Reporter's eye roll at news conference splits China into blue, red camps
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A reporter in a blue blazer rolled her eyes at another journalist wearing red during a news briefing in China on Tuesday -- and video of the exchange quickly went viral.
Wearing blue was Liang Xiangyi, a Shangai-based reporter with Yicai Media Group who emerged as a “kind of folk hero for those tired of turgid pageantry,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
In the red jacket was Zhang Huijun, a Chinese journalist with Los Angeles-based American Multimedia TV, who asked how Beijing would keep tabs on overseas investment under President Xi Jinping’s Belt-and-Road infrastructure program, the Journal reported.
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Around halfway through Zhang’s reported soft-ball question to a Chinese official, Liang rolled her eyes in an expression of disdain, after first furrowing her eyebrows, the New York Times reported.
The moment, in typically a very carefully choreographed event, spread quickly across Chinese social media, the report said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}However, by Tuesday afternoon, Liang’s name became censored on Weibo, a widely used Chinese social media app, the Times reported.
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On another popular Chinese messaging app WeChat, people separated into the blue camp (for Liang) and the red camp (for Zhang), which represents the color of China and the Chinese Communist Party, the report said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A nation split into blue and red camps? Imagine that.