Chinese Diplomat Tells Students in Britain Not to Criticise Zero-Covid Policy

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - NOVEMBER 30: Protesters participate in a vigil commemorating victims
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

A top Chinese diplomat in Britain who was involved in a recent violent attack on pro-democracy activists in Manchester has come under fire again after he reportedly made veiled threats against Chinese students critical of Xi Jinping’s draconian ‘Zero-Covid’ agenda.

Zheng Xiyuan, the Chinese Communist Party’s consul-general in the city of Manchester, is reported as saying that Chinese students studying in the United Kingdom should “resist and distorting and discrediting” Beijing’s coronavirus lockdown measures.

“Students are invited to fully understand and believe in the great significance behind every decision made by the party and the government, and consciously resist distorting and discrediting China’s epidemic prevention and control policies, so as to jointly win this regular epidemic prevention and control battle,” Zheng said according to The Guardian.

The controversial diplomat went on to extol the “remarkable advantages” of socialism with Chinese characteristics, as the CCP version of communism is called, to the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA).

Speaking to The Guardian, Lyndon Lee, a second-year law student at the University of York, said that he took the remarks as a threat to toe the line of the Communist Party abroad, and to limit debate surrounding Zero-Covid policies.

“It is put as a request but that is not how things work in China. It is threatening. They should not be trying to influence the way international students act, to tell them what to do and say. Where is the freedom of expression?” Lee asked.

Chinese students studying abroad have long faced similar intimidation tactics from CCP cutouts such as the Confucius Insititutes and indeed from other communist loyalist students.

More recently, it has been reported that the CCP has actually gone so far as to establish clandestine police offices across Europe without the permission of their host countries.

Zheng himself has even been accused of violently attempting to shut down a protest against the communist regime, when he was filmed in October pulling the hair of a pro-democracy activist, Bob Chan, outside the Manchester consulate.

Defending his actions, he said: “The man abused my country, my leader – I think it’s my duty. I think it’s an emergency situation – that guy threatened my colleague’s life and we tried to control the situation. I wanted to separate him from my colleagues – that’s a very critical point.”

While prominent politicians, including former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, called for the government to expel the diplomat from the country, the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has so far failed to do so.

The latest comments from Zheng come amid the backdrop of some of the most significant protests against the CCP regime since the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.

Thousands have protested in cities such as Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Zhengzhou against the coronavirus policies of Xi Jinping, which have included mass house arrests and quarantines for those said to be infected with the virus.

The protests seemingly achieved their aim in frightening the regime into action, with Beijing announcing that it had finally discovered that the omicron variant of the virus was less deadly — a conclusion the West came to over a year ago — and that it would therefore begin relaxing some of its harsher measures to contain its spread.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.