To China, what happened at the Capitol last week was a propaganda gift. The government-owned Global Times newspaper called it, “An Iconic Humiliation! The Madness of the Capitol Has Dragged America to its Waterloo!”
Chinese commentators have had a field day mocking what they called US hypocrisy for supporting the sometimes violent pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong.
New York Times: China’s System is Better Than Ours?
Meanwhile, China has been busy trying to show the world that it offers a better, more stable, and prosperous way and that its economy has recovered from Coronavirus while other nations are still stuck in lockdowns.
Last week the New York Times even suggested China’s system is better than ours, saying “Citizens of China don’t have freedom of speech…but they have the freedom to move around and lead a normal day-to-day life. In a pandemic year, many of the world’s people would envy this most basic form of freedom.”
Michael Waller, an expert on propaganda and psychological warfare at the Center for Security Policy, says this has been the public relations goal of the Chinese government since it first began to be blamed for COVID-19.
Waller says China wants the world to believe that “[President] Xi Jinping is doing everything right. China has perfect stability. It’s the model for the world. And by the way, look at how bad the United States is.”
China is Its Own Worst Enemy
But as it tries to overtake the United States and become the most powerful nation on earth, China remains its own worst enemy.
Despite images of dancing without masks on New Year’s Eve, making it look like everything has returned to normal, China has not beaten the coronavirus. A few days ago it had to seal off an entire city of 11 million people, Shijiazhuang, and order mass testing.
Longtime China expert Steven Mosher says, “I think that everything that comes out of China is a fabrication. It’s either greatly exaggerated or it’s an out and out lie.”
Shots like these might make you forget that China has had one of the brutal dictatorships in modern times. Millions of Muslim Uighurs have disappeared into Chinese internment camps and Uighur women have been subjected to forced abortions and sterilization. The Chinese Embassy in Washington tweeted last week that this is good because the women are “no longer baby-making machines.”
China’s Future ‘Dismal’ Because of Demographics
But China’s biggest obstacle to becoming the world superpower is simply, time.
China is on track to be the first major economy that will grow old before it achieves widespread prosperity because of its disastrous one-child policy.
Mosher says, “China has killed off half of the last two generations. 400 million unborn Chinese were eliminated. China’s long-term prospects are dismal. They’ve created a demographic trap for themselves, and they’re falling into it.”
Because of aging, China will need to import foreign workers in 10 years. In 30 years, one-third of its population will be elderly.
Chinese immigrant Helen Raleigh is the author of Backlash: How China’s Aggression Has Backfired.
“The aging population…that’s a huge issue. That’s why Chinese President Xi feels like he really needs to hurry up.”
In China’s race against time, President Xi has accelerated Chinese territorial expansion, causing border disputes with most of its neighbors and managing to turn them against China.
Raleigh says, “Xi is the most aggressive, most assertive of Chinese leaders since Chairman Mao. He’s really a control freak, and he’s power-hungry.
China Sabotages Relations in Africa with Racism
China has moved big into Africa, become the biggest trading partner with African nations but is sabotaging its own efforts by angering Africans with its deep-seated racism toward Blacks.
In one Chinese video, African children were tricked into saying in Chinese, “I am a Black Monster and I have a low IQ.”
McDonald’s was forced to apologize after a restaurant posted this sign saying no blacks allowed.
And this commercial from Chinese TV portrays a laundry detergent so strong it can wash away the skin color of a black man.
China’s Economy Slowing Down
While China’s economy has slowed dramatically, its economic statistics remain so untrustworthy that investment firms often use satellite images to find out the true state of the economy, Raleigh says, “No responsible economist or investment professionals will trust any official data’s out of China.”
Mosher says, “The economic numbers out of China are not a reflection of reality at all. The Chinese economy is in a recession. The recession is getting deeper as we speak.”
Waller says, “We can’t trust anything we hear from them, but we can trust what we don’t hear from them. So, when they’re censoring people, when they’re repressing people, that allows us to know the truth because they’re trying to hide something.”
Last year at the 70th anniversary of the founding of China’s communist government, President Xi said “No force can stop China.”
But the Chinese government’s own policies are doing a pretty good job.