The official Chinese media outlet Global Times topped the video on its English Twitter account to ensure as many users as possible saw its message: the image of the storming of the U.S. Capitol was spliced with an image of the storming of the Hong Kong Legislative Council during the pro-democracy protest movement in July 2019, with the tagline, “Similar images, U.S. politicians and media use different language.” Editor-in-chief Hu Xijin accused this “such a bizarre double standard” and demanded “condemnation of all illegal and violent activities.”
On Chinese social media, which is subject to strict press censorship, many users were amused by the impact on the U.S. Congress. Some wrote that the images of violence on Capitol Hill were “a beautiful sight” – a jab at House Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who used the phrase in July 2019 when talking about Hong Kong. However, she was referring to the human chain formed by Hong Kong people holding candles as they commemorated the 30th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, not to the violence of some Hong Kong protesters, as repeatedly and erroneously reported by Chinese media. Weibo accusations that the West was being double-moral, comparing events in Washington to those in Hong Kong, received thousands of likes.
The images of the storming of the Legislative Council were circulated around the world at the time, and it is a matter of opinion whether this was a blessing or a curse for the Hong Kong protesters. Incidentally, these different views can also be found in the Western media. In the Communist-controlled media, the opposite is true. The Chinese official media has purposefully reported the Hong Kong protest movement in a completely biased way, calling it nothing more than chaos. More importantly, however, people are confronted with two completely different events.
Philipp Bilsky, commentator for Deutsche Welle
In Hong Kong, people are taking to the streets because their right to freedom is increasingly being emasculated, the independent judiciary is being panned, freedom of the press and expression is increasingly clamped down, and democratic participation is being de facto abolished. Just this Wednesday (January 6), more than 50 former legislators, activists and District Council members were arrested in Hong Kong. Their crime: having participated in a pre-election to be able to fight for their interests in the Legislative Council by peaceful and democratic means in the event of a future victory.
In contrast, in Washington, a group of people stormed Congress in an effort to overturn the results of a presidential election that was recognized as free and fair. These people are either living in an information bubble and have been denied fact-based news for a long time; or, they simply do not want to accept the fact that they have lost.
Double morality? A parallel comparison between the Washington and Hong Kong scenarios? A travesty.
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