THE ECONOMIST: China views America’s presidential nightmare with mirth—and disquiet

Chinese officials scorn President Joe Biden’s view that the world is engaged in a “battle between democracy and autocracy”. In their view this is dangerous Cold War talk. But they are tough fighters themselves, ever keen to sow misgivings at home and abroad about Western democracy’s failings.

The weaknesses revealed by America’s presidential contest and, in particular, the debate between Mr Biden and Donald Trump on June 27th may help their case. The Communist Party’s Schadenfreude, though, is mixed with apprehension.

Unlike Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who was said to be asleep during the encounter (it began at 4am in Moscow), China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was about to deliver a speech on Chinese diplomacy in Beijing (it was 9am there) as the debate began.

He was in full flow—reading confidently from a script—as the befuddled American president struggled against his waffling, truth-dodging rival. Mr Xi did not mention America, let alone the debate, but took a swipe at American anxiety about China’s rise. “Every increase of China’s strength is an increase of the prospects of world peace,” he said.

Chinese netizens were quick to heap scorn on the Biden-Trump encounter. Clips showing Mr Biden’s confused and fumbling remarks circulated widely on China’s social media. “One is a ‘mentally deranged felon’ and the other is an ‘elderly narcoleptic’,” said one commenter on Weibo, an X-like platform. “Two people who are about to enter their coffins are fighting back and forth,” said another. “Western politics is truly ruptured. There’s no one left.” Posts on Weibo with tags relating to the debate gained well over 100m views and attracted thousands of comments.

State media also weighed in. “This is entirely America’s internal affair and has nothing to do with China, but the US election has exposed so many problems in America,” said an article placed online by a senior journalist that was reposted on news websites. Xinhua, an official news agency, said the debate had “merely exposed the chaos and division of ‘American democracy’ to the world once again”.

China’s response revealed how much its own politics has changed in recent decades. In the 1980s, before the massacre in Beijing in 1989, the Communist Party had a far better relationship with America and tolerated more nuanced views of its politics. In his book, “Beautiful Imperialist”, David Shambaugh, an American scholar, wrote that China’s America-watchers deserved “high marks” for their coverage of the elections in 1984 and 1988. It was, he said, “non-Marxist and non-ideological in its tone and substance”.

At that time, China was keen to learn more about how America worked. In 1988, during the race between George Bush senior of the Republicans and the Democrats’ Michael Dukakis, the Democratic Party invited a 12-person Chinese delegation to observe its convention in Atlanta. “China can learn from some methods and forms in the us presidential election,” said the group’s leader, Gu Ming, who was a senior official in China’s rubber-stamp parliament. “For example, there should be a higher degree of openness in the election of leaders at various levels.”

In the late 1980s, as a visiting scholar in America, Wang Huning also watched American democracy in action. Today Mr Wang is the party’s chief ideologue and its fourth-highest-ranking politician. Mr Xi’s writings, ponderously referred to as “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, undoubtedly involve his penmanship. As a young observer of America Mr Wang expressed pessimism about the country’s future, but was clearly impressed by at least some aspects of its politics. “There’s a wonderful thing about the American political system: you can’t say it’s undemocratic, and you can’t say it’s democratic,” he wrote in “America Against America”, which was published in 1991. “This procedure is very interesting and has a high degree of openness,” he said of presidential debates.

Today the party’s view of American democracy is clear-cut. Infuriated by Mr Biden’s framing of global politics as democracy versus autocracy, and his convening of “summits for democracy” to rally world leaders to his cause, China has been flexing its own ideological muscles. In 2021, days before the first such summit (held online because of the pandemic), it published a white paper hailing China’s political system as “democracy that works”. It also issued another document, “The State of Democracy in the United States”, excoriating the American version of it.

But while China delights in the grimness of America’s political predicament, it is also wary of the outcome. Both American parties believe that China’s rise is a challenge to American power and threatens the liberal order. Messrs Biden and Trump both favour tariffs on Chinese goods to protect America from what they see as China’s unfair trading practices. Mr Trump’s approach to foreign policy is more transactional, but is also less predictable.

Among those thought likely to get a job in a second Trump administration, should there be one, is Robert O’Brien, who served as national security adviser when Mr Trump was president. “Xi is China’s most dangerous leader since the murderous Mao Zedong,” wrote Mr O’Brien last month in Foreign Affairs. “As China seeks to undermine American economic and military strength, Washington should return the favour—just as it did during the Cold War, when it worked to weaken the Soviet economy.” To Chinese officials, eager to prevent further decoupling of the American and Chinese economies as their own falters, such words are not reassuring. One told The Economist that she would prefer Mr Trump to lose.

Some Chinese netizens see potential hope for Sino-American relations, should Mr Biden bow out and a contest ensue that results in Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, becoming the Democratic candidate. They have circulated clips of Mr Newsom visiting China last October. During his trip he became the first American governor to meet Mr Xi in six years. Mr Newsom stressed that “divorce” between the two countries was “not an option”.

But given how deeply entrenched China scepticism has become among Republicans and Democrats, Mr Newsom’s fans in China may be clutching at straws. And Chinese officials may wince should pressures on Mr Biden result in his stepping aside. Some daring netizens might venture to point out that such a situation would be hard to imagine in what China calls its “true democracy”. Like him or not, they may be stuck with the 71-year-old Mr Xi for as long as he lives.