Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disappointed Western observers with Beijing’s initial response, writes the Guardian’s China affairs correspondent Vincent Ni. On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying stressed that the situation has a “complex historical background”. She He also refused to use the word “attack”.
Russia’s act clearly violated China’s own position that sovereignty is sacrosanct. For example, Beijing often gives this discourse when it talks about Taiwan. But on the other hand, Beijing also takes issue with Putin’s opposite side: the US and NATO in this crisis. So far, on the scale of Beijing, the latter appears to be heavy in sending its message.
This dynamic is fully featured on China’s social media platforms. As of Tuesday afternoon, at least seven of the top ten “most searched topics” on Weibo are related to the crisis in Ukraine. Of course, Taiwan was also included in this list.
At the moment, the most searched topic is the situation in Ukraine. Hashtags: #Follow the latest developments in the situation in Russia and Ukraine Has been read at least 1.57bn times. The latest entry under this hashtag is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has decided to break diplomatic relations with Russia. Factual reporting with user comments (though many of them seem pro-Russia).
Write # on the second and seventh topic in the listNATO still owes China’s blood And #America is not qualified to tell China what it should do, The two hashtags have now been read more than 200 million times. Clearly, Beijing has found a good opportunity to remind Chinese netizens what happened more than 20 years ago.
On May 7, 1999, NATO missiles struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and set it on fire in an earlier attack, killing three Chinese civilians. The US said that it was a mistake due to the old map, but China was never convinced. At the time, it was a huge event in China that led to rare anti-US protests.
Meanwhile, Taiwan is also in the headlines on Chinese social media. Much attention has been paid to the democratically-run island’s future in recent weeks as analysts see parallels to the Ukraine crisis. The related hashtag has been read over 600,000 times so far.
China’s defense ministry spoke about Taiwan today, but its main target was what it called “Taiwan’s separatist and independence forces.” Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen made the remarks yesterday, urging its citizens to be “vigilant”. Unsurprisingly, on today’s Chinese internet, such remarks again fueled much nationalism.