The ongoing political protests in
Hong Kong, which has rocked this Special Administrative Region of China for
around half a year now, has also led to the rise of an uncomfortable shade of
patriotism from Chinese citizens online. Despite the Chinese internet being
mostly isolated from the world by the Great Firewall, any overseas online news construed
to be critical of the Communist government and supportive of the HK protesters
are almost immediately spread nationwide, leading to loud censures against the
people who have caused offense: politicians, athletes and pop culture
celebrities. A K-Pop band member recently experienced this backlash.
Inquirer.net has it that Choi Siwon of the K-Pop boy group Super
Junior has become yet another international pariah on the Chinese online
community, causing fans to publicly avow their jumping ship on Super Junior.
Choi’s mistake was in liking a post this Sunday, November 24, by South Korean
newspaper Chosun Ilbo about the Hong
Kong protests on its Twitter page. This action has been construed as
potentially troublesome by Chinese media watchdogs, and as has been the trend
lately the post went viral on the country’s secluded internet space. Choi
quickly became top topic on China’s Twitter local counterpart Weibo with 260
million views.
Unfortunately, this spike in
popularity for Choi was only for the sake of savaging him by zealous Chinese
who repeatedly point out that Hong Kong is already part of China, its troubles
are an internal affair, and the attention of the world upon it is an invasive
intervention at their sovereignty. Despite Choi going to his own Weibo account
to apologize twice for liking the news tweet (which he already unliked), and
agreeing that China and HK are inseparable, Chinese netizens are in no mood to
forgive any mistake even once. A Weibo-based Choi fan group disbanded following
haranguing criticisms of the Super Junior member.
The faux pas has also reached the
level of official state media, such that China’s state-run Global Times newspaper interpreted Choi Siwon’s unfortunate Twitter
like as “glamorizing Hong Kong rioters.” Weibo posters also accused Choi of
being insincere in his apologies. This concerted reaction has been typical of
China which is trying to downplay the now-violent protests calling for greater
democratic freedoms in HK since June. The last major celebrities to be given
this treatment are the NBA team Houston Rockets. Despite being the one-time
home squad of Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming, its popularity plummeted
following a Twitter post from their GM supporting HK.
Of course, the vitriol over
overseas focus on the Hong Kong protests can go both ways. Liu Yifei, the lead
star of Disney’s upcoming live-action “Mulan” adaptation, expressed support for
the reportedly-brutal HK police actions in social media, and has since been targeted
by HK residents in return, calling for a boycott on 2020’s “Mulan.”
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