Beijing gets lecturing after Capitol Hill raid | Economic Times

A Chinese official joked in one of our informal meetings in Beijing, ‘Donald Trump is a friend in disguise. He has harmed American image more than we could ever do.’ I remember him half-joking as I glanced through reports of savagery in Capitol Hill in Washington, temporarily held under siege by mobs, responding to Donald Trump’s December 20 call via Twitter, ‘Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!’Customs figures tell you that the US purchased almost as much, or more, from China after Trump began lashing out and initiating the trade war against it. China did suffer loss of image. But Trump did as much harm to the US’s standing in the world. Beijing could hardly resist the temptation to not just rubbish the US idea of democracy, but also score a point over the pro-democracy agitators in Hong Kong who have been battling its efforts to enhance power over the city. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying drew parallels between Wednesday’s incident and the event in July 2019 when pro-democracy protesters broke into and vandalised Hong Kong’s legislative council. ‘When similar things happened in Hong Kong, some Americans and US media reacted differently,’ said Hua.One of China’s political challenges is the vast section of English-educated and world-travelled Chinese youth who have become fond of ‘Western-style democracy,’ and emerged as silent critic of the communist regime. It is important for China to rubbish democracy at every step and show it as an inferior system compared to the red-packaged capitalism, which helped it become the world’s second biggest economy -- and enabled these youth to travel abroad in the first place.This is where India comes in. Chinese media repeatedly show how poor and anarchic India is despite its claim to be world’s biggest democracy. Rubbishing democracy is also necessary to deal with Taiwan, which has an election-driven democracy. China wants to acquire Taiwan, which was once a part of the mainland before it split up. The Capitol Hill drama ‘represents an internal collapse of the US political system -- this is where the seriousness of the problem lies,’ State-run Global Times said in an editorial. ‘Despite China's rapid development, they think the country has no political merits. Their denial of China further undermines their ability to tell right from wrong politically,’ it added.Chinese response went beyond propaganda. The Hong Kong police arrested 50 more pro-democracy activists for their alleged violation of a new national security law, which was brought in last year amid large-scale protests that turned violent.Will India draw lessons from the Siege of the US Capitol and rework its policies, not only regarding the US but also concerning China? India’s reliance on the US in the shaping of its approaches towards China and Pakistan clearly need to be reconsidered. Many countries, including those connected to the South China Sea and Japan, may do so. But it is doubtful India will tweak its policy in real terms. It will take time for analysts to fully comprehend the implications of the Capitol Hill incident on the popularity of the ‘American way,’ particularly as Asians and others try to comprehend if those TV images came from Istanbul, Lahore, Delhi or Washington. But none can deny it will have a long-term impact.Former US ambassador to China Gary Locke has put it aptly, ‘China is laughing at us and saying we’re not the model of democracy and of civility and of stability that we have always been lecturing the rest of the world to embrace… Now, we have all these other countries around the world ... expressing concern about what has happened in America, urging Americans to observe the rule of law and to respect the peaceful transfer of power and abide by the elections… They’re now preaching to us.’