China Envoy Blames ‘Foreign Forces’ for Covid Protests

Bloomberg News
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(Bloomberg) -- A Chinese diplomat blamed recent widespread protests against Covid Zero on outsiders seeking to spark “color revolutions,” an attempt to shift blame away from the harsh rules that dominated urbanites’ lives for nearly three years.

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“At first, people took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with how local governments were unable to completely and accurately implement measures introduced by the central government, but the protests were quickly exploited by foreign forces,” said Lu Shaye, the Asian nation’s top envoy in France.

“We can clearly smell the scent of color revolutions that have frequently happened in developing countries in recent years,” Lu said at a dinner on Dec. 7, according to a statement posted on the Chinese embassy’s website on Wednesday. “Some Chinese were bought by foreign forces.”

The remarks are the first time China has directly blamed foreigners for the demonstrations in dozens of cities late last month — the most widespread unrest in the the Asian nation in decades — though the government has a habit of making similar accusations. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said last year that China opposed outside powers using Central Asia to foment “color revolutions” — a reference to anti-government protests in former Soviet bloc nations in the early 2000s and later in the Middle East.

Beijing also blamed anti-government demonstrations in Hong Kong in 2019 on “black hands” backed by outsiders.

See: Xi’s Covid Retreat Shows China Masses They Have Real Power

There are some signs the public is becoming skeptical about the accusations. Footage of a protest in Beijing showed an unidentified man warning the crowd around him of “foreign actors” among them. Demonstrators challenged him, pointing out that the Communist Party’s ideological forebears hailed from places like Germany and Russia. Bloomberg News wasn’t able to verify the video.

Just after the Covid protests that saw a handful of people call for Chinese President Xi Jinping to step down, China’s top law enforcement body pledged to crack down on “hostile forces” and their “sabotage,” though it didn’t mention the civil disobedience.

Xi later reportedly told visiting European Council President Charles Michel that the protesters were “mainly students and teenagers” frustrated with the pandemic.

Read: China Could Yet See ‘Rebound in Unrest,’ Protest Watcher Says

China started dismantling its zero-tolerance approach to eliminating Covid-19 last week. It no longer sends infected people to quarantine camps, and eased travel requirements and rules that required frequent PCR tests to enter most public venues. China has also stepped up its defense of Covid Zero, with state media saying it will “stand the test of history.”

In his comments at the dinner, Lu cited some protesters holding up a blank piece of paper at demonstrations as the sign of a color revolution.

“Take the ‘white paper parade’ for example,” he said “Even though it’s white, it’s still a kind of color revolution because white is a kind of color.”

--With assistance from Jing Li.

(Updates with state media defending Covid Zero. An earlier version was corrected to remove a reference to ambassador saying protesters were brought to China.)

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