Officials and media outlets affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have seized on former President Donald Trump’s indictment to cast doubt on the legitimacy of American democracy.
Several state-run media outlets ran stories depicting the Trump indictment as a sign of American decline after the former president was arraigned on 34 counts of business fraud earlier this week. Chinese social media users mockingly applauded Trump as a CCP “double agent” sent to make the United States look bad.
I knew Chinese social media would react with glee to Trump’s indictment, but I didn’t expect them to take it this far.
The joke is that he’s building up China by sabotaging the US. People are reposting this AI-generated montage of him retiring as a hero in China. pic.twitter.com/DIHZzEV6MZ
— Matthew Loh (@ma2loh) March 31, 2023
The Global Times, a leading Chinese state-run newspaper, wrote that the indictment “further revealed the dysfunction of the American political system amid increasingly extreme political polarization.” It quoted a Chinese professor stating that the American legal system was bringing chaos, not order.
In another state-run media outlet, Xinhua, the incident was cast as “another clear reminder of how U.S. politicians get lost in divisive partisan politics, leaving America’s body politic increasingly dysfunctional.”
Wang Wen, a professor and executive dean at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at China’s prestigious Renmin University, wrote in an op-ed that America appears to be hypocritical for indicting a former president just days after hosting a “Summit for Democracy.”
The Biden administration’s Summit for Democracy, held last week, was brought together to promote liberal democratic values across the globe. Not all democracies were invited, and some of the countries invited are considered to be totalitarian regimes. (RELATED: Manhattan DA Bragg Says Letting Trump Off Would ‘Normalize’ Crime Despite Reducing Most Felonies)
Trump drew support from a handful of foreign leaders, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (who wasn’t invited to the summit.) Orban tweeted for Trump to “keep on fighting.” He also received support from Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.