Videos of Chinese flags filling San Francisco have surfaced amid Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the city for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Investigative reporter Katie Daviscourt criticized the flags on social media, tweeting, “Oh look, San Francisco turned into China for President Xi’s arrival. Finally revealing its true colors.”
Oh look, San Francisco turned into China for President Xi’s arrival.
— Katie Daviscourt 🇺🇸 (@KatieDaviscourt) November 15, 2023
Finally revealing it’s true colors. pic.twitter.com/G3WvGfRKnx
Social commentator Eric Matheny shared, “Xi Jinping was complicit in releasing a biological weapon upon the world and this is the warm welcome the Biden Administration gives him.”
Newsweek reported that a banner decrying the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) circled the sky in San Francisco just before Jinping’s arrival.
“End CCP, Free China, Free HK, Free Tibet, Free Uighur,” the banner read.
Fengsuo Zhou, executive director of the organization Human Rights in China, told the outlet, “It is futile and self-defeating for the United States to engage with the CCP regime while Xi Jinping is committing more atrocities every day.”
President Joe Biden and Jinping are to have their first face-to-face meeting in a year during the summit.
Biden previously expressed an interest in restoring military communications with China.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on CBS’ Face the Nation that having military-to-military contacts “has been a priority” for Biden.
Sullivan explained that communication is “necessary to manage competition responsibly, and to ensure that competition does not turn into conflict. And we need those lines of communication so that there aren’t mistakes or miscalculations or miscommunication. And so that could take place at every level from the senior leadership of our defense department and their defense ministry, all the way down to the tactical operational level, on the water and in the air in the Indo-Pacific.”
“I’m not going to get ahead of any announcements that the President might make coming out of the meeting,” he stated. “But I will say the President is determined to see the re-establishment of military-to-military ties because he believes it’s in the US national security interest.”
