‘Anti-China politicians’ to blame for negative global sentiment towards country, official says

Name: China says calls to boycott Beijing Winter Olympics ‘doomed to fail’
Uploaded: 2021-03-03T13:34:43.000Z
Duration: 1 min 5 s
Description: China says calls to boycott Beijing Winter Olympics ‘doomed to fail’

‘Some foreigners don’t know about China and some are misguided by anti-China politicians,’ CPPCC spokesman Guo Weimin says

Comments come on the eve of China’s annual sessions of its rubber-stamp parliament and advisory body

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Some foreigners are “misguided by anti-China politicians” according to CPPCC spokesman Guo Weimin. Photo: Simon Song

Jun Mai

Published: 9:34pm, 3 Mar 2021Updated: 11:58am, 4 Mar 2021

A senior Chinese official has blamed ill-intentioned Western politicians and misunderstanding for the slump in global opinion regarding China.

“I think the reasons are complicated, some foreigners don’t know about China and some are misguided by anti-China politicians,” Guo Weimin, a spokesman for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country’s top political advisory body, told a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday ahead of the country’s annual parliamentary sessions.

He was responding to a journalist who asked “what went wrong” to create the slump in global public opinion.

Guo said politicians, whom he did not name, had “confused the minds” on issues like Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

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China says calls to boycott Beijing Winter Olympics ‘doomed to fail’

Answering a question about calls for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics next year, Guo, who is also a deputy director of the State Council Information Office, reiterated China’s official line that any such attempts were “doomed to fail”.