TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A video released on Monday (Nov. 28) showed student protesters in Beijing rebuffing an attempt to blame the recent wave of protests on "foreign forces."
On Monday, video surfaced of a large rally held by student protesters shouting slogans with a megaphone in the Liangmaqiao area of Beijing. At the start of the video, a male student wearing a baseball cap used the megaphone to allege that in their midst were "foreign anti-China forces."
However, this quickly drew an angry rebuke from the students standing around him. Another student wearing glasses grabbed the megaphone and asked: "The foreign forces you are talking about are they Marx and Engels? Is it Stalin? Is it Lenin?"
The man responded by saying, "I want to say to you, I will always love my country." He then said, "I also think the current policy has problems. I really do. So that's why..."
Before he could finish his sentence, he was cut off by a male student in a white coat holding up a blank piece of paper who admonished him: "Don't change the subject! Think for yourself!"
(Twitter, Cindy Yu screenshot)
The student in the baseball cap, then backed off and sheepishly said, "Then you go ahead." The student wearing glasses then asked, "Was it foreign forces who started the fire in Xinjiang? Was the Guizhou bus overturned by foreign forces?"
His mention of Xinjiang was a reference to a fire in an apartment building in Urumqi that officially killed 10 and injured nine, but touched off nationwide protests over suspicions that the deaths were far higher and the result of China's zero-COVID restrictions. The second reference was to the Guizhou bus crash in September that killed 27 people and injured 20, spurring outrage because the people onboard were being transported to a quarantine facility as part of a lockdown in the area.
The man in the baseball cap then stressed that he "totally agreed" with what they were saying. The man in the white coat grabbed the megaphone and asked the crowd, "Was everyone told to come here by foreign forces?"
(Twitter, Cindy Yu screenshot)
The crowd then overwhelmingly responded, "No!" He then pointed out that given that Chinese are unable to access the foreign internet "how are foreign forces supposed to be communicating with us?"
The bespectacled student took back the megaphone and shouted, "We only have domestic forces not allowing us to govern ourselves!" The student in the white coat took his turn and asked, "Can we leave the country? Or can we go on the foreign internet?" To which the crowd shouted "Neither!"
He then asked how these alleged "foreign forces" are supposed to contact the protesters, to which bystanders replied, "They can't!"
(Twitter, Cindy Yu screenshot)
He closed by asking "Where are these foreign forces?" To which the protestor in glasses humorously replied "The moon!"
At the end of the video, another student can be heard saying, "We just want freedom."
Original video posted by Twitter user renminwansui5:
北京亮马桥
有学生指出，在我们的周围有境外反华势力，导致群众群情激愤；有学生回应称“你说的境外势力，是马克思和恩格斯吗！”
学生继续询问道：“请问新疆的火是境外势力放的吗？请问贵州的大巴是境外势力推翻的吗？”
我们连网都上不到国外的！我们哪来的境外势力！我们只有境内势力不让我们聚集！ pic.twitter.com/h5F7749jPX
— 黑夜中的大火炬 (@renminwansui5) November 28, 2022
Abbreviated version translated into English by Cindy Yu, assistant editor at the Spectator.
This was such a brilliant video I subtitled it so more people can watch it. Beijing students' response last night to accusations that there are 'foreign forces' at play in this weekend's protests
'The foreign forces you are talking about – are they Marx and Engels?' https://t.co/umdFaVhz2s pic.twitter.com/RoohkFaZgE
— Cindy Yu (@CindyXiaodanYu) November 28, 2022
