Protests against "Tibet independence" supporters erupt in Chinese cities

"BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Protests against "Tibet independence" supporters in some western countries erupted in a few Chinese cities on Saturday.

The protests were seen in Beijing, the eastern cities of Hefei and Qingdao, the central city of Wuhan, the southwestern city of Kunming and the northwestern city of Xi'an.

Protesters gathered in front of shops of the French supermarket Carrefour in the cities, chanting slogans of "boycott Carrefour", "oppose Tibet independence" and others.

They also handed out leaflets to passengers.

A dozen of young people on Saturday morning held a protest march in front of the French Embassy and the Beijing French School in the Chinese capital, which lasted less than half an hour. "

Link to full article


Mod Edit:IMPORTANT: Using Content From Other Websites on ATS

[edit on 8-5-2008 by GAOTU789]

It seems that those protests are mainly against french, ok I know we all are surrender monkeys, arogant, dirty and all you want (I'm not a patriot anyway)
but as far as I remember we weren't the only country where protests against china took place. Any chinese ATSer could tell me why only us ?

My Opinion

Anybody see that episode of penn and tellers Bull**** holier than thou?

You should watch it, you get the deal on mother theresa, Ghandi and the

Dali Lama.

From what I can remember of what penn and teller said in the episode

Mother Theresa enjoyed making her patients suffer becuase only through

suffering could they reach god, and she didn't allow friends or family to see

the people who came to her.Ghandi didn't like africans and the Dali Lama

lived a life of luxury, allowed other countries to spy on china, they didn't

educate the peasants and took most of the food for the lama class and sent a

bunch of guerilla soldeirs to train in colarado.

In my opinion a very informative show to watch.

Hello to you my French friend,

The chiniese are probaly mad at the French more, because, wasn't it in France that someone tried to grab the torch from the handicapped lady?

Or was that london?

Originally posted by TKainZero
Hello to you my French friend,

The chiniese are probaly mad at the French more, because, wasn't it in France that someone tried to grab the torch from the handicapped lady?

Or was that london?

Hello to you my dear American friend,

You're right it was in France, but I believe it wasn't a protest against handicapped people but against China's politic in Tibet, I mean does it make any difference ? Don't get me wrong, I don't have enough knowlegde on Tibet vs China issues to judge it, and if people wanted to hurt China for that they should have stoped buying chinese products instead of meaningless protest.
What I'm wondering is why chinese governement allowed such protest against France, was it to stir patriotic feeling among chinese ? I believe if chinese leaders didn't want such protestation to happen the could have easily avoided it

PS : Drunk, sorry for bad English

There's a Chinese idiom: 杀鸡给猴看,
that means:killing cock to intimidate monkey.
USA and Japan are too important to China, Britain's prime minister
participated in the torch relay, Australia is China's best friend in west,
so France became scapegoat. aside, French behavior during the torch relay
deserved these protests.
Just my personal opinion.

Originally posted by gs001
There's a Chinese idiom: 杀鸡给猴看,
that means:killing cock to intimidate monkey.
USA and Japan are too important to China, Britain's prime minister
participated in the torch relay, Australia is China's best friend in west,
so France became scapegoat. aside, French behavior during the torch relay
deserved these protests.
Just my personal opinion.

That makes sense, thanks.
Am I allowed to make a one line post to answer someone ? (anyway it was a 2 line post :p )

Bonjour

France was victimized and scapegoated for the recent increasing anti-China sentiments in the West. So please don't take it too personally.

France was the easiest obvious target for every Chinese protesters. There are several major reasons:
- Sarkozy was the first one of the Western leaders expressing the idea of boycotting China and the Olympics.
- Paris Torch Relay incredible violent and chaotic scenes, which made everyone feel that the French only half-heartedly tried to keep order. The footages and pictures of a Tibetan even attacking an amputee increased the feelings, and the hanging of the Tibetan flags on the Paris city hall almost undeniable proof.
- Paris mayor deliberately gave a honarary citizenship to the Dalai Lama during this sensitive period with the sole purpose to sabotage Sarkozy efforts to soothen the tides between China and France. This increased the feelings that the Paris police indeed only did their job half-heartedly.
- Rumor goes around that LVMH (Louis Vitton), the major shareholder of Carrefour, donated to the Dalai Lama. Carrefour is an extremely succesful foreign hypermarket chain in China and covered almost all major cities in China. So ordinary angry Chinese can protest against a tangible target, and don't need to go to the French embassy (which was well protected by the Chinese forces during this period).

By the way in my opinion I believe there were some malevolent opportunistic business people who took this chance to take out one of their most succesful competitor by spreading rumors about LV & Carrefour.

