Yang Rui - Comments On Foreign Citizens in China

Comments On Foreign Citizens in China

On 16 May 2012, Yang made comments on Sina Weibo criticising some foreign citizens and journalists in China, including Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera English, who was effectively expelled from the country. Yang's statement occurred during an official Chinese government campaign to identify illegal foreign residents in China. Yang's full posting (translated from Mandarin by The Wall Street Journal) was:

The Public Security Bureau wants to clean out the foreign trash: To arrest foreign thugs and protect innocent girls, they need to concentrate on the disaster zones in Wudaokou and Sanlitun. Cut off the foreign snake heads. People who can’t find jobs in the U.S. and Europe come to China to grab our money, engage in human trafficking and spread deceitful lies to encourage emigration. Foreign spies seek out Chinese girls to mask their espionage and pretend to be tourists while compiling maps and GPS data for Japan, Korea and the West. We kicked out that foreign bitch and closed Al-Jazeera’s Beijing bureau. We should shut up those who demonize China and send them packing.

Yang released a statement on 21 May 2012 defending his comments and seeking to correct mischaracterisations of his message and the English translation of "foreign bitch" instead of "foreign shrew".

Next Media Animation responded to China CCTV's Yang Rui alleged xenophobic comments posted on his Sina Weibo account. The mock animated news story was posted to their site on May 23, 2012, depicting Yang as a dog, with his owners, the CCP, giving him a bone for a job well done, stating "as a Communist Party mouthpiece, Yang is doing a great job!". Viewers were left with the question "Is Yang Rui an idiot or just a jerk?"

Another repercussion of Yang's comments has been an outcry to boycott his Dialogue show. Charlie Custer from the website chinageeks.org, who had previously been a guest on Mr. Rui's show, stated, "I would strongly suggest that foreigners boycott CCTV Dialogue and decline any future invitations." Another former guest, James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly, also called on invitees of the show to decline their invitations.

Read more about this topic:  Yang Rui

Famous quotes containing the words comments, foreign, citizens and/or china:

    Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father’s curse, mother’s moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    ... in every State there are more women who can read and write than the whole number of illiterate male voters; more white women who can read and write than all Negro voters; more American women who can read and write than all foreign voters.
    —National Woman Suffrage Association. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended.
    James Madison (1751–1836)

    Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law,
    Or some frail china jarreceive a flaw,
    Or stain her honour, or her new brocade,
    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)