China stepped up anti-U.S. propaganda attacks this week, claiming the takeover of the Capitol by supporters of President Trump was a sign of the collapse of the American democratic system.
State media outlets flooded Chinese online viewers with unusually harsh stories showing pro-Trump protesters battling police and trashing the inside of the domed seat of legislative American power.
The Communist Party-affiliated China Daily published an article with the headline “Capitol Hill down: Produced by U.S. democracy.”
The article stated that the assault on democracy began more than 20 years ago “when those in the halls and boardrooms of power decided to govern for the wealthy, corrupting and sucking dry as a bone all the goodness found in Western capitalism’s attributes.”
The newspaper said that blaming Mr. Trump for the action missed the larger point that the United States is in “ruinous decline.”
The nationalist Global Times, another Party-affiliated media outlet, said the mob inside the Capitol represented the “internal collapse” of the U.S. political system.
The breaching of the symbol of the American political system, Global Times said, is the result of “severe division” and the failure to control the divisions.
“The Republican Party has been hesitating between whether to support the Constitution or defend its president,” the article said, adding that the “tear” in American society is too deep.
The action by the Trump activists also will make it difficult for the new Biden administration, the newspaper said.
“Some US political figures denounced the Capitol chaos as an attack on US democracy, as if the country’s democracy is still intact, and attacks mainly come from outside,” the article stated. “But it represents an internal collapse of the US political system — this is where the seriousness of the problem lies.”
Claiming the U.S. political system has “degraded,” the newspaper went on to praise China’s communist system as better than American democracy.
“Despite China’s rapid development, [Americans] think the country has no political merits,” the article said.
A third Party-linked propaganda outlet, broadcaster CGTN, stated that the unrest at the Capitol was an American version of so-called “color revolutions” that the outlet said were backed by the United States around the world. American support for pro-democracy revolutions “finally boomeranged back, with the proverbial chickens coming home to roost in Washington, D.C. after January 6’s historically unprecedented unrest,” CGTN said.
The propaganda organ stated that the actions on Wednesday marked a turning point for the United States.
“Physical and psychological red lines were crossed beyond what anyone ever thought possible, and America should likely brace itself for more violence, even if it’s only sporadic and less symbolic or intense than what happened on Wednesday,” CGTN said.
“With radical Democrats and conservatives now employing ’color revolution’ technology against one another, there’s no doubt that America has entered a new era of political crisis unlike anything that it’s ever experienced before.”
The official Xinhua news agency was silent in commenting on the unrest, reporting only on Mr. Trump’s announcement promising a smooth transition of power.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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