A confrontation between a group of Chinese "Little Pinks" and a British pianist erupted into a headline-grabbing international incident (date: January 19, 2024; location: St Pancras Railway Station, England). Because British pianist Brendan Kavanagh happened to be livestreaming on YouTube at the time, the entire episode was captured on video from start to finish.
Watching the video in full, this was a group of typical Chinese "Little Pinks," dressed in red or draped in red scarves and carrying five-star red flags. The most outrageous performer was the male participant (netizens identified him as Leng Xuenian), while the other two women (identified as Liu Mengying and Zhang Ning) also put on an exaggerated show. They caused a scene at the London station, vividly and thoroughly acting out the elements of Xi-era China and CCP party culture. These elements included: staged victimhood ("peng ci"), lying, deception, intimidation, discrimination, hysteria, playing the victim while being the aggressor, split personality, and authoritarian thinking, among others.
Staged Victimhood ("Peng Ci"). The Chinese woman draped in a large red scarf, named Liu Mengying, was the first to provoke the confrontation. She approached and demanded that pianist Kavanagh not include them in his video. He was livestreaming with a fixed camera angle — if this group of Little Pinks did not want to appear on camera, they could simply have avoided it, but instead they chose to step into frame and confront him. This habit of stirring up trouble out of nothing is a classic case of Chinese-style "peng ci" — manufacturing a grievance to pick a fight.
During the confrontation, the staged-victimhood act reached its climax: the Chinese man draped in a large red scarf, named Leng Xuenian, suddenly shouted "Don't touch her! Stop touch her!" after the pianist pointed at the five-star red flag in the woman's hand. As if that weren't enough, he raised his voice again and shouted "Don't touch her! Stop touch her!" once more. Shouting this loudly was enough to startle passersby and create the false impression that some open act of sexual harassment was taking place. Sure enough, bystanders were alarmed and stopped to watch. To deliberately reinforce this misimpression, the shouting man kept yelling: "Say sorry to her! Say sorry to her!" Through this spirit of staged victimhood, shameless bluster, deception, intimidation, and theatrical tantrum-throwing typical of a petty hooligan, he did succeed in creating a dramatic misunderstanding — one reflected later in the differing attitude the police showed toward each side once they intervened.
Age Discrimination. In the midst of his repeated shouting, the man inexplicably blurted out another line: "Don't touch her! You are not the same age, stop touch her!" Following his implication — meant to falsely accuse the pianist of sexual harassment — the direct logic would be: if you were close to her in age, you'd be allowed to sexually harass her, but since you're not, you're not allowed to. Or, following another possible undercurrent of his logic — that the pianist was trying to court the woman — the implied message becomes: if you were close to her in age, you could pursue her, but since you're not, you can't.
Whatever the shouting man meant, it was a textbook case of discrimination — age discrimination. In democratic countries and normal societies, this kind of age discrimination would be instantly recognized as offensive, but in an authoritarian country like China, not only is there no real concept of age discrimination, it is so normalized that people invoke age at will, even using it to humiliate someone's character.
Hysteria. The Chinese man staging the confrontation didn't just shout — he shouted loudly, shouted repeatedly, and kept muttering on and on without stopping. Any normal person would exclaim: this is clearly a case of mental instability! And this is precisely one of the typical pathological personality types cultivated by today's authoritarian China: hysteria, or outright mental derangement. Such psychological abnormality would be instantly obvious to anyone in a democratic country or a normal society.
Lying. This group of Little Pinks confronted the pianist on the grounds that they owned the rights to their own image and that he had violated those rights by filming them. But the pianist explained that this was a public place, and the law permitted it. The Little Pinks insisted: under Chinese law, this would not be allowed. The pianist reminded them: this is Britain, a free country — not China. In fact, even the pianist did not realize just how casually and freely this group of Chinese people were lying. In truth, even under so-called Chinese law, there is no such image-rights restriction as the one these Little Pinks claimed. Netizens later revealed that several members of this group worked for Chinese television stations, some were event hosts, and some were even minor internet influencers who regularly filmed in public places, filming anytime and anywhere they pleased, with not the slightest concept of image rights themselves.
One of the women, dressed in a large red robe and named Zhang Ning, told the pianist that she herself was also a British citizen. Since she never produced a passport to prove this, it is highly questionable whether her claimed identity was true. After all, casual, offhand lying is precisely the kind of Chinese-style habit typical of this crowd.
Playing the Victim While Being the Aggressor. After this group of Little Pinks caused the incident through staged victimhood, they then proactively called the police and gave them a one-sided account — this is the most despicable part of low-quality Chinese culture, or CCP party culture: the wrongdoer accuses the victim first. The shouting man's loud cries, intended to manufacture the suspicion of sexual harassment, were likewise a performance of this same tactic — playing the victim while being the aggressor.
Split Personality. During the confrontation, when the pianist asked, "You're holding Chinese Communist Party flags — are you Communists?" the shouting man immediately accused the pianist of "racial discrimination." This group of Little Pinks, despite being dressed head to toe in red and carrying five-star red flags, insisted they did not represent Communist China; at the same time, they deliberately conflated the distinction between ideology and ethnicity. What is most telling and most amusing of all is this: dressed entirely in blood-red Communist Party colors, they nonetheless threw out an indignant subtext — how dare you call us Communists? — implying that the Communist Party is the worst thing in the world, and how could such a slur possibly be pinned on them?
This is split personality — the pervasive split personality found among a segment of Chinese people. It includes the woman in the large red robe, Zhang Ning, who on one hand claimed to be a British citizen while on the other hand invoked Chinese law to make her case — a textbook case of split personality. Its symptoms: physically abroad, yet mentally still in China; flaunting the pride of having studied overseas to people back home, while flaunting the confidence of a "powerful nation" to foreigners (in truth, a mask for deep insecurity).
Authoritarian Thinking. This group of Little Pinks — an estimated six or seven people — surrounded the pianist, adopting a stance of bullying the outnumbered through sheer numbers, intimidation, and volume, while invoking so-called "Chinese law." In truth, all of this is simply authoritarianism made manifest. Authoritarian thinking is a disease, the most severe symptom of a kind of compulsive disorder. In China, this disease spreads from the top down: some are the oppressors, some are the oppressed, but no small number of Chinese people are simultaneously oppressor and oppressed, carrying this dual personality without even realizing it. This is a chronic ailment of Chinese society, and the greatest tragedy of this nation. As the saying goes: those above set the example, and those below follow suit — when the beam above is crooked, the beam below will be crooked too.
Taken together, this group of Chinese Little Pinks stirred up trouble out of nothing, fabricated grievances where none existed, and made unreasonable scenes, causing a disturbance at a London train station that shocked both Britain and the world. Its sole effect was to let the world see through the horror of Communist China — including the horror of how it brainwashes, dumbs down, and enslaves its younger generation, ultimately twisting their personalities and crippling them psychologically.