Sentiment Against Foreigners Flares in China
A screen grab from a video that is said to show a British man, accused of sexually assaulting a woman in Beijing, as he was trapped and beaten by Chinese men.
Two of China's largest Internet companies are urging users to help crack down on "misbehaving foreigners," the state-run People's Daily reported on Friday, after a high-profile case of sexual assault by a British man in Beijing last week and amid a push by the authorities to rein in foreigners illegally in the country.
The companies, the search giant Baidu and the huge social media hub Sina Weibo, have joined to call for users "to expose bad behavior by foreigners in China," according to the report, which follows fury online after the alleged assault earlier this month that has galvanized social media anger in China.
Video posted on the Chinese video-sharing site Youku last week is said to have been recorded during the assault on a woman in Beijing. In the clip, which has been viewed millions of times already, the woman can be heard saying, "Help! I don't know him," in reference to the assailant. Chinese men then appear to attack the man, identified in a report from Xinhua, the state news agency, as an intoxicated British national with a tourist visa.
The video shows only parts of a fight between the Chinese men and the foreigner. By the end of the clip, the British man is in the street, barely moving, his shirt torn. It was not clear who made the recording or who edited and posted it.
A torrent of online comments, many of them obscene, celebrated the apparent actions of the Chinese men, according to a selection of responses translated by the blog Ministry of Tofu.
vera-vera-c: Isn't this too audacious and licentious?! Actually, can our country at least try to control or reduce the population of foreign expats? They have come and occupied all the good places. The country, already packed with people, is now (accommodating) so many foreign nationals. So this won't stop until we are crammed to death?!
sO__Dan: The blows were way too light.
nic-yang: He had the gall to play the bully on the Chinese territory! Beat him! Give him a good beating! Great job, Beijing bros!
More than one of the comments also connected the actions of the drunk foreigner in China with anger over the perceived lack of international respect for Chinese sovereignty behind a territorial dispute with the Philippines over a shoal in the sea between the two nations. According to the Ministry of Tofu, one of the comments posted on Weibo in response to the clip came from a blogger named Taufpate, who said: "Let's keep sharing this video. I was so upset when I was watching the video. The Philippines is bullying China. Fine. Now this "¦ foreigner has even come to our own land and bullied the Chinese girl!"
The blog China Smack translated similar comments as well as a statement posted on the verified Weibo account of the Beijing police department, which is investigating the incident. The police statement said:
From police investigations, on 2012 May 8th around 11 p.m., a foreign national male began molesting a woman in public after drinking. When passersby saw, they stopped him and called the police. The police immediately rushed to the scene and arrested the man. Afterward, the police put him in a detainment room for him to sober up and is currently being detained for investigation in accordance to law. This man is a British national and holds a tourist visa. At present, this case is currently in legal proceedings.
A handful of online commenters took a contrary view, claiming that the alleged assault may have to be a setup to ensnare the drunk foreign man, possibly to extort him. Another blog, Beijing Cream, said the men who attacked the Briton may also have been arrested though no police statement to that effect appears to have been issued.
The episode came days before a push by authorities in the Chinese capital against foreigners who enter the country illegally, overstay their visas or work without the proper papers. Global Times, the nationalistic state-run newspaper, linked the alleged assault and others like it to the clampdown on visa scofflaws that began this week in Beijing.
Authorities are encouraging residents who know of foreigners staying illegally in the country to report those violations to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. The report on the news organization's English-language site singled out the Sanlitun area of the capital — where numerous embassies, high-end shops and bars catering to Westerners are situated — as one of the "key places" for residents to be on the look out for foreigners there illegally.
According to a Xinhua report:
The campaign, which will run until the end of August, will include household checks in Wangjing, Sanlitun and Wudaokou, areas of the city known for their high concentration of foreign residents, as well as on-the-spot street checks that will require foreigners to present valid identification, according to a spokesman from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.
A day after the campaign began, the host of an English-language program on China Central Television, Yang Rui, applauded the effort in a strongly-worded post on the social media site Weibo, according to a translation by Global Times highlighted by flabbergasted foreign journalists in China.
"The Ministry of Public Security is getting rid of foreign trash right now, arresting foreign scum and protecting innocent Chinese girls from them," read the post on Mr. Yang's Weibo account. "Foreigners who can't find a job in their home country come to China and get involved in illegal business activities such as human trafficking and espionage; they also like to distribute lies which discredit China to persuade locals to move abroad."
The Economist's Gady Epstein said that Mr. Yang later softened his town in a later post, suggesting "we must guard against xenophobia."
Gady Epstein@gadyepstein
Yang Rui walks back slightly in most recent Weibo post with: "but we must guard against xenophobia" weibo.com/1348026261/yjJ"¦
18 May 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Jonathan Watts, an Asia correspondent for The Guardian, observed that Mr. Yang, a television personality who has interviewed prominent foreigners including President Bill Clinton on his show, Dialogue, has seen himself as a representative of China to the outside world.
jonathanwatts@jonathanwatts
The same Yang Rui who claimed "I remind myself that I don't just represent myself, I represent the country's image." bit.ly/KnKN1y
18 May 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Along the same lines, Global Times published a comment on Monday by Tom Fearon, who called for a dialing down of rhetoric against foreigners online. "The incident has shed light on a number of things, not least of all how deep the divide runs between Chinese and foreigners," wrote Mr. Fearon, who appears from an online profile to be an editor at the paper. "There were no winners in last week's video."
