Local residents are gathering in front of the main entrance and watching the move of the consulate. Photo: Cui Meng/GT

 

A farewell message sent out by the US Embassy in China to its Consulate General in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, on social networks on Monday was followed by swarms of comments with mixed emotions from Chinese netizens. 

While some cheered the official closure of the US consulate and praised the tit-for-tat from the Chinese government, others said they hope the moves could at least make the Trump administration learn something from challenging China's bottom line.

A post published by the US Embassy in China on China's Twitter-like Weibo released some messages that try to please the Chinese people. It said that "Today, we say goodbye to the US Consulate General in Chengdu. We'll miss you forever," along with a short video showing the history of the consulate in Chengdu, and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries in the past. 

The post was published nearly one hour after the consulate was officially shut down. It was a forced decision that China had to make in response to US unexpectedly ordering China's Consulate General in Houston to close down. The abrupt US move further flared up tensions between the world's two largest economies. And the post was heavily mocked online as Chinese netizens found the message hypocritical. But some netizens also expressed sadness over worsening bilateral ties.

The post and video that try to win the sympathy from the Chinese people receive the opposite effects and the huge amount of anger over US hegemonic move against China at present. Many web users said if US employees of the consulate want to blame anyone for their leaving, they should blame the White House's decision to close China's consulate in Houston, without which , the US consulate in Chengdu would remain open today.

Observers said most Chinese web users have already learned the tricks the US used to play to show their hypocrisy and so-called "care" to human rights or freedom, while in fact, they are infiltrating China by recruiting proxies, building connections with separatists and collecting intelligence, which are all typical tricks of a color revolution.  

"The US government might have believed such a practice will make the Chinese people feel that the US consulate is a 'victim,' and that US diplomats love Chinese people but get bullied by the Communist Party of China. They are too simple and na?ve, and their tricks have failed to fool the Chinese people," said a Beijing-based observer on China-US relations who asked for anonymity.  

The short video posted by the US Embassy also showed how the consulate covers some of China's southwestern areas, including Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, and has been enhancing "mutual understanding" with "Tibetan people." Such references to local residents have outraged many netizens, as in connotation, "American people" are in parallel with "Chinese people," not with residents from different parts of China. 

"This has challenged the bottom line of the Chinese people. The unity of the nation cannot be challenged, and clearly, the US Embassy wants to separate 'Tibetans' from the rest of Chinese, rather than acknowledge that ethnic Tibetans are also Chinese nationals. This will surely anger Chinese people, and it shows that US diplomats don't understand China at all," the observer said.

Apart from mocking and sarcastic comments, some Chinese people also expressed remorse for the closure of the two consulates in the two countries, saying "nobody wants to see China-US ties like this. But the US is unilaterally damaging the friendship of the two peoples built by past generations of the two countries."

The official Weibo account of the US embassy has sometimes been flooded with criticism. For instance, when it published a post about how to view press freedom during protests, referring to how the death of George Floyd triggered massive demonstrations in the US, some Chinese netizens questioned their double standards on the Hong Kong protests, as biased media coverage also fueled anti-government riots.

Global Times