Online activities

As last year's Qingming fell during the COVID-19 epidemic, the Ministry of Veterans Affairs called on local governments to prevent mass gatherings by holding memorial activities online. Echoing that call, one cemetery after another opened social network accounts and held online activities.

On short-video platform Douyin there are about 200 registered accounts for martyrs' cemeteries, while on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like service, there are 36 full pages of accounts of registered martyrs' cemeteries. Through them, cemetery managements shared videos and showed livestreams of martyrs' graves.

This year, as the outbreak has been largely been brought under control, martyrs' cemeteries nationwide are open to tourists again, but the online activities remain in play.

In addition to physically building infrastructures to honor martyrs and heroes, China has also been legislating to protect them "spiritually" after a series of incidents.

On May 22, 2013, Sun Jie, a micro-blogger with 8.9 million followers, unveiled a post that compared Qiu Shaoyun, a soldier killed by fire bombs during the Korean conflict, to roasted meat. A similar comparison was made about Lai Ning, a 15-year-old boy who died fighting a fire in Ya'an city, Sichuan, in 1988.

JiaDuoBao, a local canned tea drinks company, echoed Sun by saying they would give him 100,000 cans of a tea drink if he opened a barbeque outlet.

Both were sued by Qiu Shaohua, Qiu Shaoyun's younger brother, in 2015. A court in Beijing's Daxing district ruled that the defendants had to apologize and pay "spiritual damages" of 1 yuan (16 cents).

Although Sun's Weibo account was closed and he quickly disappeared from the platform, the incident prompted calls for a law to protect such figures. On April 27, 2018, the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress passed a law to protect heroes and martyrs, which came into effect on May 1 of that year.

Under the law, it is the responsibility of local governments, enterprises, schools and the army to hold memorial activities for martyrs during festivals such as Qingming.

The name and fame of heroes and martyrs are also better protected. Anyone who abuses them faces punishment and penalties.

From March 1, an amendment to the criminal law clearly states that it is a crime to slander martyrs and heroes. Yet that does not mean those who committed the deed before that date can escape criminal penalties.

On Feb 19, Qiu Ziming, a veteran micro-blogger, wrote a piece attacking Qi, the commander in last year's border clash. He was arrested the next day on suspicion of the crime of "seeking trouble".

There was such a strong wave of anger that Pan Rui, a 30-year-old who spread rumors about the PLA during the border clash in June, was the subject of an arrest warrant on March 15.

As complaints poured in against Pan and Qiu, there was also a wave of commemorations for the martyrs on domestic social networks.

On the day their deaths were made public, a poem went viral online:

"I sat at the table/cola in hand/wondering why the young soldiers died/

Late at night I realized/they died so we could live better."

Shi Baoyin and the publicity departments of Luohe city and Yanjin county contributed to this story.