China backlash as British pianist at centre of ‘unauthorised filming’ storm at busy London railway station accused of ‘setting a trap’
- Pianist sees number of online followers rocket as result of altercation
- People on mainland accuse piano man of exploiting ideological differences between East and West to portray himself as hero
A British pianist who went viral globally after he was involved in a war of words over unauthorised filming involving a group of Chinese people in a London railway station is facing a backlash on mainland social media.
The confrontation erupted in the British capital’s St Pancras railway station on January 19, when a group of people from China asked Brendan Kavanagh to stop filming a live-streaming performance in which his cameras caught them in the background.
The group from China said he was infringing on their privacy by capturing them on film and an altercation – which was good-natured at first – quickly descended into accusations of sexual harassment and racial discrimination.
The China group explained they were working on a TV project for which they were contractually obliged not to show any pictures of at the time Kavanagh’s live-streaming event was running.
The pianist has insisted that he had every right to film in a public place under English law and if people were unhappy about it, they should simply have moved away.
A video of the incident had attracted more than 9.2 million views on YouTube at the time of writing, and Kavanagh has been widely courted by Western news outlets.
The bulk of the coverage has reflected negatively on the group from China and the country as a whole, it has also portrayed Kavanagh as a “champion of free speech”.
Such has been the media frenzy over the incident, that the pianist has seen his online profile mushroom.
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Kavanagh now has 2.4 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, double the 1.2 million he had at the last count in November 2023.
The incident even led to him appearing on the internationally broadcast Piers Morgan Uncensored show.
At the time of the incident the pianist said: “We are not in the Communist China, you know? We are in a free country. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
“The UK is a free country. We are in Britain, we are not in China. Are you in the Communist Party?”
Now, however, Kavanagh, and the media’s coverage of the incident, is facing an online backlash.
Many people have accused him of setting a trap for the Chinese group and exploiting ideological differences between East and West to portray himself as a hero to boost traffic to his YouTube channel
One online observer from China: “The British man is not naive and innocent. He seemed to intentionally provoke those Chinese people by shifting a normal conversation to an ideological conflict.
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“He deliberately fanned the flames, and his constant provocation finally led the China group to turn into ‘combative Wolf Warrior nationalists’.”
Another person said: “Internet celebrities are not afraid of trivial issues. Their tendency to exaggerate matters is universal.”
“It seems like the pianist just waiting for such a moment. After this incident, his number of YouTube followers increased tremendously, and now he’s appearing on TV shows,” said another, adding: “He is like a fisherman who’s finally caught a bunch of foolish fish. It was a trap.”
