'Insensitive' China Post About India Deleted After Backlash

A social media account linked to the Communist Party of China sparked outrage with a post that appeared to mock India. A quickly deleted post on Weibo, China’s top social network, showed images of a rocket launch in China and a cremation site in India under text reading “Lighting a fire in China VS lighting a fire in India,” the BBC reports. The account it appeared on belongs to a powerful law-enforcement agency, the party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and has 15 million followers, the Hindu reports. The post stayed viral after it was deleted, with users sharing screenshots and expressing their outrage over the message.

Some Weibo users called for sympathy for India, including the editor-in-chief of the Global Times in China. Hu Xijin said it was time to “firmly place Chinese society on the moral high ground,” according to the BBC. The post showed up just a day after China President Xi Jinping sent condolences and an offer of aid to India. India is enduring a grueling second wave of COVID cases, with a staggering number of deaths—3,498 reported on Friday. The country is the only one to report 400,000 new cases in a single day. (Read more about India and China.)