Double standards ‘backfire on US with more conflicts’
After the historic and shocking riots at the Capitol in Washington DC on Wednesday, US pro-establishment elites, Democrats, mainstream media and social media networks are exerting great effort to mute and isolate voices of President Donald Trump and his supporters for their alleged purpose of safeguarding the US’ democratic system. In doing so, they maintain double standards on similar incidents elsewhere around the globe, such as claiming that the Hong Kong turmoil of 2019 is “nothing like” the Capital riots.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying urged people to rethink such a political stance riddled with double standards after the Capitol building was stormed by pro-Trump protesters Wednesday, but Western media still insist on their sophism to defend the wavering standards on democracy and freedom of speech, with Chinese analysts saying on Monday that double standards based on power politics and hegemony will backfire in the country with more internal struggles to ensue.
Pretending to be blind?
“No, Beijing, the Hong Kong protests were nothing like what happened on Capitol Hill” Olivia Enos, senior policy analyst at the Asian Studies Center at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, commented in an article published on the foundation’s website on Saturday. She claimed that what happened during the
2019 Hong Kong turmoil was “overwhelmingly peaceful, pro-democracy.” Some other Western commentators and journalists made similar comments in recent days.
Such a sophistic attitude among some US, Western scholars and media has been mocked and refuted again by Chinese media and experts. The Westerners who preach these double standards “must be blind or are pretending to be and never went to Hong Kong during the turmoil. Therefore they are able to cook up such nonsense and lies,” read a commentary article published by a WeChat public account under the Beijing Daily on Saturday.
“Trump supporters who stormed Capitol Hill were much more civilized and peaceful than the Hong Kong rioters. Hong Kong rioters used petrol bombs, bow and arrows, iron sticks, bricks and knives to attack not just police officers but also innocent people on the street who disagreed with them, even torturing journalists during the so-called ‘overwhelmingly pro-democratic peaceful protests,'” Alexander Young, a journalist who witnessed and reported the 2019 turmoil in Hong Kong, told the Global Times.
Moves to permanently mute Trump on online social networks like Twitter have also showed double standards, as the idea of freedom of speech which is frequently used by the US and the West to criticize other countries has become “a total joke,” said Chinese analysts.
China is a strategic competitor identified by the US, although the two countries both want to restore public order and oppose violence after the riots on their respective lands, US elites and politicians will never retract their support for the Hong Kong rioters despite the embarrassment that the Capitol Hill riots had caused them, because “it's never about democracy or law and order, it's about strategic competition between major powers,” said Song Luzheng, a research fellow at the China Institute of Fudan University.
Credibility collapsed
Double standards based on hegemony will undermine the credibility of US democracy, making it increasingly unconvincing around the globe and backfiring in the US with more internal struggles to ensue, said analysts, noting that Trump leaving office is just the beginning of endless political conflicts rather than an end to them.
“Ironically, US Republican senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley who show their strong support for Hong Kong separatists and rioting are now in trouble due to their pro-Trump stances in challenging the election results that may incite further violence like the Capital riots” Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday.
When US politicians and media support violence elsewhere around the globe, not only in China's Hong Kong, but also in Ukraine, Egypt and some Latin American countries, Americans are also listening and many of them will believe that attacking police, storming governmental or legislative institutions are legitimate and right if “democracy” is used as the excuse, with the Capitol riots being the latest example of such backfiring, Lü said.
US media and people should realize that the rioters in Hong Kong and Washington DC both share very similar political values – anti-immigration and anti-establishment, prefer to realize their purpose through violence rather than legal means, so when you encourage violent and extreme Hong Kong separatists, you encourage Trump loyalists like the “Proud Boys,” Lü noted.