Leica China video sparks setback over Tiananmen Square image

A promotional video for the camera company Leica has triggered setbacks in China to have a well-known Tiananmen square.

The video depicts photographers working in conflicts around the world, including a photographer covering the 1[ads1]989 protests.

People at Chinese social media site Weibo have requested a boycott of the camera brand.

Leica has distanced herself from the video.

"Tank Man" was a lonely protester who stopped a column of tanks during a breakdown of protesters in Beijing in 1989.

He refused to move out of the way and climbed the leader tank to talk to the driver. He was later pulled away from the scene by two men. What happened to him is still unknown.

Beginning with the caption "Beijing 1989", the Leica video has a photographer who takes the famous picture. The tank man can be seen in the camera's lens.

Users on Chinese social media site We have not been banned from commenting on the latest official posts from Leica. However, some people manage to post carefully formulated comments to previous official Leica posts, BBC Monitoring has found.

A search of hashtag Leica shows that 42,000 users have left posts on Weibo, but only 10 are available to view.

Some comments encourage users to "boycott the camera" and joke that the company is associated with "patriotic Huawei".

The Chinese technology giant Huawei has been confined by the United States and other countries over security issues in telecommunications networks. Consumers in China have rallied around the company, which uses the Leica technology in their latest mobile phones.

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A spokesman for Leica told South China Morning Post that the film was not an officially approved marketing film commissioned by the company. But it has Leica cameras and the company's logo at the end of the movie.

They added that the company "must therefore abstain from the content shown in the video and regret any misunderstandings of false conclusions that may have been drawn."

The BBC has contacted Leica for further comment.

How China Holds Heavenly Men Out Of The Internet

By Kerry Allen, BBC Monitoring China Analyst

China has banned all activists' memorials from Heavenly Event in 1989 and has strictly regulated online discussion about it.

If users search for "Tiananmen" on domestic search engines like Baidu or social media, such as Sina Weibo, they only see sunny pictures of the Forbidden City in Beijing. If some pictures of thoughts running along Chang & # 39; an Avenue are visible in image search, they are only from the Victory Day parades.

Hundreds of references to June 4, 1989 are banned year-round by thousands of cyber police, and Weibo corrects censorship of even seemingly innocent references to the event on the anniversary.

Simple light emitting modes, and the number of sequences referring to the date, such as "46" and "64" (June 4) and "1989" (protest year), are immediately deleted. Small businesses also struggle to market goods on June 4 every year, if the selling price is 46 or 64 yuan. Such advertising items are quickly removed by nerve sensors.

But creative users always find ways to bypass the censorship. For example, in 2014, when Taylor Swift released his 1989 album, the album covers with the words "T.S." and "1989" was seen as an effective metaphor of users talking about the event – like T.S. may be taken to mean "celestial peace".

More than a million Chinese students and workers occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989, and began the greatest political protest in communist China's history. Six weeks of protests ended with the bloody rebellion against protesters from 3-4 June.

Estimates of the death toll range from hundreds to more than 1000.

China's statement at the end of June 1989 said that 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel had died in Beijing after suppressing "counter-revolutionary rebellion" on June 4, 1989.