The Chinese government propaganda newspaper Global Times encouraged the world once again to turn away from healthy democratic norms and embrace the “harmony” of authoritarianism in a column Thursday, deriding the normal competition for the U.S. presidency as “pathetic.”
The Global Times has a long record of articles proclaiming that any public political debate is “chaos” and the only way to manage a “harmonious” society is by imposing brutal totalitarian rule that silences all dissent. It declared the imminent end of all Western democracy upon the election of President Donald Trump in 2016 and has continued to argue that empowering all citizens to have a say in who governs them is alarming and destructive.
China is the world’s largest communist country, subject to a cult of personality led by dictator Xi Jinping, who has build over one thousand concentration camps to indoctrinate the nation’s large Muslim population in the west into worshipping him.
The Global Times presented this reality as not only preferable to enduring public political discourse in the United States, but an unavoidable “world order” in the future.”
“Political chaos has become a new normal for the U.S. As the presidential election approaches, confusion has worsened while the country’s foreign policy has become the focus of political games between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party,” the propaganda outlet alleged. “This has severely restricted U.S. foreign policy from being rational, and has victimized China-U.S. ties.”
“Both parties upgraded their moves and countermeasures to knock off the other, but have only drawn themselves into a vicious cycle,” the Global Times lamented. “We can predict right now that the 2020 election campaign will be unprecedentedly fierce. It is pathetic for Democrats and Republicans to get where they are.”
The newspaper attempted to argue that the unprecedented unity in Congress and the White House on the need to challenge China’s hegemonic aspirations was somehow a sign of deep divisions in the country.
“Both parties are using China as a token to gain the upper hand. Hence, Congress won’t let Trump make a trade deal with China easily,” the publication claimed. “From the so-called Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act to the so-called Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, when one party interferes in China’s domestic affairs, the other won’t allow itself to be left behind.”
Congress passed both acts in the last two weeks – the first to protect Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters by threatening an end to the city’s special trade status if China violates human rights there, the second to punish officials running the concentration camps China has filled with Uyghur and other Muslims. Both enjoyed nearly unheard of bipartisan support, passed unanimously in the Senate and near-unanimously in the House of Representatives (in both cases, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was the lone holdout).
The “polarized U.S. Congress” is “colluding” against China, the Global Times accused, claiming the right is using opposition to China “to enhance their own careers” and the left to keep Trump “from reaching a trade deal with China.”
“Both parties have gone too far, and so has Washington’s foreign policy,” the propaganda outlet ominously declared.
The Global Times concluded that America’s system of free and fair elections determining political leaders will come to an end as the rest of the world will “join hands to rebuild the world order.”
“If the U.S. doesn’t stop harming the world and join rulemaking, some other countries will make the rules,” the newspaper claimed.
The insistence on defining political debate as “chaos” goes back years at the Global Times and similar English-language Chinese government newspapers. Following President Trump’s inauguration, the Times declared that his presidency proved the “fragility of Western democracy,” rather than the fulfillment of the promise that anyone has a chance at running a successful presidential campaign.
“From the protests against Trump, Chinese people found the schism in the US is becoming increasingly serious and are questioning the reliability and universality of the Western democratic system,” the newspaper said at the time.
A year later, the newspaper announced that an “increasingly confident Chinese people” would take over global dominance from the “Divided States of America”
“Those who support Trump and those against him are deeply divided. Not only China, but other countries have also felt it is difficult to deal with the U.S.,” the Global Times said. “From the protests against Trump, Chinese people found the schism in the US is becoming increasingly serious and are questioning the reliability and universality of the Western democratic system.”
In reality, the Hong Kong protests – which began in June and have attracted millions – show that the Chinese people are increasingly skeptical of Xi Jinping’s regime, which has failed to fulfill basic government responsibilities like provide functional vaccines for children and keeping the air safe to breathe. Last week, Chinese police used violent repressive tactics to subdue an uprising in Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong, against the construction of an industrial incinerator that erupted into chants of common Hong Kong protest slogans and a call for democracy.
The growing protests within China against the Communist Party have not stopped some within America from echoing the Global Times.
“We got a much bigger issue at our hands, at a moment when their authoritarian model is being held up as an alternative to ours because ours looks so chaotic compared to theirs right now because of our internal divisions,” South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, running for president as a Democrat, said in June. “Russia nationalism, xenophobia, homophobia, and repression of the press are both highly disturbing in that country and disturbingly ascendant in our own country.”
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