Now, state and social media are scrutinizing the US system in part by homing in on the influence of big money on politics. An earlier CCTV report said the US ballots had become a battle between billionaires, casting the latest election as the most “money-burning” event in the country’s history.
Citing reports by media outlets including the Financial Times and the New York Times, the report showcased the role of business tycoons Elon Musk and Bill Gates as key donors to political parties, concluding that such practices have led to common people’s interests “being marginalized and even sacrificed.”
The China Daily newspaper’s former deputy editor, Kang Bing, lamented in a commentary over the lack of improvement in people’s livelihoods in the US, whose name in Chinese translates to “beautiful country.”
“Americans are becoming less and less confident,” he wrote. “Why else are the presidential candidates cursing each other in public using expletives?”
A cartoon in the same publication late last month showed an elephant and a donkey — animals traditionally used to depict the Republican and Democratic parties — engaged in a tussle over who gets “ownership” of the White House, under the headline: Polarizating US Elections Breaking Apart the US.
Zhu Junwei, a former researcher for the People’s Liberation Army who’s now director of American research at Beijing think tank Grandview Institution, said few Chinese academics took such portrayals seriously.
“Scholars are trying to look deeper into American politics, society and its people,” she said “to understand what this election — and all the phenomena we’ve seen during this and recent election cycles — mean for the US, China and the world.”