As dramatic images of the failed assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump spread across the world on Saturday, news of the attack also sparked widespread online interest – as well as scathing criticism of the US – on the Internet. censored from China.
Discussion about the assassination attempt, in which a gunman opened fire at a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night, dominated Chinese social media in the hours following the attack.
Related hashtags have garnered hundreds of millions of views on China’s X-like social media platform Weibo, where Trump – who as president has amplified US-China tensions – has for years been a frequent subject of discussion, fascination and often ridicule. .
Some social media users were quick to praise the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee as “lucky” not to have suffered more serious injuries and praised Trump’s “quick reflexes,” while many others joked about how the situation would increase electoral popularity.
As shots rang out during his speech at the rally, the former president ducked and was covered by Secret Service agents. He then raised his fist in a defiant pose, with blood visible on his face before agents removed him from the stage – a gesture captured in an image shared widely around the world and in China.
“Judging by your quick reaction and agility to get down, I would vote for Trump. I bet it would take (US President Joe) Biden ages to crouch,” read one social media comment that received thousands of likes and appeared to allude to concerns about Biden’s age.
One blogger with more than a million followers noted that the incident made Trump look more like a “traditional Hollywood president.”
Other commentators have drawn morbid parallels between the incident and the 2022 assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, noting, for example, that the two former leaders ended up not “meeting” over the weekend.
There have also been repeated links between the attack and recurring cases of gun violence in the United States, which are often highlighted by Chinese state media as an example of the country’s failings.
“In the land of freedom, gunshots ring out every day,” said a comment on Weibo with several thousand likes.
China’s Foreign Ministry provided an official comment on Sunday, with a spokesperson saying Chinese leader Xi Jinping “expressed sympathy” for Trump.
State-linked media also intervened to shape the public discussion around the incident. Several op-eds or editorials published by these outlets framed Saturday’s violence as a symptom of American democracy, echoing Beijing’s long-standing rhetorical effort to portray the U.S. political system as dysfunctional and inferior to its own.
An editorial published on Sunday by the state-run Beijing News newspaper said the incident “combined all the typical political symbols of an American election: violence, uncertainty and tough guys.”
State-run nationalist tabloid Global Times published an op-ed on Monday by a Beijing-based professor describing how “the escalation of political polarization into violence shows that more people are feeling despair about American democracy.”
“Political polarization and violence stem from severe income inequality and hopelessness about social change,” the article said, while the channel’s English-language arm repeated similar themes in an editorial for an international audience.
As such comments filtered through Chinese media outlets, President Joe Biden, in an Oval Office speech Sunday night, took aim at what he described as “foreign actors” who “fan the flames of our division.”
His goals are to “shape outcomes consistent with their interests, not ours,” Biden said in an apparent reference to Washington’s concern that China, Russia and other rivals are taking advantage of existing social divisions in the U.S. in campaigns. of influence, something Beijing denies.
“Tonight, I am asking all Americans to recommit…. (to) think about what made America so special,” said the US president.
The rapt focus on the assassination attempt in China adds to what has already been frequent discussion about Trump on the Chinese internet, where he has earned the nickname “Chuan Jianguo” or “Trump, the (Chinese) nation builder” during his term in office. – a joke to suggest that its isolationist foreign policy and divisive domestic agenda were actually helping Beijing overtake Washington on the global stage.
It is also believed that Trump’s re-election bid is being closely watched in Beijing, not least because the former president has threatened, if re-elected, to increase tariffs which, according to experts, could trigger a de facto decoupling between the economies. from the USA and China.
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