Chinese envoy says Covid-19 protests smacked of ‘colour revolution’
Sign up now: Get insights on Asia's fast-moving developments
The protests in China in November took place in dozens of cities and were the most widespread unrest in the country in decades.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
PARIS – A Chinese diplomat blamed recent widespread protests against Covid Zero on outsiders seeking to spark “colour revolutions”, an attempt to shift blame away from the rules that dominated urbanites’ lives for nearly three years.
“At first, people took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with how local governments were unable to completely and accurately implement measures introduced by the central government, but the protests were quickly exploited by foreign forces,” said Lu Shaye, the Asian nation’s top envoy in France.
“We can clearly smell the scent of colour revolutions that have frequently happened in developing countries in recent years,” Mr Lu said at a dinner on Dec 7, according to a statement posted on the Chinese embassy’s website on Wednesday.
“Some Chinese were bought over by foreign forces,” he said, without providing details on how that would work given the nation’s largely closed borders.
The remarks are the first time China has directly blamed foreigners for the demonstrations in dozens of cities in late November.
They were the most widespread unrest in China in decades.
This is not the first time the Chinese government has made such accusations.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said last year that China opposed outside powers using Central Asia to foment “colour revolutions” – a reference to anti-government protests in former Soviet bloc nations in the early 2000s and later in the Middle East.
Beijing also blamed anti-government demonstrations in Hong Kong in 2019 on “black hands” backed by outsiders.
There are some signs the public is becoming sceptical about the accusations.
Footage of a protest in Beijing showed an unidentified man warning the crowd around him of “foreign actors” among them. Demonstrators challenged him,
Just after the Covid-19 protests that saw a handful of people call for Chinese President Xi Jinping to step down, China’s top law enforcement body pledged to crack down on “hostile forces” and their “sabotage”, though it didn’t mention the civil disobedience.
Mr Xi later reportedly told visiting European Council President Charles Michel
China started dismantling its zero-tolerance approach
In his comments at the dinner, Mr Lu cited some protesters holding up a blank piece of paper at demonstrations as the sign of a color revolution.
“Take the ‘white paper parade’ for example,” he said “Even though it’s white, it’s still a kind of colour revolution because white is a kind of colour.” BLOOMBERG
