Apparently China is trying to get people to forget about Tiananmen, but it’s market makes memory with numbers.
China has blocked access to the term “Shanghai Composite Index” on some of the country’s most popular microblogging sites.
This was after the index dropped by 64.89 points on Monday.
The numbers correspond to 4 June 1989, the date of the crackdown against protesters at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
A search for “Shanghai Composite Index” on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter resulted in the message: “According to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the results for this search term cannot be displayed”.
The correlation was not limited to just the drop in the stock index.
The market opened at 2,346.98 points, with many bloggers deciphering the 23 as referring to the 23rd anniversary of the crackdown and the rest of the numbers, 46.98, again forming the date of the crackdown, when rearranged.
BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18327767
