Xinhua's April Fool's Day (Photo : Xinhua)
From Gmail to “Descendants of the Sun,” the world was having a fun day pulling pranks on Friday, April Fool's Day. The only exception to that is China which virtually banned Chinese from fooling around on April 1.
That day, Xinhua News Agency published a warning that April Fool’s Day is inconsistent with China’s socialist core values, reported The Washington Times. It is also not in line with the Asian giant’s cultural tradition, Xinhua wrote on Weibo, China’s largest microblogging site.
Xinhua urged Chinese not to believe rumors, not to spread and not to pass rumors. However, Beijing News asked, “what’s wrong with giving people a holiday to express themselves, joke around and find some release?”
On another website, Huanqiu, WuGang commented, “News released every day makes a fool of ordinary people, so what’s wrong with celebrating April Fool’s Day?” Xie Xingsheng_Big Dipper Academy of Finance Research added, “This must be Xinhua’s April Fool’s Day joke,” quoted The Wall Street Journal.
The message – like an April Fool’s Day joke – became viral on early Friday evening and was reposted more than 11,000 times. But because many Chinese netizens commented negatively on Xinhua’s post, the news agency eventually disabled the comment section of the story.
Associated Press pointed out that the propagandists of China, made up of Xinhua, CCTV and People’s Daily, are notorious at spotting a bad joke and lacks taste for humor. It cited as an example of a bad joke the 2012 article on The Onion, a satirical website, that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was voted the sexiest man alive. People’s Daily published the article and a photo of the obese leader.
