Despite bitter election, many Chinese see US democracy as example to follow
China’s government is not shy about looking for ways to highlight democracy’s failings, and the United States presidential election provided plenty of raw material.
Mrs Hillary Clinton’s emails, Mr Donald Trump’s locker-room talk, the debates: Every low point was touted and catalogued on state media.
On Election Day, the Communist Party’s official newspaper offered a closing argument: Mr Trump versus Mrs Clinton was symptomatic of an “illness” in the American system.
Plenty of Americans would agree with that view. But not as many Chinese as you would think. On social media, with its more than 570 million daily users, the election has instead been a reminder that China’s political system is comparatively opaque and inaccessible.
To the many weird outcomes of the ugly and chaotic 2016 campaign, add one more: Many Chinese are touting it as an example to follow.
The business of criticising liberal democratic norms is as old as the Communist Party. State media has long gone out of its way to show the violence and suffering that can result from mass democracy movements, such as the Arab Spring. It has often portrayed American elections as corrupted by shady campaign finance, rampant lobbying and dynastic politics.
Mr Barack Obama’s swift rise from a modest background to the presidency in 2008 upended that narrative. He quickly became an aspirational symbol for a younger Chinese generation that knows how important family connections, wealth and the right ethnic background are to achieving power in their own country.
Even today, with his policies wildly unpopular in China, Mr Obama remains a symbol of what is possible in the US — but not at home.
One would have thought that the 2016 election, with all its bitterness and divisiveness, would have eroded this optimistic narrative among Chinese, and made a good case against US-style democracy. Instead, quite the opposite has happened. Many on social media have argued the campaign has further highlighted the limitations of Chinese politics.
“Idiots cite the respectability of our country to respond to the US election scandals,” wrote a Sina Weibo user. “They fail to see that the scandals are a result of American press freedom.”
Others acknowledged how hard it is for politicians to follow the whims of public opinion, but one noted a very un-Chinese upside to this problem: “You can’t abandon the people, and democratic society is a remarkable place.”
But perhaps the most eloquent defence of the US system is “Why Are You Laughing at the US Presidential Elections”, an anonymous polemic that has been circulating widely and has been read tens of thousands of times, in various forms, since mid-October. It argues that, for all the election’s ugliness, US politics has many advantages over the Chinese system. “Is a system where all decisions are made behind closed doors, and you don’t have to lift your feet or know anything, really better at making decisions?”
In the eyes of the anonymous author, the many campaign scandals are far from a sign of weakness: “Americans are so serious, they are willing to pick through the bones — everything defective about America’s future leaders are shown to the world for Americans to judge. Is this so backward?” For those circulating the post, it certainly is not — even if it may have seemed that way to Americans this year. BLOOMBERG
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Adam Minter is an American writer based in Asia, where he covers politics, culture and business. He is the author of Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade.
