US presidential election: American attempts to demonise Chinese Communist Party spill over to become issue
- For most ordinary Chinese, US President Donald Trump’s hardball tactics have not had much effect, but they have created space for strategic hawks in his camp
- ‘With or without the China issue, the Republicans will accuse Democrats of practising socialism,’ a Chinese analyst says
As voters in the United States prepare for the presidential election in November, the South China Morning Post will explore the potential ramifications for China. In the fourth part of the series, Jun Mai looks at the unprecedented ideological debate about China, particularly efforts to delegitimise the Communist Party within the country and around the world.
If there’s a converging point of the political rhetoric from Washington and Beijing, governments caught in their worst tensions for decades, the answer might be the repeated mention of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
While Beijing has praised the party as the reason for all of China’s successes, from driving economic growth to fighting the pandemic, senior Trump administration officials say it is the core threat to the current world order and the American way of life.
But one analyst says there is an added dimension to such an effort.
“By separating the [Communist] Party from the people, it allows American leaders and its people to take on a virtually ‘missionary’ role, which some Chinese liberals welcome,” said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
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