Since Tiananmen, Pelosi has become one of the most vocal critics of China's human rights situation, supporting US legislation that sanctioned Beijing over its treatment of Hong Kong. She was then briefly detained for questioning by the Chinese police before she was allowed to leave the country. In 1991, just two years after the Tian'anmen Square massacre, Pelosi travelled to Beijing in a delegation with two other lawmakers, and went to the square where she unfurled a pro-democracy banner, commemorating those who died in June, 1989. The Global Times does not mention the fact that Pelosi uttered these words on 19 June, more than a week before protesters occupied Hong Kong's Legislative Council building, after which the movement turned violent.īut Beijing bears a much older grudge against Pelosi, and the chaos on the Hill offers an opportunity to finally settle accounts. “Seeing such scenarios, many Chinese will naturally recall that Nancy Pelosi once praised the violence of Hong Kong protesters as 'a beautiful sight to behold',” argues the paper's Editor-in-Chief, Hu Xijin. The link with months of violent demostrations in Hong Kong in 2019 is quickly made.Īccording to the Global Times, the chaos on Capitol Hill “reminded many Chinese people of the 2019 Hong Kong turmoil which turned violent after anti-government rioters stormed the city's Legislative Council (LegCo) on 1 July, 2019.”Ĭhinese web users “still remember the distress and anger they felt when they saw rioters in Hong Kong storming the LegCo Complex, scrawling graffiti, smashing and robbing items.”īut instead of criticizing them, “US politicians hailed the 'courage' of these mobs, Western media praised the 'restraint' of the rioters. “Words like 'karma,' 'retribution' and 'deserving' were frequently mentioned in Chinese netizens' comments when they saw the latest episode of the real-life version of The House of Cards - with Trump supporters storming the Capitol, messing up House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, clashing with police officers and looting items,” crows the paper. “Chinese observers said this is a 'Waterloo to US international image,' and the US “has totally lost legitimacy and qualification to interfere in other countries' domestic affairs with the excuse of 'democracy' in the future,” according to an unsigned piece in the diplomacy section. The Communist Party paper then goes into a no holds barred barrage of criticism and mockery. Law and order in Washington will be gravely disrupted,” he says. “It could be followed by a large-scale riot.

Now, the failure of US democracy is there for the whole world to see, and this, Zhang contends, is only the beginning. “Even though the US has presented itself as a beacon of democracy,” writes Zhang Tengjun, an assistant research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies in the hardline daily newspaper the Global Times, “it has never been a paradigm of global democracy.” But the episode also caused unease for activists in Hong Kong, who themselves violently occupied that territory's legislative building last year.

The three hours of mayhem in Washington DC on Wednesday, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the seat of US government at the Capitol, resulted in fierce Chinese criticism of the US democratic system.

China mocks us