The official Weibo account of the Graduate Student Union at Shanghai Jiao Tong University published selected entries from the 2022 International Competition in Short Chinese Poems for College Students. Some poems sparked widespread public attention for their veiled critiques of pandemic control, social injustice, and linguistic violence.
Several of these works were censored or restricted on Weibo, and at one point, the contest’s promotional posts were entirely deleted. Amid public controversy, the Graduate Student Union removed the relevant posts in December 2022, and the competition’s official website became inaccessible—raising broader concerns about creative freedom and the shrinking space for expression within Chinese universities.