A strange diplomatic accident

At around 9:00 yesterday morning, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian suddenly tweeted, expressing "shocked by the atrocities of Australian soldiers", "strongly condemned", etc., and attached a satirical cartoon depicting a Australian soldiers slit the throat of an Afghan child holding a lamb.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison immediately reacted strongly and demanded an apology from China. Various news media immediately followed up with reports.

First of all, I believe that if a rational earth person also admits that the killing of civilians by the army is a crime, then any person, organization or regime should have the right to condemn this crime. This is not the Bible, and we don't need a sinless person to condemn sin. From this point of view, many netizens brought up the issues of Tiananmen, Tibet, Xinjiang, etc. for the first time, and they fell into the rotten logic that the nationalists they condemned most like to use. If there is a statist who proposes that this can prove that the West, which emphasizes human rights, is actually the same as or even less human rights than China, then it is necessary to make comparisons.

Regarding this comic, the first thing we should have is a factual discussion. One of Morrison's key points was that "Australian soldiers did not do this". Reports from China and Australia, as well as other Western media outlets, are inconsistent on this issue. The Chinese media reported that Australian soldiers cut the throats of two Afghan children as fact, while the BBC Chinese website quoted the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's report as an "unsubstantiated allegation".

There seems to be no credible evidence of cut-throat children in Chinese media reports. And if throat slitting remains an unsolved case, Morrison's accusation has some truth to it. As an official diplomat, the diplomatic significance of tweeting such a picture with condemnation is self-evident.

But this tweet does not seem to have no room for maneuver. First, the accompanying picture is just a satirical cartoon. Second, the text does not mention the expression of children with cut throats, so this can also be interpreted as a response to the killing of Afghan civilians and prisoners. accusation. In this way, there is no question of fact.

Secondly, is Morrison overreacting? There are many people who say that Morrison was "broken", which is probably true. No matter what level of accusation this tweet is (whether it's killing civilians and captives or killing children), it more or less gives viewers a hint that Australian soldiers are cutting children's throats with knives in Afghanistan. This will definitely be a major blow to the image of the Australian government and military, and it will surely cause uproar at home. It's no wonder that Morrison's defense was so badly broken that he immediately demanded an apology from the Chinese government.

And finally, the oddity of the event: what was the diplomatic and political significance of this tweet? First, on the positive side, the incident may lead to an Australian investigation into the killing of civilians by the military and to tighten controls on such conduct in the future. On the other hand, this will undoubtedly make the relationship between China and Australia very stiff. It is true that Australia has always been considered as the bridgehead of the new cold war between the United States and China; Australia's accusations of many problems in China have made the Chinese government very dissatisfied and even initiated sanctions. However, China and Australia have just joined the significant RECP, and Morrison himself has been trying to strengthen relations with China before, emphasizing that Australia does not want to stand in line between China and the United States, etc.

However, Chinese netizens obviously do not appreciate this, and still think Australia is a "dog" of the United States.

This is the comment below the Observer.com news above. The Observer.com has a certain official nature, but it is more representative of the attitude of China's far-right. Judging from the general comments on the Chinese Internet, the attitude towards Australia has not changed much. It can be seen that the Chinese government is not very accepting of Australia's overtures. This incident made Australia a laughing stock among netizens.

In this way, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has once again abandoned its diplomatic responsibilities: the Chinese government has no intention of establishing relations with Australia beyond economic ties. On the contrary, it is more willing to use the crimes of the Australian military to hype up the "Western countries" in a political sense. The hypocrisy of human rights. To this, I would like to respond with Chomsky's point: these questions are by no means flat. Australia is an imperialist, aggression country, but also a country with a certain degree of freedom of speech and protection of human rights. I'm not saying that the Australian military didn't kill civilians, or that Australia is right to kill civilians, I'm saying that the Australian government admits its guilt and investigates the murders, and Australians can read the reports and comment on the Internet, don't worry So he was detained by the police. The U.S. government committed atrocities during the Vietnam War, but the American people's protests ended up preventing the war, instead of cheering for it like Showa Japan, that's why I think democracy and human rights are valuable.

In addition, it should be mentioned that many netizens like to use political events when they use whataboutism to fight back, when in fact social phenomena are much more powerful. Even ardent nationalists cannot deny social phenomena. In my opinion, however, the most courteous response the Prime Minister of Australia should have made to this was to point out that cutthroat children have not been proven, but apologize for the killing of Afghan civilians.