China Briefing | As American exceptionalism falls, Chinese exceptionalism rises

Name: China mocks the US as Beijing compares chaos at Capitol with Hong Kong protests
Uploaded: 2021-01-16T01:30:18.000Z
Duration: 3 min 23 s
Description: China mocks the US as Beijing compares chaos at Capitol with Hong Kong protests

The chaos at the Capitol could not have been better timed for a Chinese leadership preparing to celebrate the Communist Party’s centenary

To them it shows a broken democracy, unfit to lecture others, and proves that China’s free-market authoritarianism is the true path to peace and prosperity

Reading Time:4 minutes

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Members of the National Guard gather at the US Capitol. Photo: Reuters

Wang Xiangwei

Published: 9:30am, 16 Jan 2021Updated: 9:30am, 16 Jan 2021

Over the past two weeks, the rest of the world has watched aghast as the United States degenerates into its biggest political crisis in recent memory.

The implications of the mob attack on the Capitol building, widely seen as the most hallowed temple of American democracy, by thousands of supporters of the US President Donald Trump, will continue to reverberate around the world for a long time to come.

The most immediate fallout is the serious erosion of American exceptionalism in which prominent Americans have long trumpeted US virtues and norms such as fair elections and smooth transfers of power as examples for the rest of the world to follow – the “shining city upon a hill” referred to in John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon that was so often quoted by former president Ronald Reagan.

This is particularly true in the eyes of Chinese officials and the public alike at a time when the superpower competition between the countries is heating up and the incoming administration of Joe Biden is widely expected to form an alliance with like-minded Western countries to promote democratic values to counter China’s rise and its autocratic regime.

The ghastly sight of the riot at the Capitol has shown a divided America, characterised by a lack of trust in government and the political system and aggravated by increasingly strong partisan conflicts and stark racial inequality.

03:23

China mocks the US as Beijing compares chaos at Capitol with Hong Kong protests

The crisis will no doubt strengthen the view in the corridors of power in Beijing and of the man in the street that Chinese exceptionalism is on the rise as American exceptionalism is on the way down.

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