Military affairs have recently become a censored topic within the Great Firewall—communist China’s sophisticated internet censorship system, amid the tightened control over speech and information on social media platforms. On March 30, several official accounts that cover military affairs on Chinese social media platform WeChat were suspended on the same day. Among them was the Jiangwutang account run by WeChat’s parent company Tencent and Sina Military, operated by Sina, another dominant social media platform. On March 23, one of the most influential military forums in China, cjdby.net, closed pages that allowed users to discuss military weapons and developments in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), citing problems in previous posts and content management. The abrupt suspension does not offer any further notice or explanation, so the tumult of gossip, surmise, and suspicion that followed was not surprising. Subscribers said on Zhihu, China’s largest online Q&A forum, that they felt lost over the block …