China: Biden Copied Trump’s ‘America First’ Policies in State of the Union

China’s government propaganda newspaper Global Times finally weighed in on leftist President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address late Wednesday – after ignoring it for a routine Xi Jinping public appearance – and used its coverage to apparently accuse Biden of plagiarizing President Donald Trump.

The Global Times lamented, in a report citing its usual Chinese Communist Party-approved “experts,” that Biden “failed” to “unite the country” and had resorted to rehashing Trump-era talking points in an attempt to please the country. Elsewhere, in an editorial on Thursday, the Global Times accused Biden of appealing to “neo-isolationism” by expressing the desire to increase job opportunities for Americans and described the United States as “sensitive, suspicious, and narrow-minded.”

The state newspaper cited alleged expert Yang Xiyu, who attacked Biden for discussing job creation and manufacturing growth.

“Yang warned that Biden’s emphasis on revitalization of US manufacturing, infrastructure and technologies is an updated version of former president Donald Trump’s ‘America first’ and isolationism,” the Global Times relayed, “prioritizing the US domestic needs over interests of the international community.”

Biden, Yang continued, could “severely impact the global industrial chains” if he followed through on any of the promises he made, a motive for global “alarm.”

Global industrial chains have been in a state of crisis for over three years as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, caused by the Chinese government’s deliberate actions that helped spread the disease out of central Wuhan city to the entire world. Among its most egregious actions are the Chinese government’s arrest of doctors advising hand-washing and isolating infected patients, trying to break a record for world’s largest banquet as the highly contagious disease spread, and allowing 5 million people to leave Wuhan after obtaining evidence an infectious disease was spreading in the city.

The remark Biden made that appeared to outrage the Chinese newspaper were his lament that America is no longer a leading manufacturing nation and his claims that his administration would soon lead a boom in job growth in the country.

“For decades, the middle class was hollowed out. Too many good-paying manufacturing jobs moved overseas. Factories at home closed down,” Biden told Congress. “Once-thriving cities and towns became shadows of what they used to be. And along the way, something else was lost.”

“Where is it written that America can’t lead the world in manufacturing again?” the president asked. “For too many decades, we imported products and exported jobs. Now, thanks to all we’ve done, we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs.”

Former President Trump, following the speech on his social media platform Truth Social, accused Biden of taking credit for the results of his policies – apparently, the Global Times was not alone in seeing some similarities between Biden’s speech and Trump’s policies.

“He’s talking about the jobs that went away to other Countries, but they went away through the Democrats. I’m the one who brought them back!” Trump wrote.

“He’s talking about Buying American, but allowing Foreign Countries to steal all of our jobs. You can only have one or the other!” he added in a separate post.

In its editorial on Thursday, the Chinese Global Times accused Biden of fueling the decline of a “politically divided, sensitive, anxious, and unconfident US.” As usual for the newspaper, it lamented that America allows for multiple political parties to coexist and disagree publicly without arrests or disappearances – as is common in China for those who dissent from communist orthodoxy.

“The fundamental reason [for U.S. decline] is that the vicious struggle between the two parties has seriously dragged down the country,” the Global Times concluded. “The US has become increasingly sensitive and radical, only caring about the so-called political correctness and ignoring real national interests.”

The state newspaper responded belatedly to the speech. On Wednesday morning Beijing time, the top stories in the four major Chinese state media outlets in English, including the Global Times, had nothing to do with Biden. They highlighted a mundane speech by genocidal dictator Xi Jinping to a Communist Party indoctrination facility.

“Xi stressed that the modernization process of a country needs to follow the general rule of modernization,” the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry reacted more urgently to Biden’s annual address, issuing a statement on Wednesday in response to Biden’s remarks about China during which he claimed to be open to collaboration when appropriate – but more specifically condemning Biden’s call for rebuilding the American manufacturing sector as irresponsible.

“China does not shy away or flinch from competition. However, we are opposed to defining the entire China-US relations by competition,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said. “It is beneath a responsible country to use competition as a pretext to smear other countries and restrain their legitimate right to development, even at the expense of global industrial and supply chains.”

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