Beijing: Following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan on Tuesday, Chinese social media users mocked the government for not living up to its tough rhetoric and also taking military action to stop Pelosi’s Taiwan trip.
Several users have claimed publicly that they were disappointed by Beijing’s lame response and how there was no military action in the Taiwan Strait when Pelosi’s plane was touching down in Taiwan late Tuesday night.
People’s Liberation Army is a waste of taxpayers’ money, said the social media users.
Many people complained that they felt let down and lied to by the government. “Don’t put on a show of power if you don’t have the power,” wrote a Weibo user shortly after the flight’s landing, lambasting the government.
In fact, some users compared the People’s Liberation Army to the Chinese men’s soccer team, a laughing stock in the country because it has qualified for the World Cup only once. They sneered at the announcement that the P.L.A. would conduct military exercises near Taiwan. “Save some gas,” said one WeChat user. “It’s very expensive now,” responded another, New York Times reported.
However, on Wednesday afternoon, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, responded to a question about the public’s disappointment by saying that she believed the Chinese people had confidence in their country and their government.
The unification of Taiwan, a self-ruling democracy that Beijing considers part of its territory, with the mainland is a centrepiece of Chinese nationalism.
This problem has become progressively larger under Xi Jinping, as nationalist appeals have moved from the margins to the centre of the Chinese propaganda apparatus across the board.
The online backlash has already shown what importance Chinese government holds in the eyes of its community.
Most Chinese didn’t pay very much attention to Pelosi’s pending Taiwan visit until Monday afternoon, when a flurry of official and semi-official statements led many to believe that China could take tough, possibly military actions to deter it.
Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesperson who may be China’s best-known “wolf warrior” diplomat, warned the United States on Monday that the P.L.A. would “never sit idly by. China will definitely take resolute and strong countermeasures to defend its own sovereignty and territorial integrity,” New York Times reported.
The angst of Chinese social media users skyrocketed so much that some of them even argued that only online warmongers should be sent to the frontlines.