China Media
Chinese Netizens on World Refugee Day: “Don’t Come to China”
A heightened focus on China’s role in solving the refugee crises on World Refugee Day has triggered waves of criticism on Chinese social media.
The topic of World Refugee Day has unleashed thousands of comments on Chinese social media this week after the United Nations Refugee Agency raised awareness for refugees on Sina Weibo. Earlier this month, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi visited Beijing and stated that China can play key role in solving refugee crises.
China became a member of the International Organization for Migration in June of 2016.
Chinese celebrity Yao Chen participated in a World Refugee Day event on Tuesday in Beijing, where the film Welcome to Refugeestan was screened. The popular actress is the Goodwill Ambassador of the UN Refugee Agency.
Yao Chen together with UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi.
With over 80 million fans on Weibo, Yao Chen is one of the most influential celebrities on Weibo. She is the first-ever Chinese UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and has been a strong voice for refugees over the last seven years.
REFUGEES TRENDING
“China will not take in refugees! “
On Tuesday, the UN Refugee Agency posted on Weibo:
“Because June 20 is #World Refugee Day#, the UNHCR has hosted a public welfare event in Beijing to pay tribute to the world’s 65.6 million people who are displaced and homeless, and to pay tribute to all those who support and care for the refugees. @NicholasRosellini @United Nations Development Program @YaoChen #westandtogetherwithrefugees#.“
The post soon attracted over 28,000 shares and 20,000 comments – many were negative about China’s role in solving the refugee crisis. The topic ‘Should China accept refugees?’ (中国要不要接收难民) eventually became one the week’s biggest topics on social media.
“Let the USA and Europe take in refugees, they started this war to begin with,” many said: “China will not take in refugees! We can give some money, but don’t come here!”
“Why should we pay our respects to people simply because they are refugees?”, one popular comment said: “How do we know if they are all virtuous people? Did they become terrific people because they became refugees? What kind of logic is this? What is the UNHRC teaching us?”
Hosting refugees is currently not a prominent issue on China’s current state agenda, and there is no national legislation for refugees in China. According to UN Refugee data, there were 317,923 “persons of concern” (refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless persons and others) in China in 2016 – a figure that is very small compared to the country’s native population.
Of this number 317,098 people are refugees from Vietnam – mostly ethnically Chinese. As for Syria, the data shows that China in 2016 had a mere 20 refugees from Syria and 35 Syrian asylum seekers. From Afghanistan, there were 20 asylum seekers. There were 102 refugees from Somalia and 5 from Iraq.
THREE VIEWS ON CHINA TAKING IN REFUGEES
“We didn’t have 30 years of One-Child Policy in order to let in other people now.”
The overall negative view on social media about China accepting refugees generally has three different perspectives.
Firstly, people on Weibo refer to the situation in Europe and say that taking in refugees will negatively impact a country’s society. They want to protect a stable Chinese society.
“We would not be so hateful [about refugees] if they were more well-behaved and had better morals. What became of Germany because of the refugees? They have led in wolves in sheep’s clothes. It’s not easy to create a stable Chinese society and we must treasure and protect it,” one netizen says.
They also say that China already has enough domestic issues with migrants and poverty.
Second, many refer to China’s One-Child Policy, that lasted from the late 1970s to 2015. The policy was implemented to reduce the growth rate of China’s population. If China would now take in large numbers of refugees, many say, then why could Chinese families not have more than one child for over three decades?
As one person writes: “China shouldn’t just let in refugees. We didn’t have 30 years of family planning [one-child policy] in order to let in other people now.”
A third perspective behind the negative comments on refugees coming to China is people’s anti-Islam stance.
“Many netizens have this logic,” one US-based Weibo female netizen writes: “Refugee = Middle Eastern refugee = Islam = Terrorism.”
“We’re not really against taking in refugees,” one man from Shanghai writes: “We’re against taking in islamic refugees.”
MOST WELCOMING TO REFUGEES?
“Your core mission should be to tell the world how China maintains peace.”
Many netizens turned their negative comments against Yao Chen. “Yao Chen should take in some refugee children herself and raise them together with her daughter. Does she dare?”, some said. Many blamed Yao Chen for standing up for international refugees while China has “enough issues” to deal with already.
