Chinese Communists Lash Out at Steve Bannon: ‘He Is a Fanatical Populist Against Globalization’

Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times is not a fan of Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon’s address to Japan CPAC on Sunday.

In an editorial published Monday evening, the Chinese paper castigated Bannon as a “fanatical populist against globalization,” whose “siren call to constrain China is poisoning U.S. society’s understanding of relations” with the communist nation.

Bannon’s speech in Tokyo was hard on Beijing, describing its ambitions as “frightening” and arguing that the United States has become a “tributary state sending China raw materials” due to a $500 billion annual trade deficit and the elimination of manufacturing jobs in America. He accused China of rejecting free-market capitalism and the “international rules-based order.”

None of this sat well with the Global Times. The editors excoriated Bannon for holding views that are “in line with white supremacists” and embracing “radical nationalism.” They called him a “cancer cell that could destroy constructive international relations in the 21st Century” and accused him of leading “evil forces” determined to rob China of its rightful destiny as the world’s leading economy.

The Global Times fumed:

The essence of China’s rise is that the world’s most populous country has found a suitable and stable path of development. As long as the world remains peaceful, China will narrow its gap with and overtake the US in terms of economic size. If the Bannons of the world are determined to hold back China’s rise, they are very likely to push China and the US into a military confrontation.

The editors accused Bannon of changing his speech to suit whatever audience was at hand, arguing that his confrontational attitude in Tokyo was completely different from the “mild remarks in favor of China-U.S. cooperation” he made in a speech delivered in Hong Kong in September.

The Global Times editorial board must have missed the interview Bannon gave 60 Minutes right before that Hong Kong speech in which he mused, “We’re not at economic war with China; China is at economic war with us.”

The Global Times complained:

Fortunately Bannon was fired from the White House within a year of being appointed to his position. Making speeches everywhere, he may just want to bluff and bluster. But his extremely conservative thinking has not been wiped out of the White House, and still has many advocates among U.S. elites.

One of those advocates appears to be President Donald Trump, whose new National Security Strategy drove Chinese media nuts on Monday.