WeChat, China’s most widely used social network, has removed its smoking emoji amid pressure from anti-smoking advocates, reports China Film Insider.

The soldier face emoji, which, up until recently, featured a cigar, is now sporting sunglasses alongside its trademark army-green helmet. The change came with WeChat’s Version 8.0.0 update earlier in the year reports China Film Insider.
The updated emoji was mentioned on microblogging platform Weibo by WeChat’s parent company Tencent who drew attention to the new version by circling it in the app’s emoji library and posting a single line of text: “Recently… quit smoking.”
Anti-smoking campaigners have been putting the pressure on WeChat for years asking for the removal of the emoji but unlike other social media platforms such as QQ and Weibo who ditched their tobacco-using emojis back in 2017 the company had remained undeterred up until now.
According to China Film Insider, WeChat declined an interview request and employees were asked not to discuss the matter with the media.