Authorities in China have detained more than 10 people who criticized the ruling Chinese Communist Party around its 70th anniversary and National Day celebrations on Oct. 1.

Police in the central province of Hunan detained a group of activists ahead of the National Day holiday after they gathered for a meal and displayed signs protesting the use of taxpayers' money to stage the lavish parade on Tiananmen Square in front of President Xi Jinping and other dignitaries.

Organizer Fan Junyi was detained alongside fellow activists on Sept. 28 and jailed for 15 days' administrative detention, a type of punishment that is handed down by a police-run committee without a trial, local sources said.

Several other participants were held in administrative detention for terms of 5-15 days, the rights website Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch reported.

"This was on Saturday, in Changsha," a source who declined to be named told RFA. "About 12 or 13 people got together for a meal."

"When they had finished eating, they put up placards, then they got into trouble the following day," he said. "Fan Junyi was detained for 15 days over the placards."

According to Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, this was the second time Fan was detained in two months over the placards, one of which read "We resolutely oppose the waste of taxpayers' hard-earned cash on the military parade."

Social media rant

Meanwhile, police in the southwestern province of Sichuan jailed 1989 pro-democracy activist Hou Duoshu after he made a critical social media post.

Dazhou activist Hou, 55, had posted to his friends circle on the popular WeChat platform, calling Shen Jilan, a delegate to China's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), a "voting machine."

"He was placed under administrative detention yesterday evening," fellow Dazhou activist Yang Bo told RFA on Thursday. "He was ranting on WeChat about these people getting [National Day] honors, Shen Jilan in particular."

Hou, a veteran of the 1989 pro-democracy movement in China, had continued to protest and organize in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre that ended the movement, speaking out against the PLA's use of tanks and machine guns to suppress the democracy protests.

Hou served an eight-year jail term handed down by the Dazhou Intermediate People's Court, which found him guilty of "incitement to counterrevolution" in November 1989. He was released from that jail term in November 1997.

Hou's wife Zhao Yongmei said the police were still at her home.

"He was taken away yesterday at about 1:00 p.m., and the police station informed me, so I went over there," Zhao said. "It seems that he posted something to WeChat that they said was anti-party."

"I can't really talk right now, because they're right outside my door, three or four of them," she said.

Unfavorable opinions

As the ruling party marks 70 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949 by late supreme leader Mao Zedong, global attitudes to China are growing more negative, according to recent survey by Pew Research.

The survey of 34,904 people conducted from May 13 to Aug. 29 found that just 41 percent of respondents had a positive view of China, while more than half had a negative view of the country, with that proportion rising to 70 percent in some countries.

"Compared with 2018, fewer in North America, parts of Western Europe and Asia-Pacific view China favorably," the group said in a report on its website.

"Negative views of China predominate in both the United States and Canada, where 60 percent and 67 percent respectively see the country unfavorably," it said. "In both countries, this is the highest unfavorable opinion of China recorded in the Center's polling history."

The results come amid an ongoing trade war between China and the U.S. and Canada, which has seen a number of Canadian nationals arrested in China in the wake of the arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver.

China also received unfavorable marks from most of its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region, with disapproval ratings of 85 percent in Japan, 63 in South Korea and 57 percent in Australia.

Influence peddling

Hong Kong political commentator Poon Siu-to said the factors behind the change in opinion could be linked to concerted efforts by Beijing to step up its political influence overseas, particularly through "soft-power" organizations like the Confucius Institutes.

"Now they have been seen for what they are: a form of cultural invasion ... a way for Chinese propaganda agencies to carry out their ideological work," Poon said.

"Gradually, these things that never got talked about much are rising to the surface," he said. "The Meng Wanzhou incident also changed the way that people in North America and Western democratic nations see China, in a negative way."

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Pan Jiaqing for the Cantonese Service.

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