The ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ is an informal term coined by social media users which are highly trending these days.

The term though in news without any institutional backing is gaining popularity. It clearly shows the public outrage against Chinese agressiveness in Taiwan and Hong-Kong.

What is the ‘Milk Tea Alliance’?

• Thai social media users began calling for the sovereignty of Taiwan and Hong Kong, extending support to the two countries.
• This spurred social media users from other Southeast Asian countries to join the call, in a rejection of China’s influence in the region for its own diplomatic and economic gains.
• The ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ is an informal term coined by social media users because in the region, tea is consumed in many nations with milk, with the exception of China.
• Memes were formed showing flags of the countries in the “Milk Tea Alliance” with China as a lone outsider.

What started this online war?

• The online battle started with a Thai twitter post that questioned whether coronavirus had emerged in a laboratory in Wuhan.
• There were some related tweets by pro-Taiwanese and Hong Kong people.
• Pro-China social media users then began attacking Thailand for being a “poor” and “backward” nation and also hurled insults at the Thai king and the Thai prime minister.

Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024

Attend Now