“Yao Chen, as the Chinese UNHCR goodwill ambassador, your core mission should be to tell the world how China maintains peace, and how it contributes to taking in neighboring refugees,” others say.
One year ago, the issue of China taking in refugees also became a trending topic when Amnesty International published a global survey that ranked Chinese, German and British people as “most welcoming to refugees” among the 27 countries surveyed. Russia ranked as ‘least welcoming’ in the so-called ‘refugees welcome index.’
The survey triggered controversy on Weibo, where many people questioned how representative it was (also see our 2016 video about this topic).
The wave of criticism on Weibo shows that most netizens do not share the ‘refugees welcome’ sentiments portrayed in Amnesty’s survey.
“China shouldn’t receive ‘green’ [Muslim] refugees, we must refuse. We haven’t even sorted out our own problems with Chinese Muslims. I must ask: Why do Syrian and other war refugees do not go to Saudi Arabia and their other rich neighbours? That’s simply the best place for them to adapt seamlessly. But instead they do everything in their power to go to Europe, not Eastern Europe, but to Western Europe where the welfare and economy is good,” one netizen named Alex writes.
An editorial by Global Times editor Hu Xijin (胡锡进) of June 22 questions what all the fuss is about on Weibo: “Refugees from the Middle East don’t even want to come to China. Why should we worry about whether or not China should take in refugees?”
Although it is unlikely that China will take in large numbers of refugees from Africa or the Middle East in the near future, the government does play an active role in refugee aid by donating money to refugee camps and humanitarian assistance.
By Manya Koetse
Follow @WhatsOnWeibo
©2017 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.
China Media
“New Chapter of Sino-Russian Friendship”: Putin Publishes Op-Ed in China’s People’s Daily, Xi in Rossiiskaya Gazeta
In Xi’s piece, the word “China” was the most recurring one. In Putin’s article, the word “Russia” was repeated the most.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow on Monday, March 20, for his scheduled state visit to Russia.
During his three-day Moscow visit, Xi will have one-on-one talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is the first time Xi visits Russia since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On the first day of the top-level meeting, the Chinese state media outlet People’s Daily headlined that Xi Jinping published an article in the Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta on the occasion of his state visit, while also featuring the news about Putin’s signed article on the front page (the actual article was published on page three).
Meanwhile, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta did the same: they also featured Xi’s publication on the front page of their digital newspaper, while also turning Putin’s contribution to the People’s Daily into one of the main headlines. The newspaper also published a special section dedicated to Sino-Russian friendship.
Xi’s article, in Russian here and in Chinese here, was also translated to English and published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on their website here.
The article, titled “Forging Ahead to Open a New Chapter of China-Russia Friendship, Cooperation and Common Development” (“踔厉前行，开启中俄友好合作、共同发展新篇章”) mainly stresses the strong bond and mutual trust between China and Russia and the future of Sino-Russian relations, with the word “cooperation” being used 22 times and the word “friendship” used 8 times in the text. The most-mentioned word in the text is “China” (24 times); “Russia” was mentioned 22 times.
“Ukraine” was mentioned three times in one paragraph about the ‘Ukraine crisis,’ which emphasized China’s “impartial position” and its active promotion of peace talks.
Word cloud of Xi’s text for Russian newspaper (What’s on Weibo/Word Art).
The article by Putin is titled “Russia and China – A Future-Bound Partnership” (“俄罗斯和中国——面向未来的伙伴关系”) (link in Chinese, link in English) and it is similar to Xi’s op-ed in multiple ways, and also focused on stressing the special friendship between both countries and how similar they allegedly are in their culture, tradition, and foreign policy.
The article was actually also very similar to an earlier article titled “Russia and China: A Future-Oriented Strategic Partnership” published by Vladimir Putin for Chinese state media outlet Xinhua just before the Winter Olympics and Putin’s visit to China in 2022 (link in English).
The current article condemns America’s role in the international community and thanks China for its approach to the Ukrainian issue. The word that comes up most often in the text is “Russia” (20 times); “China” is mentioned 18 times. Words such as “cooperation” and “partnership” also come up a lot (7 and 5 times respectively).
Word cloud made from Putin’s text for People’s Daily, by What’s on Weibo via Word Art.
The hashtag “Xi Jinping Published Signed Article in Russian Media” (#习近平在俄罗斯媒体发表署名文章#) was posted on social media site Weibo by Xinhua.
