The official Chinese social media accounts are reportedly mocking India over the surging death toll and upheaval caused by the resurgence of the Wuhan coronavirus.
India is currently in the grip of the second wave of the Wuhan virus. The authorities reported 401,993 new cases on Saturday, which is the highest ever daily count globally. The country has close to 3.5 million active COVID cases. The outbreak of the virus, which first surfaced in central China, has taken more than 222,000 lives in India.
The recent posts praised Beijing’s handling of the pandemic while gloating over Indian deaths. Social media handles affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party posted images “comparing the exhaust of a Chinese space shuttle to the flames of India’s thousands of funeral pyres,” the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported Monday.
The Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post reported the despicable social media posts:
A social media post by a Chinese Communist Party organ that mocked India’s Covid-19 death toll was deleted after it triggered an intense backlash at home and abroad.As India continues to grapple with massive surges of Covid-19 cases, Beijing has sought to project the image of a benevolent power abroad, but such efforts have been undermined by agencies that have tried to take advantage of the situation to pump up nationalist sentiment at home.In a post on Weibo on Saturday, the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the party body that controls the courts and police, juxtaposed the image of China’s most recent space launch with the caption “China lighting a fire” and a picture of Indian funeral pyres with the caption “India lighting a fire”. (…)The Ministry of Public Security, which has 31 million followers on Weibo, also posted a similar message on Friday comparing the image of an emergency hospital in Wuhan named Huoshenshan (which means fire god mountain), with a photo of a mass cremation ground in India. That post has also been deleted.
The outrageous Chinese official posts come against the backdrop of growing military hostilities between the two countries. Last May, the Chinese military attacked India along the shared Himalayan border and occupied a strategic valley in the Kashmir region.
China has told India to reverse “pro-US diplomacy” in the wake of the Wuhan virus resurgence. “India should reflect on the course of its pro-US diplomacy over the years. It ought to rethink its return to strategic autonomy,” the Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper Global Times wrote in its last week’s editorial.
China is angered by India’s growing defense and geostrategic ties with the United States. Under former President Donald Trump’s watch, India deepened its participation in the U.S.-led Asia Pacific alliance, also known as the Quad. Beijing considers it an ‘Indo-Pacific NATO,’ akin to the Western coalition forged to contain the Soviet-Communist expansionism after WWII.
The despicable social media posts are part of China’s newly unleashed propaganda and smear campaign against perceived foes. Last week, the Chinese embassy in Tokyo posted an anti-American and antisemitic meme. The diplomatic mission tweeted an image showing the Grim Reaper dressed in the Stars and Stripes and holding the scythe with the Star of David on it.
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