Policy Alert #211 | June 18, 2020

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The gruesome act was caught on camera and widely shared on social media. Protests against police brutality and racism quickly spread across the United States and across the globe. In this RPI Policy Alert, we survey the Rising Powers’ response to these protests and their take on politics and race in the US, rarely if ever, holding up a mirror.

 

CHINA

At a regular press conference, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian condemned racial discrimination in the US: “[W]e are following the latest developments of the situation following the death of George Floyd. ‘Black lives matter.’ […] What is happening right now once again shows the seriousness of racial discrimination and violent law enforcement by the police, and the urgency for the US to address them. We hope the US government will take concrete measures to fulfill its due obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination to protect the legal rights of ethnic minorities in the US.” In response to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s allegation that the Chinese Communist Party is exploiting George Floyd’s death for propaganda, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying argued that his suggestion was uncalled for: “Even under such circumstances, Mr. Pompeo is still full of lies and slanders. It’s just sad. From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech ‘I have a dream’ in 1963 to George Floyd’s moan of ‘I cannot breathe’, 57 years have passed, and yet equal rights is still a dream for ethnic minorities in the US, a country where serious systemic racism still exists. This is not foreign propaganda; this is an everyday phenomenon in the American society that should be reflected upon, as unanimously appealed by people from all walks of life in the US.” At another press conference, an exchange between a reporter from the Global Times and Spokesperson Hua highlighted the US’s “double-standards” in each country’s treatment of members of the press. Earlier this month, the International Cyber Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released a report pointing out that despite recent efforts by Twitter and Facebook to remove accounts created and used by state-linked information operations, recent activity by China-linked accounts on Twitter indicate that “the operation continues and has pivoted to try to weaponise the US Government’s repost to current domestic protests and create a perception of a moral equivalence with the suppression of protests in Hong Kong.” 

• In an editorial, the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, argued that the US’s support for democracy protests in Hong Kong and disdain for the current protests at home exemplify the US’s double-standard: “They praised the violent protesters in Hong Kong as heroes, but called domestic demonstrators rioters. They slammed the Hong Kong police, who enforced the law in a restrained manner, even though the US National Guard will not hesitate to fire at people.”
• In an editorial, the state-supported China Daily mused what the Trump administration’s tactics mean for its control of the situation: “The irony is that although the protests are one of the few things that the US administration has found impossible to attribute to China, the White House has opted to step up its China-bashing in a bid to try to divert people’s anger and attention from the issue.” In another editorial, the Daily asserted that Trump’s response would do more harm than good: “[A]lthough he labels himself as a president of law and order, the law and order he is promising is only more of the same excessive force that has triggered the current unrest.”
• The nationalist Global Times countered US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s comparison of China to Nazi Germany with its own: “China hasn’t engaged in a war with any foreign country for 32 years. But in the same period, how many wars have been launched by the US? […] The US has pulled out of international organizations that help maintain world peace, while in contrast China has been a resolute defender of a world framework under the United Nations. […] Which country on Earth acts more like the Nazis?” Furthering its position that the US is on the decline, the Times claimed that the discord in the US demonstrates its inability to lead: “The US remains the strongest power in the world, but its strength is not enough to support its ambition of reshaping the global order. The country has too many urgent domestic issues. […]The US political elites should be realistic and stop arbitrarily escalating external confrontations and playing party politics. They should figure out what the American people really need and help them fulfill their wishes.”
• Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, predicted in an op-ed that protests of this nature were sure to continue in the US: “White supremacy will eventually come to a dead end in the US. The mainstream values and historical views will gradually change. This will be a revolutionary process for American society, and will lead to a lot of entanglements, conflicts, and even pain. It is hard to say whether the US political and legal system that was built under the dominance of the whites can deal with these changes smoothly.”
• In an op-ed for the independent South China Morning Post, Brian Y.S. Wong, an MPhil candidate at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Rhodes Scholar-elect for Hong Kong 2020, compared the protests in the US and Hong Kong and concluded that “[t]he way out is not unrestrained majoritarianism ending up with disenfranchised minorities, neither is it authoritarian rollbacks of civil liberties. Politicians should exhibit courage and responsibility by listening, apologising and making amends – otherwise, all talk of restoring ‘peace and stability’ is futile.”

 

INDIA

In a phone call with President Trump to discuss the 2020 G7 Summit and the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi “expressed concern regarding the ongoing civil disturbances in the US, and conveyed his best wishes for an early resolution of the situation.”

