The Global Times, China’s state-backed tabloid newspaper, turned its attention to Donald Trump in an editorial today (March 14).
The physical confrontations between Trump supporters and those against him seen in Chicago on Friday (March 11), are common in “developing countries,” it notes. For the US, with “one of the most developed and mature democratic election systems,” to still witness “fist fights among voters who have different political orientations” is shocking, it says. (In China, readers are left to assume, democracy would lead to significant turmoil.)
Trump is ”a rich, narcissist and inflammatory candidate” whose “remarks are abusively racist and extremist,” it says. It adds “big-mouthed, anti-traditional, [and] abusively forthright” to the portrayal, calling him the “perfect populist.” His supporters, meanwhile, are “mostly lower-class whites, and they lost a lot after the 2008 financial crisis. The US used to have the largest and most stable middle class in the Western world, but many are going down.”
“Mussolini and Hitler came to power through elections, a heavy lesson for Western democracy.”
The reader is left to question whether democracy is really the best form of government.
What’s more, democracy is ineffective, the column suggests: Since “Americans know elections cannot really change their lives… why not support Trump and vent their spleen?”
Finally, the column ends with a warning and admonishment: “The US had better watch itself for not being a source of destructive forces against world peace, more than pointing fingers at other countries for their so-called nationalism and tyranny.”
Readers are left with the impression that the US is an unpredictable, potentially destructive force in the world, thanks largely to the chaotic nature of democracy—and that Chinese people should be thankful for the orderly rule of the Communist Party. The People’s Republic of China has been ruled by a one-party authoritarian government since the nation was established in 1949.
The editorial is the latest in China’s escalating criticism of the US—last week, the Chinese ambassador to the UN declared the US too violent and racist to criticize others on human rights. And on Sunday, state television station CCTV showed a 45-minute documentary that “reveals the United States’ double standards on human rights-related issues, whereby the US pokes its nose into other countries’ internal affairs while leaving many of its own problems unsolved,” Xinhua news reported.