{"id":39260,"date":"2016-06-02T11:40:09","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T15:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=39260"},"modified":"2016-06-02T14:33:18","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T18:33:18","slug":"brock-university-expert-comments-on-chinese-officials-lashing-out-over-human-rights-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2016\/06\/brock-university-expert-comments-on-chinese-officials-lashing-out-over-human-rights-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock University expert comments on Chinese official\u2019s lashing out over human rights question"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Brock University professor and expert on Chinese issues says he\u2019s not surprised with the fiery response by a Chinese official to a question<\/a> about that country\u2019s human rights record posed by a Canadian reporter Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Charles Burton, an associate professor of political science at Brock, said this type of response has been seen before.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it indicates the sensitivity of these issues and the difficulties these Chinese officials have in maintaining the official line on these matters,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in Canada Wednesday to meet with Foreign Affairs Minister St\u00e9phane Dion in an unannounced \u201cinaugural Canada-China Foreign Affairs Ministers\u2019 Dialogue,\u201d which Dion said was a way to discuss expanding partnerships between the two countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

But during a press conference in Ottawa, a Canadian reporter asked a question of Dion that touched on China\u2019s human rights record including the disappearances of numerous Hong Kong booksellers, the detention of Canadian Kevin Garratt over spying accusations and China\u2019s seizing of disputed islands in the South China Sea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dion answered the question, but when a Chinese reporter asked an unrelated question to Wang, he turned to the Canadian reporter to address the previous question.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to make a response to the questions asked by this journalist about China. I have to say that your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance. I don\u2019t know where that comes from and this is totally unacceptable,\u201d said Wang. \u201cI have to ask whether you understand China? Have you been to China?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wang went on to talk about his country\u2019s record of helping people out of poverty and how it couldn\u2019t have happened without the protection and promotion of human rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to suggest to you please don\u2019t ask questions in such an irresponsible manner and though we welcome goodwill suggestions, we reject groundless or unwarranted accusations,\u201d Wang wrapped up by saying.<\/span><\/p>\n

Burton said Chinese officials are \u201ctrained on how to respond to questions about China\u2019s human rights record raised by visiting officials and the press.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe question was not unexpected. It was directed at Mr. Dion, so the Chinese Foreign Minister was not required to answer the question, but he chose to anyway.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Burton wrote an opinion column about the visit for Thursday\u2019s edition of The Globe and Mail<\/i><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Brock University professor and expert on Chinese issues says he\u2019s not surprised with the fiery response by a Chinese official to a question about that country\u2019s human rights record posed by a Canadian reporter Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":39261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3319,4052,1],"tags":[4008,575,1185,4146],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39262,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39260\/revisions\/39262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}