抵制日货 (Boycott Japanese goods / dǐzhì Rìhuò) and 抵制家乐福 (Boycott Carrefour / dǐzhì Jiālèfú) were two separate grassroots movements in recent years aimed at demonstrating Chinese anger at Japan and the French retailer Carrefour, respectively. Though each took place in different years (For Japan: 2005, 2010, and 2012, among others; Carrefour: 2008) and for different reasons (Japan: continuing resentment over atrocities and occupation of parts of China during Sino-Japanese War, the cleansing of textbooks in 2005, former Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi’s annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, disputes over islands in the South China Sea, among others; Carrefour: in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the Olympic torch relay was interrupted several times across the world by human rights protesters, most egregiously in France when the Chinese Paralympic fencer Jin Jing was tackled in her wheelchair while carrying the torch, and Carrefour, whose supermarkets are common in Chinese cities and reportedly also donated to Free Tibet causes, served as a convenient scapegoat), both were inspired by patriotic verging on ultra-nationalist sentiment that played up China’s role as a country that had been victimized in the past but would no longer be bulled.
Why it is blocked: For each event, anger was expressed virtually as well as with demonstrations and a call to boycott goods. In each case, the central government appeared to support initial protests or made no strong efforts to tamp it down, but as demonstrations grew violent and out of control in each instance, the authorities reacted by reining in the outrage (most recently: ”Weibo calls for Japanese boycott to remain rational”; “China moves to quell anti-Japanese demonstrations”). The existence of a block of “Boycott Japanese goods” on Weibo seems to be a legacy of these previous demonstrations and is not new.
