China’s State Media Show Hong Kong Protest Images, Fanning Public Anger - The Wall Street Journal

Riot police confronting protesters in Hong Kong on Sunday. Chinese officials typically censor or understate... — Riot police confronting protesters in Hong Kong on Sunday. Chinese officials typically censor or understate reports of public unrest world-wide for fear of encouraging additional outbursts. Photo: Andy Lo/Associated Press

Chun Han Wong and

Chun Han Wong

The Wall Street Journal

Biography
@ByChunHan
chunhan.wong@wsj.com

Eva Dou

The Wall Street Journal

Biography
@evadou

Updated July 22, 2019 10:41 am ET

BEIJING—China’s state media aired images from the aftermath of Hong Kong’s latest antigovernment protests, a change in tack that appears aimed at fanning public anger against the demonstrations, as Beijing signaled support for a stronger crackdown by authorities in the city.

After Hong Kong protesters on Sunday defaced a Chinese central government office in the city, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said local authorities should use “all necessary measures to…safeguard the rule of law in Hong Kong and punish criminals”—without saying specifically what that response might entail.

For now, Beijing likely wants Hong Kong to arrest protesters and stop further demonstrations. Should that fail, experts said, Beijing has options—many of them unpalatable and risky—including calling in the military.

In high-profile commentaries Monday, major Chinese news outlets reported that “radical protesters” in Hong Kong a day earlier defaced the liaison office by splashing black paint on the state emblem on the front of the building and writing derogatory slogans on its walls. Footage showing the vandalized emblem and building appeared on China Central Television’s Monday evening newscast, which the state broadcaster later described as its first time airing “images of the violence causing disorder in Hong Kong.”

Pro-Beijing opinions were allowed to proliferate on Chinese social media, as censors appeared to tolerate the sharing of footage and images of the unrest in Hong Kong—as long as they kept to the official narrative on the protests.

Antigovernment protests generally get short shrift in Chinese state and social media. Officials typically censor or understate reports of public unrest world-wide for fear of encouraging additional outbursts, while state media outlets rarely publicize acts of vandalism against symbols like the Chinese flag and state emblem.

Hong Kong police fired a barrage of tear gas canisters at thousands of demonstrators late Sunday as protests stretched into a seventh weekend. Photo: Getty Images

Adam Ni, a China researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney, said Beijing appeared to be trying to take control of the narrative, as word of the protests had reached people on the mainland over the past seven weeks despite censorship efforts.

“The Chinese government is essentially preparing the people for a potential acceleration of the crisis in Hong Kong,” Mr. Ni said. “It has really seen the writing on the wall that the majority of the Hong Kong people are not happy with the current arrangement.”

In recent weeks, demonstrators in Hong Kong have broadened their list of targets which have included symbols of China’s presence in the city, including a high-speed rail station that connects to the mainland.

At a news conference Monday, the Hong Kong government and its police force put up a united front to condemn the weekend’s violence, which it blamed on radical groups. “Their targeting of the national emblem can absolutely not be tolerated,” said Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive. “The government will take all actions to deal with perpetrators.”

“By yesterday, some demonstrators attacked the Liaison Office, defaced the national emblem and graffitied the Liaison office,” said Li Xiaobing, a mainland scholar who studies Hong Kong affairs. “When things reach this stage, the nature has changed.”

All three of China’s main state-media outlets published commentaries denouncing Sunday’s violence.

The throwing of paint at the Chinese state emblem was an act that “raised people’s hackles,” Xinhua News Agency said. “The blatant desecration of the state emblem represents a trampling of national dignity and sentiment.”

Protesters marching in Hong Kong Sunday. Photo: Vincent Yu/Associated Press

In a front-page commentary, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, said people in Hong Kong “must recognize the violent and damaging nature of the extreme minority of radicalists, and firmly protect ‘one country, two systems’”—Beijing’s framework for governing Hong Kong as a semiautonomous region.

State broadcaster CCTV denounced the vandalism as a “blatant challenge” to Beijing’s authority and said the perpetrators must be strictly punished. “If we allow these black sheep who forget their ancestors to wantonly disregard the law, behave unscrupulously, trample on Hong Kong’s rule of law and challenge the central government’s authority,” CCTV said, “what rule of law and what future can Hong Kong speak of?”

Chinese media also lauded a pro-police rally in Hong Kong on Saturday, which organizers said drew more than 300,000 people. Police said it was attended by 103,000 people at its peak.

“The ‘silent majority’ have come out to speak,” read one widely circulated blog post by Xiakedao, a social-media account run by the overseas edition of People’s Daily. The post called the rally an “unprecedented movement by all of Hong Kong’s people.”

At the same time, there was a concerted online push to discredit media reports that Beijing doesn’t agree with. People’s Daily published an online post about a pro-Beijing protester shouting “fake news” at a British Broadcasting Corp. reporter over the weekend, which said the BBC had grossly underestimated the number of pro-government protesters.

Criticism of Sunday’s antigovernment protests also proliferated on Chinese social media, including the widespread sharing of images from Sunday’s protests—an apparent shift in Beijing’s censorship strategy.

On the popular Weibo microblogging service, Hong Kong emerged as a top search topic. As of Monday evening, posts with the hashtag “Protect Hong Kong” had garnered some 350 million views, while those with the hashtag “the central government’s authority is not open to challenge” had received about 300 million views.

Many posts condemned the Hong Kong protesters for vandalizing Chinese national symbols. Images of the damage were abnormally visible across the platform, often accompanied by captions denouncing the protesters for unruly behavior.

Some Weibo users expressed support for “white-shirt people” in Hong Kong’s northwestern district of Yuen Long, where a large group of men in white shirts used sticks to attack people on the subway late Sunday, targeting people they believed were returning from the protests.