Malaysia Announces Interruption of Searches for Missing Flight MH370, Outrage Erupts in China

Malaysia Announces Interruption of Searches for Missing Flight MH370, Outrage Erupts in China

CNN Alex Billaud Curvale

More than a year after the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 a press secretary of the Malaysian government announced on thursday that in absence of any new tangible element, funding for the searches with be withdrawn within the next month. “The research teams have tried everything within existing means”, said a senior American official, “Now the the investigations seem to be slowing, with no clear resolution in sight”.

Flight 370, a Boeing 777 with 239 persons on board, disappeared from the radars over the South China Sea on March 8th 2014. In spite of the most expensive searches in the history of flight, no part of the plane has been found yet by an international Joint Investigation Team, looking as far as Australia. Inquiries on the crew’s background proved equally inconclusive.

Since 152 of the 227 passengers of flight MH370 were Chinese citizens, the initial Malaysian response, or lack thereof, sparked vocal discontent in China last year.  Some Malaysian declarations had been perceived as insensitive and contradictory.  Calls for boycott, often endorsed by celebrities, provoked a major drop in Chinese tourism to Malaysia.

Thursday’s announcement was followed by an eruption of outrage in China. On Weibo, China’s social network, angry reactions dominated by far the discussion. The calls for boycott were renewed with strength, and reached even a broader audience according to Berkeley Chinese studies Professor Adam Steingler.  “A mobilization of this extent”, Mr Steingler affirmed on phone, is “exceptional for China, and would be on the front pages for several days in a democracy”.

A largely followed blogger going by “Uncle Fu” called the Malaysian decision “an act of enmity towards the people of China”. His post was shared more than half a million times. Many users went even further, spreading popular conspiracy theories that the plane was in fact shot down by a foreign aggressor. These assertions were often associated with “patriotic requests” for the Chinese government not to cede any square foot of the contested Paracel Islands to the “murderers”. By the end of the day, the most offensive keywords were unaccessible on Weibo. The Chinese government issued no statement.

A crowd of more than a thousand also gathered in February of this year in front of the Malaysian embassy in Beijing with signs calling for Malaysia to “say the truth or face anger”. Some of the slogans criticized a supposed role of the United States in the Malaysian withdrawal, before the police dispersed the demonstrators.

According to Tim A. Long, a Chinese foreign policy expert at the National University of Hong Kong (NHU): “It remains very unlikely that one of China’s regional concurrents was involved in any way in the MH370 disappearance. If that was the case, however, public reactions would certainly lead Beijing policy-makers to radically toughen their stance in the South China Sea showdown.”