Bizarre scenes unfolded yesterday as the Marsascala Local Council unveiled a statue of Lu Yu, a Chinese cultural and national figure, during an official ceremony. The event was organised by the Marsascala Local Council, whose mayor appears eager to secure a share of Labour’s corrupt dealings with China.
Even more bizarrely, the new Minister for Civil Rights and Equality, Rosianne Cutajar, of all ministers, attended the ceremony on behalf of the government. China is among the world’s worst violators of civil rights, operating a dystopian prison state that persecutes dissidents, ethnic minorities, civil-rights campaigners and LGBT activists.
The Chinese state considers an occasion as evidence of its growing influence in Malta and across Europe, and as a symbol of its “geopolitical” success in a continent it increasingly perceives as weak and pliable. Labour Party politicians, on the other hand, view it simply as another opportunity for corruption and the advancement of their personal interests.
Note also how the Chinese ambassador to Malta attended the event wearing a Mao-style tunic rather than a conventional Western suit. The choice of dress was not incidental: the tunic remains closely associated with the symbolism, authority and ideological pageantry of the Chinese Communist Party, making it a revealing statement about how Beijing wished the occasion to be perceived.
Remarkable is the silence of academics at the University of Malta, who recently took the bizarre step of smearing the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola with a blood libel over Israel. Of all people, the President of the European Parliament has no control over European foreign policy or executive decision-making, and the attack was primarily intended to target Malta’s most prominent symbolic European figure from the Opposition. Equally remarkable is the silence of the Nationalist Party throughout all of this, despite its supposed adherence to nationalist principles.
China, meanwhile, has carried out the systematic persecution and forced assimilation of Uyghurs and presides over a totalitarian dystopia whose rule is sustained through repression and cruelty. Yet it is being welcomed with open arms by the government and met with total silence from Malta’s pseudo-intelligentsia.
The Chinese state is conducting an extensive propaganda and influence campaign in Malta, following the same methods it has used across southern Europe and Africa to cultivate political dependence, silence criticism and expand its strategic reach.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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