Iconic yellow stickers from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement have appeared in eastern US cities amid Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit, with Washington keeping human rights topics off the agenda.
Stickers of yellow umbrellas, the “I want true universal suffrage” slogan and an image of Xi holding a yellow umbrella were found on the John Harvard statue in Harvard University in Cambridge as well as in Boston’s Chinatown.
The stickers were put up by Hongkongers living and studying in the two Massachusetts cities earlier this week, according to boxun.com.
Xi is unlikely to see the stickers as Massachusetts is not on his official itinerary. The Chinese president and Communist Party strongman is set to visit the Lincoln High School in Rhode Island on Thursday, which he toured as a local Fujian official more than two decades ago. He will also attend the US-China Internet Industry Forum at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Xi’s trip has been met with political protests while official talks have focused on cyber security, the South China Sea and climate change.
Human rights activists, Tibetan groups and Falun Gong supporters held demonstrations in Seattle when Xi arrived on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, Chinese lawyer and dissident Gao Zhisheng asked his wife Geng He, who lives in the US, to decline an invitation to meet with US State Council officials, saying such a “sneaky meeting” while Washington politicians are “hugging the thief-like Chinese leaders” is useless and inappropriate. In an interview with the Associated Press, Gao, who is under house arrest in China, said he was tortured in prison.
这是朋友翻译的英文版。 pic.twitter.com/cJk7UdbIqc
— 耿和 (@Genghe1) September 23, 2015
Other events on Xi’s itinerary include a meeting with US President Barack Obama and a state dinner at the White House on Friday. Xi will also open the World Conference on Women at the United Nations on the weekend and give a speech at the UN 70th anniversary summit.
