‘Are You Like This Doggy?’ U.S. Embassy Requested Chinese language College students. It Backfired.

HONG KONG – The US Embassy in Beijing had good news to report: Student visa applications for Chinese nationals have resumed after a year-long hiatus.

“Spring has come and the flowers are in bloom,” the message wrote on Wednesday in a Chinese-language social media post that contained a video of a dog trying to jump over a fence. “Are you like that pooch who can’t wait to go out and play?”

It backfired, big time.

The post on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform in China, could be seen as an attempt to be cute. But at a moment of rising nationalism on the Chinese Internet, it sparked criticism – and allegations of racism – which were compounded by the ruling Communist Party’s formidable propaganda machine.

The embassy quickly removed the post and apologized, but the damage was done. The spit is the final thorn in a diplomatic relationship that is prickly at best and has recently been at its most delicate point in decades.

Some Weibo users wrote that the US State Department deliberately tried to offend Chinese students by comparing them to dogs. The Global Times, an English-language Chinese tabloid, accumulated criticism of the Post and criticized former President Donald J. Trump’s visa policy.

Fang Kecheng, a professor of journalism and communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the response is a typical example of how nationalist news outlets and social media users in China are waging “public opinion warfare”.

“They pay close attention to what the US government and the media are saying and reinforce inappropriate language to discredit them,” he said.

Professor Fang said such campaigns sometimes drew attention to statements he believed should be criticized, such as Mr. Trump’s use of the term “China virus” to describe the coronavirus. This phrase has been widely criticized as racist and anti-Chinese in the United States and beyond.

“In this case, it amplifies a misstep,” he added, referring to the embassy’s social media post.

Earlier last year, Mr Trump imposed restrictions on travelers from China, including students, which sparked criticism from Beijing. The Weibo post of the US Embassy Consular Section on Wednesday announced that student applications under the direction of President Biden have resumed.

Not everyone who criticized the embassy post in China was outraged. Some Weibo users said they were more disappointed than angry, adding that the post was more deaf than intentionally malicious.

“It didn’t need the Weibo post to have that line about the dog,” said Susan Chen, a student from south China’s Guangdong Province, who returned to China last year after starting a master’s degree in Connecticut. “It could have simply said, ‘Spring has come and the flowers are in bloom, come and get the visa.'”

The social media message from the US Embassy in Beijing. “It wasn’t necessary for the Weibo post to include that line about the dog,” said a Chinese student.Recognition…US State Department

An embassy spokesman said Thursday that the United States has the greatest respect for all Chinese and that the social media post should be “lighthearted and humorous.” The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity on the terms of the embassy, ​​said the staff had cut the post as soon as it became clear that many Chinese people saw the embassy differently.

The episode further shows how frayed US-China relations have become in terms of tariffs, human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang region and a technological cold war, among other things. Travel between the two countries has been largely frozen by strict visa controls, due to both Covid-19 protocols and acidic relations. Even attempts to restore diplomatic normalcy were fraught with problems.

There are also potential financial implications for the US education sector.

About one million international students enroll in American universities each year. According to the Institute of International Education, more than a third came from China in the 2019-2020 academic year.

However, experts say universities in the US and other English-speaking countries could lose billions of dollars in the coming years because Chinese students and parents are upset about what they believe to be a permissive stance on public health during the pandemic due to travel restrictions and anger.

Last year, the Trump administration abandoned a plan to visa-withdraw international college students if they did not attend at least a few classes in person. Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and attorneys general from 20 states had complained about the proposed policy, saying it was ruthless, cruel and pointless.

Paul Mozur contributed to the reporting and Lin Qiqing contributed to the research.