For the other countries? And not only France:
-America is being targetted indirectly through the anti-CNN protests. CNN made themselves a very easy target for the obvious biased reporting and a racistic commentator. Wall Mart is also being targetted here, but they are much less succesful than Carrefour, so not many rallying points.
-Japan is during this sensitive period very silent and made it clear from the beginning no boycott. Japan even invited President Hu to visit them and now President Hu is travelling around Japan to improve relations.
-Australian prime-minister Kevin Rudd made the incredibly great politican act by visitting China and giving a speech lecture at the Beijing university in front of journalists and students right after the Lahso riots. Showing respect and being fair about the topic.
-UK's Brown greeted the Torch, but BBC is one of the main targets for their biased reporting. And you can not imagine how much BBC is being targetted right now for their obvious biased and one-sided reporting, especially the BBC reporter staioned in Beijing. But there is no Tesco in China, or other obvious British retail target for any protests to erupt.
-Germany is lucky that there was no torch relay there. And the German Metro is not as succesful as Carrefour, so also no retail target to express the frutrations. However, almost all Chinese know by now that Merkel is boycotting the Olympics opening ceremony, using it as a political weapon. You should check how much protests are going on in Germany against the biased German reporting and Merkel's politican blunder.
-Smaller countries: Obviously France and others are way bigger and more important in the world stage, so in China not much attention is spent for these smaller countries. However Chinese Netizens and local Chinese communities are protesting in the same way. These are happening in The Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand and so on.

So how come all these Chinese in China AND all over the world would organize these anti-Western Media protests and inside China also an extra anti-Carrefour protests?

Well, one thing is for sure, Chinese people is fortunately much more united and patriotic than we ever thought. These protests in China and in the Western world were not centrally organized, it erupted quite spontaneously after seeing that there is an anti-China propaganda agenda by the Western media. The Chinese Netizens all over the world came into "Chinese" defense in a stunning and determined way. For the first time in history the Chinese Netizens showed the world and the Chinese government that they are a force to be recognized and who will jump into defense of Chinese interests, especially when we see injustice, unfairness, biases, prejudices and even racism. These are driven by the so-called Chinese pride of our 5000 year culture and sense for justice and fairness.

And we can see that all these protests are giving the Chinese government the very mandate that the Western world critizes a "one-party country" of missing. So the Chinese government of course closed one eye when these anti-West protests erupted all over China. And it was not like they could have stopped that, they did keep it in order, protected the French embassy and requested the demonstrators to not use any kind of violence & chaos. The only thing the government could have and also did is make publicity for Sarkozy's efforts of soothen the tiden between the nations, but those efforts and results were destroyed by the Paris mayor within one day, the flaw of democracy. The other thing the government did is asking people to think rationally and publish what the improvement/understanding agreement is between China and France (agreed in these weeks), the statement showed how China and France should cooperate and understand each other. Another thing President Hu did, is having dinner with the Japanese prime-minister at a FRENCH restaurant, to show the Chinese people that French is a friend and not bad.

I do want to emphasize that this "Chinese pride" does not mean we believe China is a paradise now. Hell no. We know very well we are living under a imperfect sysetm with a lot of pressing issues to be resolved, like corruption and pollution. However we do believe the country in her whole is moving into the right direction. After more than 150 years of suffering and humilation for the first time we can become strong and united again and hope of bringing prosperity into every corner of our still under-developed developing China. This all started off when the great leader Deng Xiaoping opened up China and set the course for a peaceful development of the Chinese people and culture. Peaceful is a keyword, we want peace with the world, cooperation and mutual understanding. However, we will come into defense when we are being attacked, so we are prepared to fight with our hearts against any kind of threat.

[edit on 9/5/08 by IchiNiSan]

Ok thanks mate, you were one of the two or three I wanted a reply from, thanks.
I didn't know carrefour was that big in your country.
I believe your country is in the right direction, I hope both our people can be friend whatever our governements tell, patriotism sucks .
As for the Paris' mayor, he is not in the same party than Sarkozy so I guess he'll do whatever he can to embarass "our" president. I think Sarkozy will not boycott the olympics opening ceremony, China is economically too important for our little country.

I love Chinese culture and I wish you the best for the next olympics, it seems really important for chinese people.

Thanks, Marmelade

Yes, you are right, your socialistic Paris mayor wants to feel powerful and important, and therefore for some short-term gains he is willing to sacrifice French long-term benefits, aiy, politicians....

Maybe you did not know, but France topped the Chinese list of "most favorite and adorable country" before all this. We loved the French culture, that's one of the reason why Carrefour was so succesful. Carrefour knew how they can market themselves as that French chain from that adorable country. Unfortunately this made Carrefour even more an obvious target when the angry people needed to have something to express their frustrations. I'm quite sure when Chinese/French governmental and ordinary people like you and me make the right gestures and efforts spent on soothening the tides, and rationality hit back in our people, then France will top that list again.

By the way, same as the Brittons, when the Olympics arrive in London 4 years later, you will also see how proud the Brittons will feel. So of course Chinese people should be proud of it, and hopefully we can use this Olympics to understand each other even more, and stop abusing it as a political weapon.

[edit on 9/5/08 by IchiNiSan]

reply to post by IchiNiSan


Marvellous explainations. You have mentioned all points I can think of. As you said, Chinese had always believed that France was the best friend of China in the west. Chinese widely think de Gaulle, Pompidou were great statemen while Mitterrand and Chirac are best friends of China. Suddenly, people found Frenchmen dislike China so much. They just felt so disappointed and betrayed.

Anyway, 2008 is just a start of a new stage of inter-communication between China and the west. With the appreciation of Chinese Yuan, much more Chinese will go to travel and study in western countries. In the city of London, you couldn't find many Chinese working there several years ago, but now you can see quite a lot Chinese working for those elite companies. With more contacts, people will have more opportunities to know what the other side is really thinking.

Wow, one of the last thread expected to be resurrected out of the graveyard

Glad more Chinese people share my opinion, especially in this critical time with the danger of getting xenophobics again. That's the last we and the world need.