Chinese netizens today effusively celebrated Joe Biden’s victory, while the Asian country’s state press also reacted with optimism, but recommended caution, given the increasing complexity in US-China relations.
“God saved America,” responded Gao Zhikai, an interpreter of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and currently one of the best-known commentators on Chinese television, in a commentary posted on the social network Wechat.
“[Donald] Trump is still trying to stay afloat, but a thousand sailboats pass a sinking boat,” he described, using a Chinese saying.
Memes and congratulatory messages to Joe Biden flooded Chinese social media in the early hours of the morning in China, illustrating Donald Trump’s unpopularity in the country.
“You are fired,” wrote a Chinese Internet user, in a comment addressed to Trump, on the Weibo social network, Chinese Twitter. “I am happy that the Americans are finally showing some intelligence and exercising what they consider to be their superior concept of democracy,” he added.
“It is a great day for the world and an even better event for China,” described another Internet user.
The relationship between China and the United States has deteriorated rapidly since Trump’s rise to power, with several simultaneous disputes between the world’s two largest economies.
In Beijing and Washington, references to a new Cold War have become commonplace.
Trump launched a commercial and technological war against the Asian country, while strengthening ties and arms sales to Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be under its sovereignty, despite functioning as a sovereign political entity.
The sovereignty of the South China Sea, the status of Hong Kong or human rights issues also contributed to inflame relations.
In recent months, Trump’s insistence on calling the covid-19 the “Chinese virus” has helped to antagonize perceptions about the American leader.
“Donald Trump is at the top of the list of the most hated men in China,” commented Penny Li, a Chinese woman who lived in Australia for almost ten years, to the Lusa agency. “[Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo is right next.”
Some Chinese media have expressed hope that Biden will stabilize relations between Washington and Beijing, but have warned of future tensions between the two great powers. Others have suggested that American democracy is in decline.
“The result [of the elections] can usher in a ‘dead-end period’ in tense China – US relations, and offers an opportunity to resume high-level communication and rebuild mutual strategic trust,” wrote the Global Times, the Party’s official newspaper Chinese Communist, in an article that quotes Chinese experts.
Biden will be “more moderate and mature” than Trump in foreign relations, the newspaper predicted.
The Southern Daily, an official newspaper in Guangdong, a southern Chinese province bordering Macau, wrote that while Biden is likely to treat Russia, not China, as the greatest external threat to the United States, the Chinese “do not they must deceive ”.
“One thing is certain, things will never be the same again,” he said. “The world changed”.
The Chinese regime’s press also explored the growing divide in American society to describe a “chaotic” and “declining” country.
After Biden won in the state of Pennsylvania, state television CCTV showed videos of crowds in Philadelphia and police presence, to report “verbal attacks” and “physical confrontations” between supporters of Trump and Biden.
Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times, recalled, in Weibo, that “American society is now highly divided, which creates favorable ground for further political instability”.
