Trump, Tiananmen and the Chinese exile divide over the Capitol siege

A former student leader draws parallels between the crackdown in 1989 and the storming of the US legislature

The outgoing president is popular among dissidents who applaud him for standing up to Beijing

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Trump’s hardline stand against China has won him support among dissidents overseas. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:00pm, 10 Jan 2021Updated: 10:23pm, 10 Jan 2021

Several prominent Chinese dissidents have doubled down on their support for US President Donald Trump, comparing those who stormed Capitol Hill in Washington last week to the Tiananmen Square student protesters in 1989.

Some also repeated unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and staged riots meant to pin the blame on Trump, angering others in the exile community.

On Twitter on Thursday, Li Jinjin, a former Peking University student leader who took part in the 1989 movement, compared the Trump supporters who laid siege to the Capitol to students involved in the 1989 protests, in response to descriptions of the former as a “mob” or “thugs”.

“Who are the mobs? The students also occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989, the Communist Party also called them mobs? If they didn’t pick up a weapon, then they weren’t violent,” wrote Li, now a lawyer in New York.

“If they broke the law, then they should be arrested but they’re not mobs,” he wrote, referring to the Trump supporters.

Li told the South China Morning Post that he was not comparing the Capitol Hill siege to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest but that the people from the two events, Trump supporters and the student protesters, were of “similar nature”, in that they were both carrying out a political struggle.

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