Chinese keyboard warriors unleash buying spree to bail out Moscow

From chocolates to ballet groups and even purebred cats, internet users in China have shown their support for all things Russian.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin says China and Russia will continue to conduct normal trade co-operation. Picture: AFP

Chinese keyboard warriors have cleared the shelves of Russia’s flagship online store in China, buying chocolate-covered caramel lollies to show their defiance of the “US imperialist” sanctions put on Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Sergei Baitsev, the commercial ambassador of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, on Wednesday expressed his country’s gratitude as the waiting list for products sold by the Russian’s state-backed online “national pavilion” grew to the tens of thousands.

“In this complex and turbulent international situation, we see the friendship of our old friends in China,” he said in a video message.

“There is an old Chinese saying that a goose feather sent from afar conveys profound affections. We will keep this deep friendship in our hearts and minds.”

In much of the world, Russia has become a pariah state for its unprovoked invasion of its smaller neighbour Ukraine. The conflict is portrayed completely differently in China. Guided by Beijing’s propaganda department, the sentiment on China’s curated internet is overwhelmingly pro-Putin and anti-American.

China’s government has claimed the US is the “culprit” for the war because of its European alliance network, a view widely shared by Chinese internet users.

Many denounce the Ukrainian army as “fascists”, echoing Russian propaganda. Beijing has also repeatedly denounced what it calls “illegal unilateral sanctions” while defending its economic support of Russia. “China and Russia will continue to conduct normal trade co-operation in the spirit of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit,” said foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Wednesday.

Along with buying Russian chocolates, internet users in China have shown their support for Russia by expressing outrage over international bans on Russian ballet groups and even purebred cats.

While China’s government claims to be taking a neutral stance on the war, the censorship of anti-war voices within the country make Beijing’s Russian leaning clear. This week, a poster on the Canadian embassy in Beijing expressing solidarity with Ukraine was scrawled with “F..k NATO” — a brazen act on a compound surrounded by Chinese diplomatic security guards and cameras.

Jude Blanchette, an expert on Chinese politics at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said China’s support for Moscow was “on the verge of explicit”.

He said President Xi Jinping’s backing of Vladimir Putin’s war was shaping up as an “extraordinary blunder” for Beijing.

“You can bet your bottom dollar there’s a lot of people in European and Western capitals who are going to do their damnedest to make sure China isn’t able to wipe the stink off of them from their enablement of Moscow,” he said.

Those opposing the war in China face a ferocious backlash.

A group of professors from universities in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macao at the weekend called on Russia to stop the invasion. “As a country that was once ravaged by war, where families were destroyed, where everywhere people were dying of starvation … we sympathise with the pain of the Ukrainian people,” they said in an open letter.

The letter was promptly scrubbed from the internet and nationalist internet users boasted about reporting them to the Communist Party’s discipline inspection commission. “As a citizen, you have the right to monitor public opinion,” said one.