The Chinese Communist Party’s naive hatred for India and its people is finding no resonance whatsoever among the Chinese populace, which is, in any case, disgruntled with the CCP regime ruling China. Under despotic supreme leader Xi Jinping, every aspect of Chinese life is controlled by the CCP. Freedom has become an alien concept for the Chinese people. They are being oppressed and stripped naked of all rights. Yet, the Chinese people are resilient enough to draw a line when the need arises. Being in control of an insecure Communist regime, Xi Jinping is forced to tone down the rhetoric now and then.
Of course, China has its fair share of Communist hotheads, who get off on the simple idea of waging war on India and all other nations with which China shares its borders. However, the sane and moderate public of China is simply not in a mood for seeking war or normalising warmongering and hatred for people of other countries. So, the people of China have condemned anti-Indian T-Shirts, bearing depictions of Indian people being shot, being sold by a Chinese company.
Violence Against Indians Being Propagated as Heroic by CCP
According to a report by WION, a popular Chinese clothing line created a stir after it came out with kid-sized T-shirts bearing depictions of Indian people being shot and phrases such as “welcome to hell” and “let me touch you”. JNBY came under heavy criticism after people shared the photos of the controversial pieces produced by the company on the Chinese microblogging website Weibo.
An infuriated mother took to vent her anger on the heavily censored Chinese social media, and asked, “Welcome to hell. Excuse me? Who are you welcoming?” Another user accused the Chinese company of promoting paedophilia. She asked, “Let me touch you?’ Is the designer promoting paedophilia?” The Chinese clothing company apologised and initiated a recall and refund process after the anti-India t-shirts gave rise to a storm on Chinese social media. However, nobody was impressed by the company’s apology.
A black coat manufactured by JNBY had an image of a person being shot by arrows, along with the words: “The whole place is full of Indians. I will take this gun and blow them to pieces.”
Chinese Citizens Not Willing to Give in to Jinping’s “Rally Around the Flag” Rhetoric
The CCP aims at ensuring that the people are overwhelmed by a sense of duty to their flag and country and ignore their miseries, cast upon them by the current Xi Jinping-led regime. By pushing forward some crass anti-India narratives and even products, Xi Jinping is trying to instil nationalism among the Chinese populace, hoping that the same will help the man overcome the many political challenges he faces.
The man is making people ‘rally around the flag’. This is a phenomenon that world leaders usually engage in before elections. They ramp up patriotic sentiment, showcase national security as being under threat and seek to further widen societal, cultural, and religious fault lines domestically. This helps them consolidate votes in their favour. Now, China has no elections, so ideally, Jinping does not have to ‘win’ the confidence of the people to remain in power.
Chinese People Not Hostile Towards Others
The strategy of Xi Jinping – of stoking hatred among Chinese citizens for people of other nationalities, especially Indians, is bound to fail. By their very nature, the Chinese people are inward-looking and are quite happy without conflicts. In fact, according to a survey conducted between September and October of last year, 45.2 per cent of Chinese had a ‘favourable’ opinion of Japan. Since comparison data became available in 2005, this was the second-highest proportion. The most common reason cited for the positive attitude of Chinese people towards Japan was that the Japanese are ‘polite’ and they ‘put emphasis on manners’ with ‘high cultural standards.’
Read more: Why Xi Jinping has not stepped out of China for the past 600 days
Now China has quite many conflicts with Japan. Yet, the Japanese people are liked by the Chinese populace by and large. So, the recent incident of Chinese citizens protesting against a company’s plans to fuel anti-Indian sentiment with its products does not come as a surprise but is indeed a wake-up call for the Chinese Communist Party. Xi Jinping needs to make an enemy out of India and Japan, and other countries to materialise his “rally around the flag” trick. But the Chinese people simply do not share the CCP’s hostile sentiment against the world.
China is also cracking down against the English language, and those who teach it in the mainland. Jinping’s crackdown on English and stringent censorship only denote his intentions to cut off any point of interaction between the Chinese people and the outer world, which leads the Chinese to feel a sense of oneness with the whole of humanity.
India should, in turn, capitalise on the good nature of the Chinese populace. Together, India and the Chinese people can ensure that the Chinese Communist Party is ousted from power.