Chinese Communist Party Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian speaks during a regular press conference in Beijing, April 8, 2020.
Li Yang, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Consul General in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, recently sent a tweet insulting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, causing an outcry in Western public opinion. At a regular press conference at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, a Western media reporter asked Chinese spokesman Zhao Lijian to explain the term “running dog” used by Li Yang, but Zhao declined to comment with a cold expression.
On Friday (April 2), a video of a journalist asking Zhao Lijian to explain Li Yang’s insult to Trudeau surfaced on Twitter, sparking a firestorm of debate among netizens.
The video shows an English-speaking journalist at the press conference, first repeating the full text of Li Yang’s insult to Trudeau on Twitter, and then asking two questions: First, is it now accepted practice in the Chinese Foreign Ministry to refer to leaders of other countries as “boy”? Secondly, there may be people in Canada who don’t understand the word “running dog,” “Can you explain what’s running? And what does dog mean?”
In the process of this reporter’s question, Zhao Lijian expression indifferent, head down casually fiddling with the information in hand, and from time to time raised his head to look blankly. When the reporter finished his question, Zhao was silent for a few seconds before responding, “You’re talking about his personal Twitter feed, we generally don’t comment on related content.”
On March 28, Li Yang uploaded a photo of Trudeau to his Twitter account while tweeting, “Boy, your greatest achievement is to screw up friendly relations between China and Canada and reduce Canada to a lapdog of the United States. Loser!!!” As a high-ranking diplomat, Li Yang blatantly disregarded basic diplomatic etiquette by insulting the leader of another country, a move unanimously condemned by Western democracies.
Now, when Western media reporters asked Zhao Lijian to explain Li Yang’s insulting words to Trudeau, Zhao indifferently refused to comment, without any intention to reflect and admit his mistake, which once again attracted many overseas Chinese netizens’ denunciation.
(Screenshot of Twitter page)
After the incident in which Li Yang insulted Trudeau, Wang Lu, president of the Canadian Association for the Promotion of Civic Power, had publicly called on Ottawa to take a stand in protest, saying bluntly, “Now this kind of war wolf, it’s really a disgrace to us, the world’s Chinese are embarrassed, it’s hard for us to live here Chinese ah!”
Wang Lu also mocked the extent of China’s “diplomatic etiquette lessons” by looking at Li Yang’s description of Canada and Trudeau.
Lin Wen, co-founder of the Chinese Canadian Council on Political Affairs, told Radio Free Asia that the Chinese Communist Party diplomats are now frequently putting on a war-wolf show, which is, frankly speaking, a show for their own political future. He analyzed, “It must be an instruction from Zhongnanhai, and it is possible that whoever scolds fiercely and performs well will be promoted and rewarded.”
Lin Wen believes that it should be that the Chinese Communist Party officials know that the Canadian government will not intervene in Meng’s case anyway, so they have to perform the war wolf through the Chinese Communist diplomats, “just to appease the emotions of some brain-damaged little pinkies at home.
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