Chinese hegemony sparks global protests, calls to boycott China products

If China had thought that it would be walking up and down the street, stomping boots and banging nail-studded rods on tar roads, making the neighborhood quiver with fear, it has been proven wrong.

While the art of leadership and diplomacy call for measured words and polite tones, it does not necessarily work the same way for the man or woman on the street.

The neighborhood is making its annoyance clear to the bully. Even in days of dread and fear of dying due to the made-in-China virus, people have gathered the courage to come out and protest. Across the globe, fed up with Chinese bullying, people are showing their annoyance with the Communist nation and protesting outside Chinese consulates.

The leaders, meanwhile, still issue bureaucratized and heavily-edited diplomatic notes, barring Donald Trump who minces no words—whether on trade with China, the origins of the virus, harassment of Taiwan by Chinese incursions, the PLA attack on Indian troops or the change in the status of Hong Kong. People across the world, however, are not constrained by diplomatic niceties and political equivocations.

People in Hong Kong continued with their anti-China protests from last year, now over a national security law, which protesters say takes away their civil and social rights besides bringing the city-state into China's authoritarian rule. Armed with the new laws, the Hong Kong police arrested nearly 400 people.

Though Hong Kong residents pour out on the streets shouting pro-independence slogans, their numbers have decreased. The 2019 protests in Hong Kong had tens of thousands of people carrying flags and spray paints. Now the Chinese dread is overwhelming. People haven't forgotten the Tiananmen Square incident in which the Chinese government had killed thousands of its own youth seeking democracy.

It is not just the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Other communities and nationalities are getting together. Japanese, Taiwanese, Indians and Tibetans held a protest in Japan against China's expansionist policies. They gathered at the Hachiko statue in Tokyo and raised slogans against Xi Jinping and even demanded that the authoritarian leader be replaced with a democratically elected and responsible leader. The demonstrators blamed Xi for the coronavirus spread that has affected people across the world and pushed millions into poverty.

People have been out on the streets in India over China's bid to sneak into Indian territory in the icy regions of Ladakh which touch Tibet, China, Xinjiang and Pakistan. Indians, cutting across political divisions have protested against China, asking the Indian government to reduce trade and make the country less dependent on Chinese imports. Many protesters showed their anger by breaking Chinese products. Some of the protests were held in front of the Chinese embassy in Delhi. Angry over the assault on their soldiers on the border amidst talks, Indians held protests across the country vowing not to use Chinese products.

Demonstrations by the Indian community reached American shores where Indian-Americans protested outside the Chinese consulate in Chicago. They urged the American people to boycott Chinese products and switch to using American products. At protests in New York and New Jersey, Indians were joined by Tibetans who came to show solidarity for the Tibetan cause. People carried placards asking China to vacate Tibet and improve the human rights situation there.

In neighboring Canada, members of the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress held an anti-China protest outside the Chinese Consulate in Toronto. They also thanked the Indian Army for standing up to Chinese aggression and highlighted the Chinese genocide in their country.

The Tibetan students have put the cause of Tibet center stage. They shouted slogans for self-determination of Tibet and highlighted Chinese human rights violations in Tibet. They also urged people to boycott Chinese products.

People are angry with China for violation of human rights, for its abusive spokespersons, for encroaching upon the land of smaller nations, violating international protocols and sovereignty of nations on land and sea as well as thrusting nations into debt.

With a chorus building up against China, the leaders of affected countries will have to take a stand and confront the bully with the barbed wire stick. The time for appeasement is over..