Chinese glued to U.S. debate, with envy and concern
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Date: 10/23/2012 8:06:11 AM
Sender: Washington Post
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BEIJING — Chinese Internet users who watched live streams of Monday’s U.S. presidential debate heard President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney criticizing China with strong language – and many assumed the candidates will dial it down once the election is over.
Most Chinese Internet users, known here as “Netizens,” seemed not particularly concerned about the candidates’ tough talk. Instead, they viewed the debate process with admiration, as a kind of democratic theater. They commented mostly on the candidates’ intelligence, their skills at presenting their arguments, and who made the most jokes.
Many said they wished such a show could one day happen here in authoritarian China. The country’s Communist Party is preparing for its own leadership transition a few days after the U.S. election, but there will be no debates and no public participation – the people will find out who their new rulers are when the lineup is unveiled to them after a secret meeting of Party elites behind closed doors.
“Although mainland China is a one-party state, competitive elections and political shows should still be adopted,” wrote an Internet commenter using the name Guliyeweiqi. “But that’s almost a luxurious dream.”
“It＇s an election for them, an internal decision for us, how do you compare?” wrote another Internet user called “gw1710.” “I really don＇t want to stay in this country.”
The Obama-Romney foreign policy debate was largely dominated by the Middle East, the Iranian nuclear issue and America’s role in the world.
But it turned to China in its final minutes, with Obama declaring China “both an adversary but also a potential partner.” Obama outlined how he has set up a special task force to enforce trading rules on China, and said he brought a series of successful trade cases against Beijing, including cases involving American steel exports and dumping of Chinese tires.
Romney repeated some of his strongest anti-China language from the campaign trail, again promising, “On Day One, I will label them a currency manipulator,” and take tough action. Romney accused China of “stealing our intellectual property, our patents, our designs, our technology, hacking into our computers, counterfeiting our goods."
Romney said his actions wouldn’t trigger a trade war because China sends more goods to the United States than vice-versa and would have the most to lose. “It’s pretty clear who doesn’t want a trade war,” he said.
In mostly pro-Obama Europe, a continent whose name was uttered only once in the debate, some commentators saw the lack of focus on their part of the world as a victory. Romney has been using Europe’s economic problems as an attack line against Obama on the campaign trail.
It “is a good sign” for the European Union that it didn’t come up, since “Republicans have been using countries like Greece and Spain as a exhibits of failed states,” wrote the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
But with many people in Europe surprised at the possibility that Romney might win, many saw the challenger in a new light after the debates even if they called Monday’s for Obama.
“Romney seemed as though he were already Commander-in-Chief,” wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “while Obama, his opponent, violently attacked him, sometimes patronizingly.”
In China, media commentaries seemed unfazed by the tough rhetoric spouted by by the candidates. “Willing or not, Democratic or Republican, the next U.S. president shall have to tone down his get-tough-on-China rhetoric made along the campaign trail, and deal with his country＇s sclerotic ineptness toward China＇s inevitable rise,” said a commentary that ran on Xinhua, the state-run news agency, immediately after the debate.
The commentary called trade disputes “speed bumps” thrown in the way of China’s advancement, and said “a contagion of China-phobia syndrome” was spreading across the United States.
“If Washington continues to view China＇s rise as being more of a threat than an opportunity, it is possible for their differences to spiral out of control at one point, leaving neither side unscathed in a breakdown of their relationship,” the commentary said.
The debate drew a wide online audience here, where it was live-streamed starting at the relatively convenient time of 9 a.m. Most of the mainstream media outlets devoted special reports to the last face-off of this presidential campaign.
Chinese have been intensely following the American election, paying far closer attention than they did in 2008, mostly because of the explosive growth of the Internet here and the Twitter-like microblogging site called “weibo.”
People’s Daily Online, the Web site of the main Communist Party newspaper of the same name, put out an alert at 6:43 a.m. calling the U.S. debate “important upcoming news.” The Web site then ran real-time reports on each debate segment, with commentary by a scholar from the China Institute of International Studies.
The Web site of Phoenix Television put the debate in its most prominent position. Tencent QQ media Web site made it the second most important news event – after a report saying that China’s Communist Party is set to amend the country’s constitution. The site made a special report about the debate with video footage of each segment, complete with simultaneous interpretation in Chinese.
Other major Internet sites also had special reports.
One hour after the debate, the name Obama was the seventh-most searched term on weibo, with “U.S. presidential election” being the 10th-most searched term.
Liu Liu in Beijing and Michael Birnbaum in Berlin contributed to this report. |
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