Image by Badiucao, a well-known Chinese Australian artist

While most of the world was still reeling in shock at the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday, disturbing chatter quickly emerged on the giant Chinese social media platforms Weibo and WeChat that celebrated the murder. Hours later, shops began offering celebratory specials and nightclubs held a themed evening. China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has yet to be seen to do anything to effectively quell the celebrations.

Weibo is known to be a heavily government-censored platform and thus, anything that remains on the platform is approved by the CCP. WeChat is similarly monitored and censored. In the few hours after the shooting and while Abe’s death had yet to be formally confirmed, Weibo users were quick to post the following (translation & image courtesy of @MachineGun___):

Chinese Australian artist Badiucao, known for his anti-CCP artwork, provided translations of other social media posts.

Twitter removed some tweets that were of the same nature. However some have still remained.

Images of Chinese retail sales celebrating the assassination have also appeared.

Videos of celebrations in nightclubs have been posted.

In what has been the only sign so far that the CCP does not wish for this nationalist sentiment to become unmanageable, the former editor of the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper Hu Xijin wrote on Weibo that “this is the time to put aside political disputes.” He added, “I hope there can be more people who understand and join me.”

Any Chinese or Hong Kong social media posts that have expressed sympathy for the assassination have been met with a deluge of invective.