Toads, spectacles and the word “grandpa” figure in posts by people in China as they remember the late Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and try to avoid the censors.

Members of China’s top leadership have never had individual accounts on local social media platforms and posts about them are routinely heavily filtered, to avoid people leaving messages critical of the Communist Party government.

As a result, there has long been intense censorship of Jiang Zemin online.

His death coincides with a wave of protests against the authorities’ “zero-Covid” policy – an outpouring of frustration over frequent lockdowns, and some have chanted anti-government slogans.

Media posts about Mr Jiang’s death show that millions of social media users have left comments – most of which are positive.

But only a handful are available to view, and a search on Sina Weibo for “Jiang Zemin” only shows some 250 posts, all from government media accounts.

The Communist Party appears to want people to see comments from users wishing him “a good journey” to the afterlife. The majority of visible posts include a candle emoji, which is a common way of commemorating someone who has died.

For users to talk at a more personal level about what he meant to them, they have had to coin nicknames.