Overnight and continuing into this morning, Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece The Global Times published and tweeted the anti-Australia content, which also targeted Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
In an opinion piece accompanying a new cartoon of a kangaroo holding a scale while a bloody knife lay beside it, author Yu Luxu defended a doctored image depicting an Australian soldier holding a knife to a child’s throat that was shared by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.
The piece accused Morrison of having a free speech double standard.“To clarify matters: A Chinese artist expressed his anger and condemnation against Australian troops’ war crimes in a neighbour (sic) country of China with a cartoon,” Luxu wrote. “A Chinese diplomat put it on Twitter to show his own opinion about these outrageous crimes. That’s all. Did they do anything wrong?
“They are practising (sic) their freedom of speech, something Australia claims to love and fight for. “Ridiculously, such moves are intolerant to Australia’s current PM.”The piece was followed by an article attacking Ardern for also condemning the doctored image, titled “Kiwis bleat like Aussie sheep but don’t condemn Afghan killings”. “Ardern said it was ‘an unfactual post’ and the cartoon was ‘not factually correct.’,” the piece read. “However, the satirical cartoon was illustrated based on the inquiry report released by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force.”The publication then turned its attention to Smith, posting a clip of him on Sky News pointing out that many countries, including China, have murky pasts when it comes to war. “No nation, no army, no government, can claim to be cleanskins from their own history of war,” he said.
“The Chinese in particular have nothing to be proud about from a long list of outrageous incidents on their own people, let alone innocent foreigners.”Smith then used the Shanghai communist massacre of 1927 and the government’s burning down of the city of Changsha, killing the entire population, in 1938.The Global Times called these examples “hilarious” and “uninformed”.In response to a global effort to boycott Chinese products and buy Australian wine after Beijing slapped a 212 per cent tariff on our alcohol, an editorial slammed Australia as “arrogant.”“Given the size of Australia’s economy and Australia’s trade surplus with China, the land down under is way too arrogant when taking boycotts of Chinese products as a weapon against Beijing,” the piece read.
Meanwhile, Twitter has refused to take down the doctored image, labelling it only as “China government account”.
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