China’s official state media arms and users on the regime-censored social media site Weibo mocked President Joe Biden’s lackluster performance during Thursday night’s presidential debate, one user joking that he or she was concerned Biden may suddenly die.
Communist China closely moderates the entry of international news into the country and censors all commentary on Weibo that defies the official stances of the Party on various issues. Multiple reports state that Beijing allowed hearty discussions on Weibo regarding the debate. State media outlets offered detailed summaries of the discussion between Biden and former President Donald Trump, including informing Chinese readers that Biden had “trouble delivering complete thoughts” and sharing direct quotes, such as when Biden declared that he had “beat Medicare.”
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Biden and Trump met in Atlanta for a debate hosted by CNN on Thursday night. Most mainstream media coverage of the debate in the United States emphasized Biden’s apparent missteps, including various incoherent responses to Trump and a failure to convince the public that, despite being an octogenarian, he has the vigor and mental capacity to continue governing the country. While some Biden supporters attempted to defend him, claiming the president was suffering from a cold, chatter on the American left focused on Friday morning on the potential that the Democrat Party would try to replace Biden as the presidential candidate just five months before the election.
Translations in multiple publications of Chinese-language chatter on Weibo, the largest legal social media micropublishing site in China, indicated that the government was allowing users to openly mock Biden, despite his extensive documented business dealings with the country. Business Insider translated comments comparing Biden to a “robot.”
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“I’m worried that Deng Deng will die suddenly during this debate,” one user reportedly wrote, referring to Biden by a Chinese nickname. Weibo users often give American politicians nicknames – Trump’s is “Comrade Nation Builder” (Chuan Jianguo), the joke being that Trump has hurt America so much that he has helped China prosper and become a beloved communist ally.
The Spanish newspaper El Mundo found even more vicious comments on Weibo about the debate.
“This debate round reminds me of a scene in which two old men visit a brothel and fall in love with the same harlot, doing everything possible to show the woman who among them is the good and strong one,” one comment translated by the newspaper read.
Another similarly commented derisively about both Trump and Biden, stating, “One old man is trying to convince people he is not crazy, and the other old man is trying to convince people he is not senile.”
As is typical in Chinese media, many other commenters used the debate to also proclaim the superiority of Chinese totalitarian communism over a free society.
“This just points out the fundamental problem of American democracy. Americans don’t elect a president, but someone who is more suitable to play the president on TV,” one Weibo commenter wrote, according to a translation by Newsweek.
Chinese state media prepared to deride the event before it even happened. The state-run Global Times newspaper published an article on Thursday previewing the debate, claiming that it was “like a reality show” and exposed the frivolity of America’s free political system, as opposed to the presumed superiority of totalitarian communism.
“The focus on age highlighted the phenomenon of gerontocracy in US politics, which also showed a significant flaw in the self-proclaimed democratic political system, experts said,” according to the state propaganda outlet.
One such expert, researcher Lü Xiang, claimed that American viewers would not be watching to hear policy differences, but, rather, “what people are actually concerned about is how they perform physically.”
“There are undoubtedly talented individuals within both parties, but the current party culture makes it difficult for them to emerge. This is a clear manifestation of the sluggishness, rigidity and lack of vitality in the American political machine,” another state-approved “expert” said.
The Global Times omitted from its condemnation of America’s “gerontocracy” that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping is 71 years old and has deliberately kept the Politburo, the body made up of China’s most powerful people, populated with senior citizens to intentionally prevent the rise of a young, charismatic rival.
Following the debate, Hu Xijin, a Chinese state propagandist and former top editor of the Global Times, condemned the debate as “low-quality.” Hu attempted to equate Biden’s poor performance to Trump’s, claiming the debate exposed “two old men” and was a “negative advertisement for Western democracy”:
Hu also failed to mention the advanced age of most Chinese Communist Party leaders, including Xi.
Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, limited itself to offering a summary of the debate but notably included details of the exchanges between Trump and Biden, indicating the Chinese government wants the public to be informed on what happened.
“Without shaking hands, Democratic incumbent Biden and his Republican rival Trump engaged in fierce exchanges that lasted about 90 minutes and featured frequent personal attacks,” Xinhua related. It noted that Biden called Trump a “loser” and “made several verbal slips, and his speech was at times unclear.”
“Many television viewers took to social media to complain, describing the debate as a ‘disaster,’ a ‘train wreck,’ and a ‘waste of time,’ expressing concerns about America’s future,” Xinhua observed.
China Daily, another government outlet, similarly described Biden’s performance as poor.
“Biden mostly just stared ahead and listened as Trump spoke and at times had trouble delivering complete thoughts,” it reported. “He had some stumbles early, misstating how many jobs were created on his watch and saying, incongruously, that he ‘finally beat Medicare.'”