TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Hu Xijin (胡錫進), the chief editor of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece the Global Times, released a video attacking the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics on Twitter Monday (Dec. 13), using a food analogy.
Australia, the U.K, and Canada have all announced they will join the U.S.-led boycott, while other democratic countries are considering it. Hu, famous for his no-holds-barred rants, most recently released an outburst comparing Western leaders to “drunkards” and the boycott to “chicken feet.”
“Some Chinese people like to eat chicken feet,” Hu says at the start of the video. “When China was very poor, drunkards with nothing to eat would snack on a chicken foot.”
“In my opinion, the boycott is like the chicken feet that they eat when drinking,” he goes on. Hu then stretches this analogy to infer that the Olympic boycott is a meager meal only for the desperate:
“This fiasco is the equivalent of a little chicken foot. Only a drunkard would see it as a meal and eat it up with such relish.”
The video is the latest in a string of inconsistent messaging on the topic from the Global Times, expressing both indignation and a cool, dismissive attitude.
Last week its Twitter handle featured a post claiming the Chinese are “relieved” about the boycott. The rationale for this, the Global Times claimed, is that not having U.S. officials in Beijing will help keep COVID-19 under control: “The fewer U.S. officials come, the fewer viruses will be brought in.”
Despite China’s attempts to keep the Omicron variant out of the country, it has failed to do so. On Monday (Dec. 13), China recorded its first case of the new strain in Tianjin, a neighboring city of Beijing, where the Winter Olympics are to be held in a few weeks.
