Iran through Chinese eyes
Shanghaiist has a very interesting roundup of Web message board reactions to Iran’s election from China, a country that knows a thing or two about the government stifling dissent. Many of those commenting faulted the government not for cracking down on the protests, but for bothering to hold sham elections at all, and allowing the ...
Shanghaiist has a very interesting roundup of Web message board reactions to Iran's election from China, a country that knows a thing or two about the government stifling dissent. Many of those commenting faulted the government not for cracking down on the protests, but for bothering to hold sham elections at all, and allowing the protests to get out of hand:
Shanghaiist has a very interesting roundup of Web message board reactions to Iran’s election from China, a country that knows a thing or two about the government stifling dissent. Many of those commenting faulted the government not for cracking down on the protests, but for bothering to hold sham elections at all, and allowing the protests to get out of hand:
"The Iranian presidential election evolved after decades but now is triggering so many protests and riots; I am not sure how the liberal wings of the party would think? Use the army. Whoever fights against the government should be killed. There are so many people in Iran so killing several hundreds of thousands is not a big deal. What does the army do? Foolish (Iranian government)."
Barack Obama’s caution also doesn’t seem to have convinced Chinese netizens that the U.S. isn’t behind all of this:
"America is always opposed to the other countries’ democracy because American politics is a fake democracy; it is really the ‘presidential dictatorship.’ However, America asks other countries to be ‘fake democracies’ — killing the real democracy!"
…
"When Bush was elected as the American president, he cheated too. But Al Gore was rational and admitted that he lost because of national stabilization. Mousavi has America as his biggest backer but not many Iranian supporters. He should admitted that he lost."
It’s a very small sample size and I’m sure not universally representative of Chinese opinions, but telling nonetheless.
(Hat tip: Josh Kucera)
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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