The following English-language post by Chinese historian Lei Yi (雷颐) was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 3:32am Hong Kong time today, April 2, 2012. Lei Yi currently has just over 92,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Mr. Heywood’s relationship with the family became especially close after he played a key role in organizing a place for Mr. Bo’s son, Guagua, at Harrow, an exclusive British private school that usually requires entrants to be on a waiting list from birth, and helping to …
Lei Yi’s post is an English excerpt from a Wall Street Journal report about the suspicious death in Chongqing in November last year of British national Neil Heywood, who was believed to be close to the family of Chongqing’s former top leader, Bo Xilai (薄熙来).
The deletion of this English-language post can be read as an indication that while Chinese-language information remains the chief priority for censors on social media, English-language content is also reviewed.
NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.
