New Delhi: As New Delhi and Beijing worked to repair relations, the Chinese embassy amplified an unusually blunt commentary accusing some Chinese nationalist influencers of exploiting anti-India prejudice as “clickbait”, warning that years of curtailed exchanges have left many Chinese with fragmented and stereotyped perceptions of India.The Chinese-language commentary, carried under the byline “Xin Ping” by The Paper, a Shanghai-based digital outlet owned by the state-run Shanghai United Media Group, on July 2, was later reproduced in full on the embassy’s website. The embassy’s version does not carry a byline, attributing the piece only to The Paper.An analysis published along with the translation of the commentary on the China-focussed Substack newsletter The East is Read noted that the backlash reflected tensions between Beijing’s diplomatic outreach and online nationalist opinion.The article argued that years of suspended exchanges have distorted Chinese perceptions of India, leaving many people with what it describes as “fragmented, label-driven and stereotyped” views. It says content portraying India negatively “may appear to be ‘patriotic’,” but is in fact designed to generate online attention.“In essence,” it said, “it exploits patriotic feeling and national sentiment for traffic,” adding that such content pollutes China’s online environment and does not reflect “the open and confident mindset a major country should have.”The commentary was published as Ambassador Xu Feihong faced a sustained online campaign, including calls for his recall, after a rise in visas issued to Indian nationals and the gradual resumption of direct flights since 2025. Relations between the two countries had been frozen for four years over the military stand-off in eastern Ladakh, which ended after a patrolling agreement in October 2024.A group of self-styled “positive energy” nationalist bloggers had spread claims that the embassy was indiscriminately issuing visas, according to a report published July 6 in Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore’s leading Chinese language daily. The campaign included fabricated claims, which trended on Weibo, that an Indian team lead at a Shanghai tech park had locked down access to core code, and an AI-generated video that falsely quoted Xu pledging to help India achieve “common prosperity”.The commentary referred to online posts claiming that Indian visitors were arriving in large numbers, behaving uncivilly and “taking up Chinese resources”, fuelling criticism of China’s visa policy towards India.While saying any foreign visitor who breaks Chinese laws should be dealt with accordingly, it noted that “the real problem begins when the behaviour of a few individuals is used to condemn an entire country”. It added, “We should not close the door on India because of a handful of cases,” and allow every negative incident to be blamed on Indians simply because the issue generates online traffic.It also rejects criticism that China has become too generous in issuing visas to Indians, noting that direct flights have gradually resumed since 2025 and that more than 80 percent of visas issued to Indian nationals are for business travel.While acknowledging that India still lags behind China in restoring visas for Chinese nationals, it warns against turning the issue into a flashpoint and seeking immediate reciprocity. “If the visa issue is endlessly escalated and turned into an outlet for anger, the result will only be counterproductive, narrowing the space for the relationship to improve and develop,” said the article.The commentary instead urged Chinese readers to “look at the bigger picture”. Calling China and India “neighbours that cannot be moved away”, it stated the recent easing of border tensions shows the boundary question should not define the relationship. It cited meetings between the leaders of the two countries in Kazan and Tianjin and notes that bilateral goods trade reached $151.1 billion in India’s 2025-26 financial year, making China India’s largest trading partner.According to the analysis by The East is Read’s editor, Zichen Wang, the episode revealed less about entrenched anti-India sentiment than about what happens when such sentiment is “hijacked by racists” and collides with a diplomatic thaw.Nationalist influencers, he argued, could turn “grievance, prejudice and fabrication into traffic,” while diplomats had to contend with “the world as it is,” balancing national interests against the longer-term need to prevent rivalry from hardening into permanent hostility.The episode was also a reminder, Wang wrote, that Chinese online opinion, though heavily controlled, is not entirely “manufactured from above,” and that authorities do not exercise “complete command over the sentiments circulating online.”While China exercises extensive control over the internet, he argued, the backlash showed that “responsible statecraft sometimes requires navigating and pushing back against bigotry, rather than staying silent.”Note: An earlier version of the piece had misspelled Zichen Wang’s name. The error is regretted.