A social media post from China’s top law enforcement agency juxtaposing the country’s successful launch of a module into space with grim cremation pyres in India was removed after it sparked criticism online in China.
Photos of the launch of the Tianhe module and its burning of fuel were compared to what appeared to be an open air mass cremation in India, captioned “China lighting a fire versus India lighting a fire.” The posting on Saturday by the Communist Party Central Commission for Legal and Political Affairs on its official Sina Weibo account was accompanied by a hashtag noting that new COVID-19 cases in India had exceeded 400,000 per day.
Later that day, the post could no longer be found. Many Chinese social media users expressed shock and anger at the post’s insensitivity.
“We hope that everyone will pay attention to the Chinese government and the general public opinion that supports India’s fight against the epidemic,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in response to a request for comment. The ministry spokesman’s office added that more supplies will continue to be shipped to India in the coming days, demonstrating China’s support through practical actions.
Official social media accounts should “hold high the flag of humanitarianism at this time, show sympathy for India, and firmly place Chinese society on high moral ground,” wrote Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the newspaper. Global Times, backed by the Communist Party, commenting on the deleted post. Hu said such methods were not an appropriate way for official social media accounts to gain traffic.
“I don’t think we can expect clarification from the Party account in question, but I think there was no consensus on this post or it wouldn’t have been removed so quickly,” said Manya Koetse, editor-in-chief of What’s On Weibo, a site that tracks trends on the social media platform.
Ties between China and India have been shaky in recent months. A border dispute that killed dozens last year and damaged economic ties between the two nations has stoked nationalist sentiment in both countries. Tensions persist despite ongoing high-level talks, with India more recently urging an early disengagement from all sticking points along the border.
That didn’t stop President Xi Jinping from sending a message of condolence to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday and offering to provide assistance to help the South Asian country deal with a fierce increase in COVID-19 cases. .
Another deleted post that first appeared on Friday compared China’s “fire god mountain,” the name of the emergency hospital complex built in Wuhan, to a photo of a mass cremation in India on the Ministry’s official Weibo account. of Public Security of China. It was also criticized, and users of social networks consider it to be “morally problematic”.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday that the Chinese Red Cross Society, local governments, non-governmental organizations and Chinese companies are “doing everything possible to collect supplies against the epidemic that India urgently needs and deliver them to the people as soon as possible ”.
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