In the past few days, Beijing has cut off much of mainland China’s access to both Gmail and Google Search.
Google has a history of drama with China, having removed its offices from mainland China in 2009 over censorship disputes, according to the Washington Post. Since then, Google has been rerouting mainland users to their servers in Hong Kong instead.
But with the new move from Beijing, most people in the mainland will be unable to access these Google services at all. Life without Google? Unthinkable!
In typical Hong Kong fashion, the local netizens’ response has been in the form of a revised meme:
Instead of the now ubiquitous vertical yellow banner proclaiming “I want real universal suffrage“, this update says “I want real Gmail”.
Now that’s a fight we can all agree on.
