The Christian Science Monitor: China Responds to Taiwan’s Election Results With Hostile Messages
February 19, 2016
In the wake of the election of Tsai Ing-wen to Taiwan's highest office, which was met with an outpouring of support for the island's first female president, citizens of mainland China took to social media to share their sentiments about the election's outcome.
Christian Science Monitor reporter Bamzi Banchiri writes: "As of Thursday morning, Facebook users had flooded Ms. Tsai's Facebook page with more than 40,000 comments. Foreign sites including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others are blocked in mainland China. But users found ways to surpass the Great Firewall, the country's vast network of censors and spying technology used to control Internet traffic, through VPN software."
Banchiri sought comment on the social media reaction from Shelley Rigger, Brown Professor of East Asian Politics, chair of Chinese Studies and assistant dean for educational policy.
Rigger noted that many Chinese citizens remain wary of Taiwan despite Tsai's conciliatory victory speech. "What they are saying is that something close to ‘One China' has to come out of Tsai Ing-wen's mouth eventually," she said.
.