A screen grab from a video that is said to show a British man, accused of sexually assaulting a woman in Beijing, as he was trapped and beaten by Chinese men.
Two of China's largest Internet companies are urging users to help crack down on "misbehaving foreigners," the state-run People's Daily reported on Friday, after a high-profile case of sexual assault by a British man in Beijing last week and amid a push by the authorities to rein in foreigners illegally in the country.
The companies, the search giant Baidu and the huge social media hub Sina Weibo, have joined to call for users "to expose bad behavior by foreigners in China," according to the report, which follows fury online after the alleged assault earlier this month that has galvanized social media anger in China.
Video posted on the Chinese video-sharing site Youku last week is said to have been recorded during the assault on a woman in Beijing. In the clip, which has been viewed millions of times already, the woman can be heard saying, "Help! I don't know him," in reference to the assailant. Chinese men then appear to attack the man, identified in a report from Xinhua, the state news agency, as an intoxicated British national with a tourist visa.
The video shows only parts of a fight between the Chinese men and the foreigner. By the end of the clip, the British man is in the street, barely moving, his shirt torn. It was not clear who made the recording or who edited and posted it.
A torrent of online comments, many of them obscene, celebrated the apparent actions of the Chinese men, according to a selection of responses translated by the blog Ministry of Tofu.
vera-vera-c: Isn't this too audacious and licentious?! Actually, can our country at least try to control or reduce the population of foreign expats? They have come and occupied all the good places. The country, already packed with people, is now (accommodating) so many foreign nationals. So this won't stop until we are crammed to death?!
sO__Dan: The blows were way too light.
nic-yang: He had the gall to play the bully on the Chinese territory! Beat him! Give him a good beating! Great job, Beijing bros!
More than one of the comments also connected the actions of the drunk foreigner in China with anger over the perceived lack of international respect for Chinese sovereignty behind a territorial dispute with the Philippines over a shoal in the sea between the two nations. According to the Ministry of Tofu, one of the comments posted on Weibo in response to the clip came from a blogger named Taufpate, who said: "Let's keep sharing this video. I was so upset when I was watching the video. The Philippines is bullying China. Fine. Now this "¦ foreigner has even come to our own land and bullied the Chinese girl!"
The blog China Smack translated similar comments as well as a statement posted on the verified Weibo account of the Beijing police department, which is investigating the incident. The police statement said:
From police investigations, on 2012 May 8th around 11 p.m., a foreign national male began molesting a woman in public after drinking. When passersby saw, they stopped him and called the police. The police immediately rushed to the scene and arrested the man. Afterward, the police put him in a detainment room for him to sober up and is currently being detained for investigation in accordance to law. This man is a British national and holds a tourist visa. At present, this case is currently in legal proceedings.
A handful of online commenters took a contrary view, claiming that the alleged assault may have to be a setup to ensnare the drunk foreign man, possibly to extort him. Another blog, Beijing Cream, said the men who attacked the Briton may also have been arrested though no police statement to that effect appears to have been issued.
The episode came days before a push by authorities in the Chinese capital against foreigners who enter the country illegally, overstay their visas or work without the proper papers. Global Times, the nationalistic state-run newspaper, linked the alleged assault and others like it to the clampdown on visa scofflaws that began this week in Beijing.
Authorities are encouraging residents who know of foreigners staying illegally in the country to report those violations to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. The report on the news organization's English-language site singled out the Sanlitun area of the capital — where numerous embassies, high-end shops and bars catering to Westerners are situated — as one of the "key places" for residents to be on the look out for foreigners there illegally.
According to a Xinhua report:
The campaign, which will run until the end of August, will include household checks in Wangjing, Sanlitun and Wudaokou, areas of the city known for their high concentration of foreign residents, as well as on-the-spot street checks that will require foreigners to present valid identification, according to a spokesman from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.
A day after the campaign began, the host of an English-language program on China Central Television, Yang Rui, applauded the effort in a strongly-worded post on the social media site Weibo, according to a translation by Global Times highlighted by flabbergasted foreign journalists in China.
"The Ministry of Public Security is getting rid of foreign trash right now, arresting foreign scum and protecting innocent Chinese girls from them," read the post on Mr. Yang's Weibo account. "Foreigners who can't find a job in their home country come to China and get involved in illegal business activities such as human trafficking and espionage; they also like to distribute lies which discredit China to persuade locals to move abroad."
The Economist's Gady Epstein said that Mr. Yang later softened his town in a later post, suggesting "we must guard against xenophobia."
Gady Epstein@gadyepstein
Yang Rui walks back slightly in most recent Weibo post with: "but we must guard against xenophobia" weibo.com/1348026261/yjJ"¦
18 May 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Jonathan Watts, an Asia correspondent for The Guardian, observed that Mr. Yang, a television personality who has interviewed prominent foreigners including President Bill Clinton on his show, Dialogue, has seen himself as a representative of China to the outside world.
jonathanwatts@jonathanwatts
The same Yang Rui who claimed "I remind myself that I don't just represent myself, I represent the country's image." bit.ly/KnKN1y
18 May 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Along the same lines, Global Times published a comment on Monday by Tom Fearon, who called for a dialing down of rhetoric against foreigners online. "The incident has shed light on a number of things, not least of all how deep the divide runs between Chinese and foreigners," wrote Mr. Fearon, who appears from an online profile to be an editor at the paper. "There were no winners in last week's video."
