Chinese Editorial: Charlottesville Proves U.S. Source of ‘Global Instability’

The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times argued in a Sunday editorial that the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, proves the United States is the source of global instability, for which stable Chinese leadership is the antidote.

“The world is closely monitoring the changes in the US, and concerns have begun to deepen. The source of global instability may not be North Korea’s nuclear ambitions nor Europe’s refugee crisis, but the chaos in the US,” the Global Times argues.

The Communist paper buys into conventional American media spin about the rise of “white supremacy” during the latter years of the Obama administration, although it briefly wags a finger at Democrats for stirring the pot to suit their own political ends, and suggests President Trump is picking a fight with North Korea and Venezuela to distract from American social unrest:

The violence undoubtedly reflects the divisions in US society. Racial relations have improved in recent years, symbolized by Barack Obama’s election as president, with Obama attaching great importance to the rights of minorities during his term in office. However, the middle- and lower-class white people thought their interests and basic values have been jeopardized. Soon after the Black Lives Matter movement was launched, “All Lives Matter” was put forward by another group. Promising to “Make America Great Again,” Trump’s slogan resonated with white supremacists, who helped him win the 2016 presidential election.

Developments in the US could have a negative effect on the global economic, financial and security order. People worry that the Trump administration is not capable of bridging the divide, and the Democrats and the liberals could set up more difficult barriers for Trump.

The public is also concerned that Trump is using international disputes to divert public attention away from the domestic turmoil. The president escalated his rhetoric with North Korea recently, warning that “military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded.” He claimed that a military option is possible to deal with the Venezuelan government’s crackdown on the opposition; he threatened to launch a trade war against China just months after talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida in April.

The Global Times contrasts this with Chinese “social stability” and boasts that Chinese society is a “united organism” which can “make tremendous contributions to global stability and development.”

These boasts of unity might be challenged by, say, the Uighur population of China, or the lawyers and activists rounded up and jailed on certain uncomfortable anniversaries, but they are not usually invited to write editorials for the Global Times. Listening to an authoritarian regime brag about brutally enforced “social stability” should be bracing for any American wondering if our tradition of robust dissent is tearing the country apart.