Wendi Deng became the most talked about woman among China's huge online community Wednesday as images of her leaping to the defense of her 80-year-old husband Rupert Murdoch were spread across the Internet, said an article on the website of Agence France Presse on July 20,2011.

Footage of the 42-year-old Deng clouting her husband's attacker attracted nearly 430,000 hits on Youku, China's version of YouTube, and was the top international story on news websites such as Sina.com, said the article.

According to the article, Deng was described as a "guardian angel" and "tiger wife" after her haymaker on a pie-wielding protester during a British parliamentary hearing on the News of the World hacking scandal on Tuesday. "She's not only a tiger wife but also his guardian angel," one web user wrote on Sina's Weibo, a popular Twitter-like service.

Some netizens said Deng "should be praised for protecting her husband" and that her lightning reactions would "boost the positive image of Murdoch" as well as "improve the image of Asian women in Western eyes".

A survey by Sina showed 46.1 percent of an undisclosed number of respondents believed in love again after Deng jumped to her husband's aid, while 30 percent said her actions had changed their attitude towards her, said the article.

But some postings derided her as a gold digger, saying she was a prime example of a "strong and strategic... Cinderella". Others suggested she had even staged the entire incident.