A war between Thai and Chinese Twitter users broke out this month, resulting Taiwanese and Hong Kong users declaring a 'Milk Tea Alliance' in solidarity with Thailand. The seemingly innocuous spat may highlight growing frustrations with China's regional influence
This month, a Twitter war has broken out, with users from Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong banding together against Chinese nationalists.
Its origins were relatively innocuous. A Thai celebrity retweeted a photo that implied that Taiwan was a country. Soon after, he was bombarded with criticism from mainland Chinese and quickly apologised.
But the Chinese brigade wasn’t done. Prajak Kongkirati of Bangkok’s Thammasat University told Reuters « his is the first transnational geopolitical Twitter war Thais have engaged in».
Users from Taiwan and Hong Kong soon joined the fray. This included Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, who called for «pan-Asian solidarity that opposes all forms of authoritarianism». From there, a broader Southeast Asian coalition emerged under a new hashtag: The ‘Milk Tea Alliance’, so-named because of a collective love for sweet tea beverages.
As the geopolitical feud plays out in cyberspace, the regional consequences of China’s damming of a major Southeast Asian river system have emerged. Twitter users are now harnessing #MilkTeaAlliance’s popularity to bring attention to this issue.
The Mekong, dubbed ‘Asia’s rice bowl’, is a river system that flows from China down through Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
Recent research from the Stimson Center reveals that China’s upstream dams have repeatedly caused droughts in countries downstream.
This article was written by PATRICK FLANNERY
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