New | Chinese netizens call for sanctions against Malaysia as frustration surges over missing flight

Weibo users question how much information Malaysia is withholding about missing jet

Malaysia Airlines flight 370

Amy Li

Published: 2:45pm, 18 Mar 2014

Why you can trust SCMP

Chinese netizens wondered wondered how much more information Malaysia is withholding

China’s internet users, increasingly frustrated over the Malaysian government’s handling of events after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing 10 days ago, have called on the Chinese government to apply economic sanctions and urged tourists to boycott Malaysian destinations this week.

“It is due to your bureaucracy and politics that we are still unable to locate our people,” a microblogger wrote on Weibo on Tuesday. “If the Malaysian government continues to fail their job, I strongly urge China to sanction against them. “

Microbloggers expressed discontent over the contradictory and piecemeal information Malaysian Airlines and its government have provided, criticising the government’s lack of transparency. Many wondered how much more information Malaysia is withholding.

“ China should sanction Malaysia to force the truth out of them, “ Zhang Kai, a lawyer based in China’s Zhejiang province, wrote on Weibo.

“Malaysia should be completely honest and release everything they know,” a blogger wrote on Tuesday. “Otherwise China should slap them with sanctions and take military actions if necessary.”

On Weibo, a satirical cartoon created by a Chinese blogger compared the reactions of Malaysia after the flight went missing with those of China, the US and Vietnam. The cartoon has gone viral and received more than 50,000 reposts so far.

“I am speechless. How will people dare travel to Malaysia in the future when their leaders demonstrated such little sense of responsibility?” a microblogger commented on the cartoon.

The cartoon artist, Sun Shaokang, told the he was a Chinese student studying in Singapore. Sun said he had used images available on the internet and created the imagined conversations among the four countries to reflect how poorly Malaysia had handled the crisis.

“I realised Malaysia had acted very irresponsibly after the flight went missing,” he said. The artist also admitted that he had not expected that this cartoon would draw so much attention.

Watch: Chinese MH370 relatives threaten 'hunger strike'

Malaysia, rich in natural resources, has become an increasingly important trade partner of China in recent years. China imported about 15 per cent of its liquid natural gas from Malaysia last year, China’s reported on Monday.

Chinese state media slammed Malaysia this week for providing conflicting information on missing jet MH370. After Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced on Saturday that the Malaysia Airlines flight’s disappearance may have been “deliberate,” state-owned China Daily in an editorial questioned why the announcement came more than a week after the flight vanished.

Malaysian authorities also admitted that while the country had been co-operating with the FBI, Interpol, and other international law-enforcement agencies since day one of the search, they had been withholding information that’s not “verified by the international investigations team. “

This has angered many net users who said they feared China was being blocked from learning the whole picture.

Huang Huikang, Chinese ambassador to Malaysia, told a press conference on Tuesday that China could "rule out the suspicion of any Chinese passengers engaging in terrorist or sabotage activities on board the MH370 flight".

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