贴吧". tieba.baidu.com. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  15. ^ "JYP%E5%AE%98%E7%BD%91 %E5%91%A8%E5%AD%90%E7%91%9C %E5%9B%BD%E7%B1%8D - Google Search". www.google.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  16. ^ 自由娛樂. "強國網友嗆封殺 子瑜照飛北京 - 自由娛樂". ent.ltn.com.tw. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  17. ^ 自由娛樂. "止不了血！ JYP股價1日蒸發2.4億 - 自由娛樂". ent.ltn.com.tw. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
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  28. ^ "選後第一次民進黨中常會，我謝謝大家在選舉中的幫忙，大家都辛苦了，未來，我們有更艱鉅... - 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen | Facebook". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2016-02-16. 
  29. ^ the internet memesRetrieved 2016-02-16.
  30. ^ Gil, P (2016) What Is a 'Meme'? What Are Examples of Modern Internet Memes? About.com. Retrieved 2016-2-16
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  32. ^ 叶良辰什么梗 – 与赵日天五五开的男人，附良辰体和微信截图 prefershare Retrieved 2016-02-16.
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