Chinese Communist Party mocks India’s COVID funeral pyres in Weibo post

An image mocking India’s thousands of flaming funeral pyres has been removed from an official Communist Party social media account amid fierce backlash.

An image mocking India’s thousands of flaming funeral pyres by comparing it to the smoke from a Chinese shuttle has been removed from an official Communist Party social media account amid fierce backlash.

On Monday, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission posted a meme on Chinese social network Weibo showing a picture on one side of a Chinese rocket blasting off from a launch pad and on the other Indian crematorium workers burning deceased victims of the pandemic.

The caption read, “China lighting a fire vs India lighting a fire”.

Caption says “China firing up VS India firing up.” This is a Chinese govt Weibo account. The lack of basic decency is just unbelievable. Are some young bureaucrats managing the account? To what extent it reflects the mindset of the younger generation in the CCP? pic.twitter.com/dyS9001du4

— Yaqiu Wang 王亚秋 (@Yaqiu) May 1, 2021

Human Rights Watch researcher Yaqiu Wang criticised the post.

“This is a Chinese govt (sic) Weibo account,” she said on Twitter.

“The lack of basic decency is just unbelievable.

“Are some young bureaucrats managing the account? To what extent it reflects the mindset of the younger generation in the CCP?”

A Long March 5B rocket, carrying China's Tianhe space station core module, lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China's Hainan province. Picture: STR / AFP / China OUT

A new wave of the pandemic has totally overwhelmed India’s healthcare services and has caused crematoriums to operate day and night as the number of victims continues to spiral out of control. Picture: Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images

The image was also criticised by Weibo users, and eventually taken down entirely.

But while some criticised the post, others noted that it had become a theme on the social media platform.

The weibo from the CCP Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission mocking India’s Covid tragedy - “China lighting a fire vs India lighting a fire”. pic.twitter.com/TOGnfbyDsG

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) May 1, 2021

The tweets come at a time of increasingly strained relations between India and China.

India recently participated in Quadrilateral Security Dialogue talks with Australia, Japan, and the United States, further deepening its rifts with Beijing, which flared up last year with a series of clashes along the Indian-Chinese border.

The communist regime in Beijing has a long history of using social media to take swipes at its perceived rivals, a tactic that is widely seen as controversial and counterproductive.

Last year China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian touched off a diplomatic row with Australia after he posted a tweet showing a photoshopped Australian soldier holding a dagger to the throat of an Afghan child.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian touched off a diplomatic row with Australia after he posted a tweet showing a photoshopped Australian soldier holding a dagger to the throat of an Afghan child.

Amd just last Thusday the Chinese embassy in Japan tweeted an anti-Semitic cartoon featuring a Grim Reaper character holding a scythe bearing the Israeli flag, leaving a bloody trail behind him as he passes doors marked Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Egypt.

China eventually took down the tweet after a protest from the Israeli foreign ministry.

India has become the epicentre of the global COVID-19 pandemic in recent weeks, with experts estimating the reported 20 million cases and more than 215,000 deaths are actually significantly higher.

By comparison China reported just 11 cases of the virus on Sunday.