China has taken an interest in the elections this cycle, and its media is covering them far more than in any other U.S. election.
As a result of the widespread coverage, Republican Donald Trump has actually developed a following in China. He cited a poll by the Hong Kong South China Sunday Morning Post showing a stunning 39 percent of Chinese people favor Trump for president.
“The Chinese state-controlled media has portrayed an ‘ugly’ which has led Americans to rethink the values of American democracy,” according to Jim Laurie, an independent media consultant who has advised the English-speaking China Central Television (CCTV).
“This approval rating among the Chinese is far different from the 13 percent approval the same poll shows Trump getting among citizens of the Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia,” said Laurie.
Laurie was a participant in a forum Monday on China’s unusual degree of attention on U.S. politics in 2016. The forum, which was held in Washington, D.C., was hosted by the Public Diplomacy Council of the USC Annenberg Center on Communications Leadership and Policy.
Part of the attention, he explained, comes from “the entertainment value of Trump.” But, Laurie added, “It is also true Trump reconfirms the Chinese argument that American style democracy and argue that ‘democratic socialism’ as practiced in China might be a better system.”
This view was seconded by Mike Ottley, former news editor of China Daily.
“I’d come into the newsroom and reporters would always be saying, ‘Did you hear what Donald Trump said?’ and ‘We’ve got to write about that,’” he said. “At the Beijing airport, they were actually selling Trump T-shirts.”
Trump’s celebrity status aside, Ottley noted, “the elites — that is those who belong to the Communist Party — want him to win because there would be more chaos than there is now in the U.S. and this would benefit China. They are always looking for things like this. They imagine that if China had democracy such as the U.S., things would also be chaotic.”