Chinese state media focuses on US divisions as America awaits election results

Hong Kong
CNN

As the election results come in and America holds its breath, Chinese state media has not missed the opportunity to accentuate American political polarization and exaggerate the threat of post-election unrest at home. rival democratic superpower.

Beijing has long bristled at Washington's criticism of its authoritarian one-party rule. Under leader Xi Jinping, who has paved the way for lifelong rule, his spokespeople increasingly mock the American political system and liberal democracy.

In a chain of election day In reports and commentary, state media attempted to portray the vote as a reflection of deep social divisions and political dysfunction in the United States, amid widespread public sentiment. China that no matter who wins, strained bilateral relations are unlikely to improve.

Voting for the US elections begins amid fears of violence and unrest, headlined the nationalist tabloid Global Times.

On state broadcaster CCTV, a dispatch of journalists from Washington DC focused on shuttered businesses, increased police patrols and metal fencing erected around the White House and Capitol to prepare for a worst-case scenario of chaos, while minimizing the millions of people. peacefully exercise their democratic rights.

The US elections, once seen as a high point in the so-called beacon of democracy, could now become the starting point for social unrest, state-run Beijing Daily said in a social media commentary .

The election is like a theater, filled with controversy. The root lies in the extreme polarization and division between the two parties, which has already created a sharply divided electorate.

On Chinese social networks, the US elections were among the hot topics on Tuesday and Wednesday. On the microblogging site Weibo, a popular quip reads: The country is so divided that they might as well divide into US-A and US-B.

But for many Chinese who followed the lead-up to the vote, the focus was more on spectacle than substance, with the feeling that no matter who wins, tensions in the US-China relationship will remain.

For us ordinary Chinese, whoever becomes president of the United States, whether candidate A or candidate B, is the same, Li Shuo, a Beijing resident, told CNN as the opening of the elections approaches.

This could be explained in part by the consensus in China, among policymakers and ordinary citizens, that the die is cast for a US administration that wants to coerce countries. China rises on the world stagewhether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump wins.

Trump's final term saw the Republican impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of Chinese products, launch a campaign against the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and use racist language to describe the virus causing Covid-19, first identified in China.

The last four years under Joe Biden's presidency have been marked by a change in tone and efforts to stabilize communication. But US concern about the threat China poses to its national security has only intensified, with the arrival of Biden. targeting Chinese technology industries with investment and export controlsas well as the prices.

Biden also seemed to bypass The longstanding U.S. policy of expressing support for Taiwan constitutes a red line issue in relations with Beijing, which claims the self-governing island democracy as its own.

(It) doesn't matter who (who wins), wrote one social media user in a popular comment on Weibo. Their containment of China will not be made easier.