Leading Chinese TV presenter criticises 'foreign trash'

ONE OF China’s leading television hosts has launched a vitriolic attack on foreigners on his microblog site, calling a recently expelled Al Jazeera correspondent a “foreign bitch” and praising police for “clearing out foreign trash”.

Yang Rui is the host of current affairs interview show Dialogue on state broadcaster CCTV, in which he often interviews overseas experts in English. It a flagship programme on English-language CCTV4 and is at the forefront of China’s efforts to boost soft power overseas and present a kinder, gentler face to the country.

Yang’s rant comes as Beijing authorities have launched a 100-day campaign to “clean out” foreigners living or working illegally, amid online fury over the bad behaviour of overseas residents.

“Cut off the foreign snake heads. People who can’t find jobs in the US and Europe come to China to grab our money, engage in human trafficking and spread deceitful lies to encourage emigration,” Yang wrote on his microblog.

The TV presenter has more than 800,000 followers of his microblog.

The tone of his posting on Weibo, the Chinese version of the banned Twitter service, is far harsher than anything uttered on the show, which has a fairly nationalist tone but avoids overt confrontation.

“Foreign spies seek out Chinese girls to mask their espionage and pretend to be tourists while compiling maps and GPS data for Japan, Korea and the West,” Yang wrote. “We kicked out that foreign bitch and closed Al Jazeera’s Beijing bureau. We should shut up those who demonise China and send them packing.”

He urges China’s public security bureau to concentrate its efforts on the Beijing “disaster zones” of Wudaokou, where many students live, and Sanlitun, a bar district and shopping area popular with expatriates.

A significant portion of the Chinese reactions were critical of Yang. “This is how the Boxer Rebellion started,” ran one comment on Weibo. Several other posts referred to the antiforeigner unrest of early 20thcentury China.

Last week video footage went viral of a man, reportedly a British tourist, sexually assaulting a young Chinese woman before being tackled by angry passersby and later being attacked again as he lay unconscious on the ground.

Bad behaviour by foreigners made the news a couple of days later when another video was posted online showing astonishing rudeness by Russian cellist Oleg Vedernikov, a principal in the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. In the video he taunts, in Chinese, a fellow train passenger angry at the musician for resting his bare feet on the top of her seat.

Vedernikov later issued an apology but he has since been sacked by the orchestra.