When online outrage gets in the way of Beijing’s diplomatic outreach
As China seeks warmer ties with India, nationalist fervour is pulling in the opposite direction.
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For years, China’s information environment has fostered a political culture in which criticism of foreign countries has become a genre in itself.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Chinese Embassy in India recently did something unusual – it reproduced a commentary from a state-backed news outlet urging Chinese netizens to approach India “rationally”.
This came after a spate of xenophobic videos portraying Indians as uncivilised swept across the Chinese internet, coincidentally around the same time that videos falsely claiming Singapore had been overrun by Indians surfaced on the same platforms.
