US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan late on Tuesday was too much to bear for many mainland China internet users, who wanted a more muscular response from their government.
« Going to bed yesterday night, I was so angry I could not sleep, » blogger Xiaoyuantoutiao wrote on Wednesday.
« But what angers me is not the online clamours for ‘starting a fight’, ‘spare the island but not its people’…(but that) this old she-devil, she actually dares to come! »
China considers Taiwan part of its territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.
But Taiwan rejects China’s sovereignty claims and says only its people can decide the island’s future.
Hashtags related to Pelosi’s visit, such as « the resolve to realise national reunification is rock solid », went viral on China’s Weibo microblogging platform.
By Wednesday, about a dozen of these patriotic hashtags had racked up several billion views.
Some bloggers even regarded Ms Pelosi’s temerity as justification for an immediate invasion of Taiwan, with many users posting the term « there is only one China ».
Others said China’s military should have done more to stop her plane from landing, and thousands of users mocked a viral Weibo post published by an official People’s Liberation Army account last week that had simply read « prepare for war! ».
« In the future if you are not preparing to strike, don’t make these statements to deceive the common people, » said one user.
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