In today 14 december 2021 news from China, Hong Kong movie star Anita Yuen (Wikipedia) and her husband Julian “Chilam” Cheung (Wikipedia) are in hot water because of their 15 year old son.
Their son implied that Hong Kong is not part of China when responding to an Instagram user asking, “Are you in China now?”, he said, “No not right now” with a background photo of Hong Kong.
Chinese internet users were prompt to accuse him to being a Hong-Kong-separatist. This prompted the mother to apologize on WeiBo (a heavily government monitored and self-censored Chinese version of twitter) for not educating her son well. (Notice the patriotic phone)
(rought translation) After thinking back anf forth, I think it is on me to clarify things.
About the misunderstanding caused by Zhang Mutong's English on social media, we have discovered and corrected him immediately, and we emphasized to him again and agian the importance of words, making sure he will not repeat it. But, we realized that he must be crtiticsed, and the root of the problem is us, we did not educate him to be careful with experssions, we failed as his parents.
Today I want to be frank with everyone, something needs to be explained, some attitude never need explanation. We have heard different voices from all side, we are addressing all now.
Our whole family loves China loves Hong Kong, we support one China, this should never be doubted.
We will do what we should do as Chinese, and we will not do what we should to.
We bear the love from you, and we are grateful of your tolerance and attention.
Chinese twitter users were as prompt to provide more background to the story with their comments: @maklokgai (tweet) reminded people that the father went to Xinjiang to pick cotton as part of CCP propaganda against western boycott of Xinjiang Cotton (reported to use slave labour from the internment camps according to Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) ). @maklokgai also mentioned that the 15 year old is studying in a private international school, probably has no nationalism incline, is not patrotic, does not hate CCP or China. He is probably just a very normal teenager. Other twitter users commented on how wealthy the family is and how they chose to “eat the patriotic meal” instead of migrating to any country they wish to.
Here is a recent report by HK01, in which the father, stage name Chilam (HKMDB), is pictured in blue sweater and floral scarf picking cottons. The article on HK01 website was published on Dec 9th, claiming the TV show in which the father normalizes and beautifies the slave labour background of XinJiang Cotton goes on air in Hong Kong on Dec 10th.
Chinese twitter users were noting the precariousness of “eating the patriotic meals”: no matter what you do, you will never earn enough credit to be safe.
In other news, ASPI, the major western thinktank that researches on XinJiang region with multiple reports just released a new report Borrowing Months on how State Media of China are hiring foreign influencers for their propaganda, the report is Chilam is part of this campaign.