• The liberal Indian Express was optimistic that the protests would result in meaningful change: “The participation in the protests shows that the wound has cut deeper and wider this time, across racial lines. Perhaps even on Trump’s side of the fence, it may turn out to be the proverbial straw on the camel’s back that can force America to confront the reality of the distance it has still to cover — to fulfil the possibilities of its own admirable democratic ideals.”
• The liberal Hindustan Times warned that the domestic discord in the US was a boon for the Chinese government: “Watching its geopolitical rival fumble the ball repeatedly will come as a relief. More worrying, it may encourage an already heightened sense that the Middle Kingdom faces no real check or balance in the international system. The US can do better and, for reasons well beyond its borders, it needs to.”
• The pro-government Daily Pioneer similarly urged restraint: “Seeing police in riot gear and highly militarised forces on the streets will not only give demagogues elsewhere in the world little pause for thought before indulging in their own violent reprisals. It will also weaken the case for democratic governments with Chinese politicians showing American anarchy as a contrast to their own vision of the world.”
• Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a contributing editor at the Indian Express, disagreed with claims that the protests would weaken Trump ahead of the 2020 elections in a comparison with former President Richard Nixon: “Nixon greatly benefited from the narrative of disorder in the Sixties; whether Trump can do so is an open question. But there is no question that he will try. America will come out of this, in the short run, more authoritarian and polarised.”
• In an op-ed for the Hindustan Times, former Union Cabinet Minister Salman Khurshid noted the similarities between law enforcement’s crackdown in the US and similar responses to protests in India against the Citizenship Amendment Act: “Much evil has been done in history in the name of State security. We see the same happening today in India.”

 

JAPAN

Japanese public broadcaster NHK came under fire for an animated video explaining the protest for a children’s program that was criticized for being “tone-deaf and offensive.” In addition to omitting discussion of police brutality and racial injustice, the since-removed video also used insensitive caricatures of Black Americans. Although the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun was the only major news outlet to weigh in on the protests, several rallies have been held in Tokyo and Osaka, including one held in response to the police’s treatment of a Kurdish man in the capital. 

• The conservative Yomiuri Shimbun questioned President Trump’s handling of the unrest, which it characterized as “exacerbat[ing]” the situation with “provocative remarks: “Leaders from all walks of life must send a message of reconciliation to the public to calm the situation. Trump’s behavior is far from that. He criticized Democratic governors for being weak and stressed the need to control their states by force. With the presidential election approaching in November, he seems to be focusing only on white voters.”

 

RUSSIA

At a regular press conference, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova reported that Russia was monitoring the protests in the US and had been in communication with the US State Department regarding law enforcement’s injury of Russian journalists covering the events. Spokesperson Zakharova went on to criticize President Trump’s Executive Order on Advancing International Religious Freedom amidst the domestic crisis: “I would like to believe that before showing their zeal in protecting the rights of the ‘suppressed’ and ‘dissenters’ in other countries, US authorities will start to scrupulously observe democratic standards and ensure the freedoms of their citizens at home.”  

• In an op-ed for state-funded RT, Artyom Lukin, associate professor of international relations at Far Eastern Federal University in Russia claimed that the protests demonstrate an increased likelihood of a collapse of the US: “I don’t believe the US disintegration is imminent or likely. On the contrary, America could emerge a reinvented and rejuvenated nation out of the current crisis. Nevertheless, the scenario of US implosion has now definitely left the realm of the hypothetical.” Lukin argued that such a collapse would not be to the benefit of Russia, given that “the US is the devil we know,” and the risk of such a collapse “prov[ing] contagious, triggering fragmentation processes in other super-states.”
• RT also provided a sounding board for critics of the protests. RT published an anonymous letter allegedly written by a University of California Berkeley professor that RT described as “calling out things impossible to openly discuss on campus, including the Democratic Party co-opting Black Lives Matter and the suppression of dissenting voices.” RT also featured British journalist Guy Birchall’s assertion that the movement’s tactics are antithetical to liberal values as “[c]ollective guilt and justice are two of the most illiberal notions known to man,” and former New York University professor Michael Rectenwald decrying public apologies as “Maoist-derived rituals.” 
• The nationalist Pravda Report, on the other hand, featured interviews and op-eds more sympathetic to the protests such as an interview with American University Professor Peter Kuznick, an op-ed by legal editor of the Pravda Report David R. Hoffman that turned Secretary of State Pompeo’s Nazi Germany analogy against the Trump administration, an interview with linguist Noam Chomsky, and an op-ed by American journalist John Stanton.   
• In the independent, Dutch-based Moscow Times, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute Mark Galeotti analyzed the Russian media’s reporting of the protests in the US and concluded: “1. The Russian media is not delighting at your misery; and for that matter 2. The Russian media isn’t that interested in you.”
• In his analysis for the Moscow Times, Ilya Klishin, former Digital Director of the New York-based Russian-language RTVI channel, instead focused on Russians’ online reactions to the US protests against the context of the looming vote on President Vladimir Putin’s proposed amendments to the constitution that would enable him to remain in power until 2036: “[E]motions are boiling over. People are posting from morning until evening about what and who should burn, while others insist that those setting the fires should be shot. Maybe it would all be comical. These people can’t even bring themselves to go out and do a solo picket in Moscow where not a single window was broken during the lock-down. But it’s not really funny at all — maybe because of that smothering premonition of the gathering storm.”

 

RPI acknowledges support from the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for its activities.