Huntsman's appearance at protest prompts Chinese accusations
Last Sunday, a small number of protesters gathered at a busy Beijing thoroughfare to play a part in the so-called "Jasmine Revolution" protests. As NBC's Adrienne Mong reported, the protests had been organized online, and it appears that word had spread - many in the crowd were journalists and Chinese police, and there had been a crackdown on activists ahead of the protest date.
Among those in the crowd, strangely enough, was U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman - the former Utah Republican governor who appears to be preparing for a 2012 presidential campaign against his current boss, President Obama. As you can see in the rather amazing video at left, Huntsman, who was wearing sunglasses and a black leather jacket with an American flag on it, was confronted at the rally by citizens who pointed to his presence to suggest that the United States is trying to foment revolution in China.
The Chinese nationalist website M4, which posted the video, had this to say:
"There is no doubt that he had gone there to see how the planned protest was going on, and apparently tweet in more words of encouragement and reassurance to the protesters that the U.S. was with them in the advent of any reaction from the government of China. But to his greatest disappointment, nothing was happening. The Chinese people are too busy to give a damn to western manipulations aimed at destabilizing their own nation which today is a source of pride to every Chinese citizen in any part of the world...
It was not a coincidence that the U.S. ambassador was spotted at the venue during the same hour that the protests were supposedly planned to hold. He was there to applaud the protesters, take down notes of how the riot police will react, then return to his office and make a report on human rights violations in China, and then fax an urgent message to the White House on the need to covertly encourage the protesters to march on, chant slogans and call for regime change and other social benefits like was the case in Tunisia, Egypt, and now, Libya and Bahrain.
A spokesman for the embassy claimed that Huntsman's presence at the event had been a coincidence, telling AFP that he and his family "were on their way to Tiananmen Square and they walked to Wangfujing, and the fact that that happened and they were there at the time was purely coincidental."
According to The Shanghaiist blog, in the wake of the incident, "Chinese internet censors have taken to filtering search results for the Chinese name of the ambassador."
Huntsman sent the president his resignation letter in January ahead of a possible presidential run. He is expected to make a formal decision this summer.