China’s state-run Global Times dismissed the presence of Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese human rights activist, at the Republican National Convention (RNC) on Thursday, calling it “stale” and proof that President Donald Trump had turned the Republican Party into a “street gang.”
Chen spent years advocating for the rights of women in his rural Chinese community who had suffered forced abortions as a result of the “one-child policy,” which required Communist Party officials to kill unauthorized children. For his efforts, the Party imprisoned Chen for seven years. He escaped in 2012, fleeing to the U.S. embassy in Beijing and ultimately to the United States.
During his speech on Wednesday, Chen applauded Trump for confronting the Party, calling China under communism an “enemy of humanity” and urging Americans to vote for Trump “for the sake of the world.” Chen was one of several survivors of communist regimes around the world given a platform at the RNC to tell their stories and argue that Trump’s foreign policy has successfully addressed the countries’ repression.
“Why did the Republican Party invite Chen? Will Chen’s groundless smear have any substantial effect on Trump’s campaign?” the Global Times, often China’s most belligerent English-language outlet, asked on Thursday. The newspaper then quoted two political “experts,” Party-approved Marxist professors, to disparage Chen’s appearance at the event.
“The [Republican] party could not find any more decent people to give a speech, nor could it find any new topic. Chen has been wandering in the US for almost 10 years since he arrived in the country in 2012,” an “expert” identified as Fudan University professor Shen Yi, is quoted as saying. “He has no other value for the Republican Party except to blacken China. Such slander will not have any substantial impacts on China.”
“The convention demonstrates that under the strong influence of the Trump administration, the whole Republican Party is turning from a party of elites into a street gang. The convention looks like a large party of third-tier talk show actors,” Shen claimed. He did not elaborate on what about Chen projected a “street gang” atmosphere at the event.
Shen also apparently attempted to use Chen’s blindness to insult the United States, saying, “Now, the US is immersed in blindness as an anti-intellectual and hysterical perspective with which to comprehend China.”
The other “expert” the Global Times appeals to, another Fudan University scholar, did not attack Chen personally as severely as Shen. Instead, the “expert,” Xin Qiang, makes the case that Republicans carefully noting that the Chinese Communist Party – not the Chinese people – is the enemy is a failed tactic because the ethnic Han Chinese people are inseparable from communism.
“According to historical traditions and customs, Chinese people tend to believe that government, country and the people are integrated. They cannot be separated. China is led by the CPC. An assault on any of these three truly hurts the feelings of the Chinese people,” Xin claimed, calling Chen’s speech “ridiculous to the Chinese people.”
The Chinese Communist Party regularly makes the claim that to be born Chinese is to be communist, and only “traitors” and undesirables within the Chinese ranks do not support the Party.
“Advocating for the separation of the CPC from the Chinese people for so-called targeted attacks is the fantasy and delusion of a few U.S. elites. It is as hypocritical and arrogant as attacking a man’s heart and nervous system yet claiming to be beneficial to his whole body,” the Global Times asserted in a column published in July. “Opposing all CPC members is undoubtedly opposing all Chinese people.”
While not addressing Chen by name, the state newswire service Xinhua also attacked the RNC as a hotbed of anti-Chinese discrimination in a column on Thursday.
“One of the most bizarre characteristics of America’s 2020 presidential election is that political attacks on China have gone well beyond common sense,” Xinhua claimed. “The vicious rhetoric against Beijing has hit one fresh low after another this week at the ongoing Republican National Convention.”
“Those China hardliners in fact slapped themselves in their own faces when they were brazen enough to boast that the United States is not a racist country while constantly making ill-founded accusations against China that suggest otherwise,” Xinhua asserted. “Such apparent cognitive dissonance and their wicked political motivation to scapegoat China are too obvious to miss.”
Xinhua, like the Global Times, did not offer evidence to refute any of Chen’s statements in his speech.
“The CCP is an enemy of humanity. It is terrorizing its own people and it is threatening the well-being of the world,” Chen told the RNC audience. “In China, expressing beliefs or ideas not approved by the CCP – religion, democracy, human rights – can lead to prison. The nation lives under mass surveillance and censorship.”
“The U.S. must use its values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, to gather a coalition of other democracies to stop CCP’s aggression. President Trump has led on this and we need the other countries to join him in this fight. A fight for our future,” Chen urged. “We need to support, vote, and fight for President Trump – for the sake of the world.”
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