Tsai Ing-wen Photo:VCG

The Financial Times published its list of 25 most influential women of 2021 on Thursday. Those featured on the list related to China include Taiwan regional leader Tsai Ing-wen, secessionist Hong Kong riot leader Agnes Chow Ting, and film director Chloe Zhao, while the women of the year from the US side include Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and Mary Barra, chair and CEO of General Motors. The list is an expanded version of the 12 listed in 2020, which also contained Tsai. Another Chinese on the list last year was Fang Fang, who biasedly recorded the daily lives of local residents during Wuhan's lockdown based on rumor and innuendo.  

People can easily feel the hostility of the list toward China. American female leaders hailed on the FT list are mainstream politicians, entrepreneurs and other social elites. In contrast, none of the Chinese figures listed plays an active or constructive role in China's development. If we take Pelosi and Barra as a reference, Chinese women leaders such as Vice Premier Sun Chunlan and Dong Mingzhu, president of Gree Electric Appliances Inc, should have a place on FT's list. But, can the British media and the West be open-minded to give fair credit to them?  

  

Women are playing an increasingly important role in social life and national development. And their rising influence and leadership is worthy of recognition and publicity. But the FT list, from the very beginning, is not meant to show respect to women's influence. It is full of political and ideological color. If the list is really about female influence and leadership, why is Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, not on it? Under Mottley, the Caribbean island country has gained independence from Britain and become a republic, which has a great impact and significance on the world's cause of anti-hegemony and anti-colonialism pursuit. Does FT dare to put Mottley on the list? 

Attacking China has become an ulterior motive of the list. Are Tsai, Chow, and Zhao qualified to be chosen as representatives of influential women? Shen Yi, a professor of the Fudan University, unveiled the true colors of the three. Shen said Tsai is an egoist politician who has stirred up the cross-Straits relations and the international community for her own political ends, Chow is a political speculator while Zhao, brainwashed by Western culture, has been used as "a vase to decorate the façade of the West" because of her different skin color.   

Since Tsai assumed office, she has refused to recognize the 1992 consensus, and kidnapped the island onto a path of confrontation with the mainland. Ignoring the security interest of the people on the island, she has fueled cross-Straits confrontation with repeated provocations. Tsai has also bowed to the US to seek support at the cost of Taiwan residents' health by allowing imports of US pork containing growth and leanness agent ractopamine. How can such a traitor to people on the island be hailed as a representative of influential women? 

Chow is a Hong Kong rioter. She supported violent demonstrations, incited others to participate illegal gathering and engaged in secessionist activities. Jacob Chansley, the so-called "QAnon Shaman," was sentenced to 41 months in prison for his role in the US Capitol riot, while Chow has been hailed as "hero" and "influential woman" by the West for inciting riots in Hong Kong. How ridiculous! 

Zhao, the Oscar winner, recently drew massive criticism from Chinese netizens because of her latest Marvel film Eternals, in which she empathized with the Japanese fascist invaders and made a black gay superhero kneel and burst into tears to confess for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. She also accused China of "a place where there are lies everywhere" in an interview in 2013, a narrative that conformed to the West's biased and stereotypical description of China. 

Most Chinese people, including the Taiwan residents, will never recognize figures like Tsai, Chow and Zhao as representatives of influential women. The FT's list and praise for them reveal its disrespect for the Chinese people and once again display the West's ideological arrogance. This kind of list has no credibility at all, it will only become an international laughing stock just as the Nobel Peace Prize did. 

The West is still living in the shadow of its own arrogance and prejudice. It mistakenly thinks it has the power to judge who is influential and who is not in the world. As a matter of fact, FT's list cannot hold water. It is like a child playing house, declaring who he or she thinks is king and who is princess. Very naïve. 

"The list has no value at all," Shen commented. "At a time when so many people have been killed by the virus, the Western media isn't mulling over how to supervise the government's response to the pandemic, or how to hold those failing to curb the virus accountable, but is obsessed with making such so-called list to attack China. This shows the degradation of the Western media," Shen said. He added that the more regrettable thing is now the West has degraded to such a point that it can only comfort itself by resorting to such lists. 

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn