Prankster punished for WeChat post declaring holiday on Apr 1st

In an apparent April Fool’s Day “prank” gone wrong, a Henan man is facing punishment for a social media post in which he announced that the provincial capital of Zhengzhou had declared a citywide “holiday.”

On April 1st, an “emergency notice” from the city’s “centers for disease control” made the rounds on local WeChat groups. The notice claimed that a one day holiday had been proclaimed in Zhengzhou due to some temporary traffic controls.

Of course, this notice came not from the CDC but from a man surnamed Zhao working in the city’s high-tech zone. Evidently, Zhao created the notice and shared it with his circle of friends on WeChat, who then passed it on to a wider audience, reports dahe.cn.

For his “prank,” local authorities said that Zhao will be punished for “spreading rumors.”

“Spreading rumors” is a favorite catch-all term used to prosecute those for disseminating misinformation on the internet about things like the Tianjin blasts and avian flu. Punishment varies depending on how widely the rumors are circulated, but the offense can result in a prison sentence of three years or more.

For these sorts of reasons, April Fool’s Day isn’t really a thing in China and Chinese state media have argued that it should stay that way. Back in 2016, China’s official Xinhua news agency told its followers on Weibo: “April Fool’s Day is not in keeping with our national cultural tradition or socialist core values. Please do not believe, create or spread rumors.”

However, China’s state media itself is at least guilty of believing the occasional rumor or hoax.

Most infamously, in 2012, People’s Daily reported that Kim Jong-un had been named “Sexiest Man Alive,” citing The Onion. The outlet went so far as to run a full 55-page photo spread online showing off the Pyongyang-bred heartthrob’s “devastatingly handsome, round face, his boyish charm and his strong, sturdy frame,” before realizing that they had been had.

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