China’s state propaganda outlets observed America’s Independence Day on Monday with a barrage of commentary predicting the short-term demise of the United States and calling the holiday “miserable,” specifically blaming President Joe Biden’s “incompetence” for the allegedly bleak day.
“This year’s celebration will not be very popular among American people, and is likely to be miserable,” the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, proclaimed on Monday, citing an anonymous pro-regime Chinese “expert.”
“Such a gloomy atmosphere would also be amplified by the widely shared disappointment toward the US government,” it continued.
The Global Times, China’s English-only propaganda newspaper, published multiple insulting political cartoons about America over the weekend, including an infographic declaring the United States a “modern slavery empire on the basis of statistics beginning in the year 1514.
“If a person has symptoms similar to the US, they should see a psychologist first,” the Global Times affirmed in an editorial on Sunday.
The People’s Daily proclaimed this year’s Independence Day celebrations a failure explicitly as a result of “public anger over incompetence of [the] Biden administration” in an article by state propagandist Chen Qingqing.
Chen asserted, “the Biden administration appeared to be disconnected from reality, showing little efficiency in responding to public demands and instead shifting the blame to other countries such as Russia and China,” citing unnamed “experts” who predicted that Biden’s “chaotic and incompetent policy-making process will only make the situation worse.”
The article concluded that Biden would plunge America “into a prolonged chaos [sic] and recession.” An alleged expert cited claimed additionally that, independent of Biden, America was facing a “confusion in values” that had damaged morale.
Predictably, the People’s Daily writer concluded that one solution to confidence issues in the United States would be for Biden to lift tariffs on Chinese products – a move polls show that Americans have no particular interest in and are not clamoring for Biden to take. Experts the Chinese Communist Party does not control also do not believe, as Chinese state media has repeatedly insisted, that lifting tariffs on Chinese goods will have any positive effect on reducing inflation in America.
The Global Times editorial board similarly published a grim condemnation of America on July 4 accusing Biden of creating “a more divided, confused, and chaotic America.”
“On this particular day of Independence Day, we sincerely advise the US to handle its own issues first and mind other people’s business less. This is good for the US and everyone,” the Global Times editors proclaimed. “The situation at home has sent a strong signal that cannot be ignored by Washington. The functional dislocation and dysfunction of US governance of internal affairs must be corrected soon.”
The editors described America as “sick” and demanded it “obediently” take “medicine,” without clarifying what actions outside of lowering its international profile it should take.
“If a person has symptoms similar to the US, they should see a psychologist first. But the fundamental adjustment of Washington’s situation is much more complex,” the state propaganda outlet asserted. “It would be better if Washington used its ruthlessness in suppressing China to deal with internal problems.”
The Times also published bizarre anti-American illustrations to mark the day. One of them repeated the outrageous allegation that America is currently home to 500,000 slaves – an angry rebuttal to the extensive evidence unearthed by human rights activists, journalists, and researchers that China is enslaving potentially millions of people belonging to the Uyghur ethnic minority.
“An estimated 12.5 million African people were trafficked to the New World and enslaved between 1514 and 1866,” the newspaper’s graphic asserted to accuse America of “modern” slavery. The “New World” is a term that typically refers to the entirety of the Western Hemisphere, not just the United States.
In addition to condemning America for allegedly being a “slave empire,” Chinese outlets have aggressively condemned America for acting to keep Chinese slave products out of the country in a campaign Beijing has admitted is working.
The state propaganda outlet made explicit that its accusations are meant to distract from China enslaving millions of Uyghurs:
Some American politicians have racked their brains to fabricate the “sad narrative” of “forced labor” in China’s Xinjiang region, but a lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie. It is the US, a self-proclaimed “human rights defender” or a “beacon of freedom,” that stands accused of using forced labor.
The Global Times also mocked reports that some towns in America allegedly canceled fireworks shows due to supply chain issues.
The political cartoon did not address the fact that about 94 percent of fireworks products used in the United States come from China and the “supply chain crisis” is largely the product of the Communist Party’s decision to impose total lockdowns on its largest city, Shanghai, and partial lockdowns on manufacturing hubs like Shenzhen and even political capital Beijing.
China was already struggling with supply chain woes before the Shanghai lockdown but began documenting a marked decline in exports to America since, partially a result of China hindering its own manufacturing and partially a result of growing interest, in America and elsewhere, in not buying slavery-tainted Chinese products.
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