China Daily posted images featuring several quotes from Xi’s signed article in Chinese and English.
While it was not the first time for Putin to post an op-ed in a Chinese state media newspaper, it was also not the first time for Xi Jinping to publish a signed article in a Russian government newspaper. He also posted one in 2015 (link in Chinese).
Xi previously also published letters or bylined articles in the media of other countries.
Ahead of his state visit to Finland in 2017, the Finnish newspaper Helsinki Times featured Xi’s article titled “Our Enduring Friendship” (“穿越历史的友谊”). Xi also stressed bilateral relations in letters to the foreign media of countries such as Myanmar, Greece, Nepal, North Korea, and others.
The term used by Xi in the article, “starting a new chapter” (“开启时代新篇章”) was repeated by many commenters replying to the topic on Weibo, where Xi’s Russia visit is covered by many media accounts in videos, text, and images.
In a recent post, political commentator Hu Xijin (@胡锡进) noted how Xi’s Russia visit made international headlines, underlining the major significance of the meeting. Hu wrote that no third party could hinder the “steady development of Sino-Russian relations.” At time of writing, only three out of more than a hundred replies to Hu’s post were displayed – the three replies consisted of hearts and thumbs up emoji only – with the other comments being filtered.
Although the meeting between Xi and Putin was promoted in the Weibo trending lists, most posts about the state visit only allowed some selected replies in the threads below, or simply closed the comment sections. This was also the case went Putin’s annual address in Moscow was featured by various accounts on Weibo.
For more articles on China-Russian relations and related Weibo discussions, check our archives here.
By Manya Koetse
With contributions by Miranda Barnes
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China Digital
Meet Ren Xiaorong, People’s Daily AI Virtual News Anchor
Although their functions are still limited, AI news anchors such as Ren Xiaorong are a sign of the future.
Ren Xiaorong (任小融) joined the Chinese state media outlet People’s Daily as a virtual presenter/news anchor this week.
Ren Xiaorong is the AI-powered host of an app allowing users to ask questions related to the Two Sessions, the annual plenary sessions of the National People’s Congress and of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference that have been taking place this week.
Through the People’s Daily app, you can ask Ren Xiaorong to tell you more about various topics covered during the Two Sessions, including education, epidemic prevention, housing, employment, environmental protection, and many other issues.
According to the introduction video launched by People’s Daily, Ren is also available to discuss other news topics people would like to know more about.
Ren Xiaorong is interactive to a certain (very limited) extent; users can select the topics they want to learn more about, but the app does not yet allow to ask specific questions.
A related hashtag went viral on Weibo on Sunday (#人民日报AI虚拟主播#), triggering discussions on the use of virtual news presenters.
Ren Xiaorong is not the first People’s Daily virtual news anchor. In 2019, the very first AI-powered presenter was unveiled at the 2019 Big Data Expo (#人民日报首位AI虚拟主播#). Guo Guo (果果), aka Little Guo Guo (小果果), was based on the real-life Chinese reporter Guo Xinyu (果欣禹).
Guo Guo and Guo Xinyu
China’s state media outlets Xinhua, Beijing TV, Hunan TV, and CCTV previously also unveiled their own AI-powered virtual news anchors at a time when China’s virtual idol market started to explode.
During the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, there was also a virtual host and China’s first AI sign language presenter.
Although news media outlets have started experimenting with virtual presenters for some time now, some netizens are still not convinced about the actual purpose of having virtual TV hosts and news anchors, especially when their AI-driven interactive functions are still limited.
Weibo blogging account ‘Media People Online’ (@传媒人在线) writes: “I’ve never really understood this, is there a shortage of broadcasting talent, or are AI anchors better at it? Why would you use a robot to broadcast the news? Are you spending so much money on an AI presenter just to show technological progress?”
But other bloggers (@夏日之阳新闻传播考研) think that virtual anchors could improve the quality and availability of news, since they could broadcast around the clock while saving on manpower, alleviating the pressure on newsrooms.
Whether people approve of virtual news readers or not, most agree Ren Xiaorong, along with her virtual colleagues, is a harbinger of the digitalization of the media at a time when artificial intelligence has already come to play a pivotal role in everyday activities.
Want to see Ren Xiaorong at work? Click this link on mobile.
By Manya Koetse
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