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Posted: 2021-04-26T17:10:48Z | Updated: 2021-04-26T18:19:41Z

Chlo Zhaos history-making Oscars sweep, winning best director and best picture, is being met with a muted response in her country of birth, and even censorship.

Zhaos Nomadland is the second film directed by a woman to win a best picture Oscar. She is the first woman of color and second woman ever to win the Oscars for best director .

Yet, in China, where Zhao was born, her history-making success has not been trumpeted or celebrated. State media in China remained silent as of Monday afternoon, with no mention of her win by either CCTV and Xinhua, the two main state-run outlets.

Instead, there was even censorship. A post announcing Zhaos directing win by film magazine Watch Movies, which has over 14 million followers on the ubiquitous Weibo microblog, was censored a few hours after it appeared Monday morning. A hashtag called Chloe Zhao wins Best Director was also censored on the platform with users coming across an error message saying, according to relevant laws and regulations and policies, the page is not found.

Some users resorting to using zt to post about Zhao, using the initials of her full name in Chinese, Zhou Ting. Typing in Zhous name in Chinese on Weibo brought up only unrelated posts from the beginning of April. A search for Oscars showed only official posts from the South Korean and U.S. embassies.

Douban, an app popular with film buffs, banned searches for Nomadland and Zhao Ting saying that the search results could not be displayed in accordance to relevant laws and regulations. Multiple discussion threads about Zhaos win were deleted on the app as well. A news article on WeChat, the largest messaging app in the country, was also deleted.