Hypocrisy behind West's double standard: China Daily editorial

If a name is not true to the nature of what is said, what is said cannot make sense; if what is said does not make sense, the thing concerned will not be done. So what should we call those in Hong Kong who wear black masks and vandalize public facilities and attack police and innocent people?

Should they be called rioters or protesters? Should what they do be called a protest or riot?

Much of the Western media and many Western politicians prefer to call them protesters. And they call the violent bedlam they create "freedom of expression". This is not because they are blood-thirsty or delight in mayhem. It is simply because such violence takes place in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, whose political system and ideology are different from theirs.

When protesters in Barcelona threw stones at the police and set fire to garbage bins last week to protest at the sentencing of nine Catalan separatist leaders, what they did was called unrest or rioting in Western media reports.

It is obvious that Western media and politicians have a double standard when it comes to the same violence committed by protesters in different countries.

Violence by protesters in Western countries is unrest or rioting, but it is a demonstration or protest, even "a noble fight for freedom", when it takes place in Hong Kong.

What is behind the double standard of Western politicians and media, we suppose, is an ulterior motive. They hope that the unrest in Hong Kong will create trouble for China as they cannot do anything else to contain the rise of China as a world power.

Procedural justice is always emphasized in the West. No matter how correct one's appeal is, it is definitely unacceptable for one to express such an appeal in an illegal way.

That is why a violent protest is called unrest or a riot. That also explains why police have the right to use tear gas or water cannons or even rubber bullets to crack down on rioters.

Yet in the eyes of some Western politicians and Western media, the Hong Kong police are using violence against protesters even though they are doing the same thing their Western counterparts would do to protect the public and property from harm.

Those employing such a double standard do not care whether what the rioters are doing in Hong Kong is against procedural justice or not. They do not care that those resorting to violence are doing so because they know well that their demands are unreasonable.

Such a double standard betrays the hypocrisy of Western politicians and media.