No good deed goes unpunished, said the China Daily (Beijing) in an editorial. As the Philippines struggles to dig out from the devastation wrought by Typhoon Haiyan, “a storm of China bashing has been gathering.” Foreign media are “pointing an accusing finger” at China’s donation of $100,000 in aid, calling it meager in comparison to those of countries like the U.S., which pledged $20 million to disaster recovery, and even the Swedish furniture company Ikea, which gave $2.7 million. Our critics “have wrongly assumed China’s skirmishes with the Philippines over islands in the South China Sea” are to blame for what they consider a stingy donation. “Those China bashers must harbor ill intentions, aimed at either tarnishing China’s image in the world arena or sowing further seeds of discord between China and the Philippines.”
Beijing has since increased its aid to $1.6 million, but its first offer was more than adequate, said the Legal Daily(Beijing). “Any donation should be in line with public sentiment in the donor country as well as its capacity [to donate], and the $100,000 to the Philippines [was] a reflection of both.” Chinese social media are awash in anger that we are giving any money at all to a country “that has tried to provoke China,” said Wang Wenwen in the Global Times(Beijing). It’s only prudent that Beijing should consider negative public opinion, as well as China’s ongoing maritime dispute with Manila, when determining how much to give its neighbor.
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