Some Chinese are daring to criticise Russia

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to acquire a mass following on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, while being politically careless. A post that annoys the government can result in an account’s sudden closure and with it painful severance from millions of fans. Take Jin Xing, a transgender dancer who was once a colonel in an army entertainment troupe. She had been keeping her page updated with news of her travels in Europe when she took a risk that plunged her into digital darkness.

On March 1st Ms Jin published a post on Weibo that referred to two of the platform’s hottest topics: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the story of a woman in eastern China who had been sold into marriage and was found in chains in a shed. “The most horrifying things of 2022 have been a Chinese woman with an iron chain around her neck saying this world doesn’t want me,” Ms Jin wrote to her more than 13m followers. “The other is a Russian madman saying if you don’t want me to continue as president, I don’t want this world.”