Policy Alert #205 | March 12, 2020

With the 2020 presidential election cycle in the United States underway, even the media in the Rising Powers cannot ignore the pageantry of the Democratic Party’s primary elections. Following former Vice President Joe Biden’s sweeping success on Super Tuesday, analyses began to churn out that attempted to explain the candidate’s appeal vis-a-vis contender Senator Bernie Sanders and what the emergence of such polar opposite candidates in the Democratic Party mean for the state of American politics. In this RPI Policy Alert, we share the buzz around the primary in the Rising Powers.

 

CHINA

• Although the government-supported China Daily has not weighed in on the elections specifically, it had tough words for US politicians from both parties in editorials condemning Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s announcement to introduce legislation to ban the use of China-based social media app TikToK on government devices and Democratic Congressman David Cicilline’s Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act of 2019, which has now passed in both the Senate and House of Representatives. The China Daily warned US politicians to abandon their “ideological bias against China” and that “Washington’s increasing use of Taiwan as a pawn in its game may not only create further troubles in cross-Straits ties, but also derail the overall China-US relationship for good.”
• In response to the tit-for-tat limitations on journalists between China and the US that began with a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the nationalist Global Times questioned the degree to which the media in Western countries is truly independent: “[S]ince the 2020 presidential campaign began, Western media have quickly turned to different camps of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. They have turned into tools for different candidates. Western media is run by capitalists, who profit by providing news services to the public.”
• The independent South China Morning Post cautioned that with the impending elections, there is a grave risk that campaign rhetoric, especially from President Donald Trump, will have negative consequences for ties between China and the US: “At home, Trump faces internal criticism over an increasingly authoritarian style, including highly divisive meddling in the justice system. If he faces a domestic political backlash and implementation of the trade deal is lagging, China-bashing could serve as a distraction for voters. That would do nothing for prospects of a badly needed wider trade deal.”
• Shi Tian, a contributor to the Global Times, criticized US politicians’ use of the coronavirus outbreak to further election ambitions: “The urgent task for the two parties and all politicians in the US should be to reach a consensus and work together to fight the virus. After all, if the epidemic spins out of control in the country, all their efforts to win votes will be fruitless.”

 

INDIA

• In an op-ed, Contributing Editor at the liberal Indian Express Pratap Bhanu Mehta analyzed the popularity of candidates like Bernie Sanders and President Donald Trump along a different dimension than the capitalists-versus-socialists dichotomy: “It could be argued that at this point in many countries across the world, the ‘Left-Right’ dimension does not quite capture what is at stake in contemporary politics. What is at stake is not just equality of distribution, but the relationship between democracy and capitalism. […] The issue is between those who think that capitalism is the problem, and those who think democracy is the problem.”
• The liberal Hindustan Times responded to Joe Biden’s sudden surge as evidence that the Democratic Party is prioritizing independent voters and centrist Republicans at the expense of members of their own party: “The Democrats prefer a candidate who can save the Oval Office over a candidate who can save America. […] But Mr Biden would do well to take a closer look at the policy agenda of the Democratic left if he wants to stitch together a winning platform.”
• The center-right Times of India similarly speculated about Joe Biden’s appeal as a presidential candidate to run against Trump: “[K]eeping aside untenable conspiracy theories, what the formerly fragmented Democratic field coalescing around Biden suggests is that his pitch has greater traction: People don’t want revolution, they want results and the revival of decency. […] Back in 1988 Biden had asked voters to choose him as a candidate who can ‘let America catch its breath.’ That message may have a lot of appeal today.”

 

JAPAN

• The progressive Asahi Shimbun Vox Populi, Vox Dei scholar Kazuo Watanabe’s characterization of the paradox of tolerance “Being intolerant of intolerance would defeat the spirit of tolerance itself.” “In Japan as well as in the United States, there are instances of politicians displaying such utter lack of dignity or common decency that are enough to drive us to despair. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they are happening in both countries.”
• The center-right Japan Times featured an op-ed by Yoichi Funabashi, chairman of the Asia Pacific Institute think tank, the implications if the election in November is between two populist politicians “In fact, a victory for either Trump or Sanders will raise anxieties in Japan. The U.S., it is feared, may treat Japan as a strategic bargaining chip should Trump prevail, or grow even more inward-looking if Sanders does. The sort of polarizing populism exemplified by Trump, Sanders and several other current world leaders may present Japan and the international order with their biggest challenge of the postwar era.”
• The conservative Yomiuri Shimbun expressed doubt that the Democratic Party would be able to close the gap between Sanders’ and Biden’s supporters: “As long as the Democrats continue to be shaken, it will be a rough road for the party to regain the White House.”

 

RUSSIA

• The op-ed section of government-funded RT is saturated with pieces promoting cynicism behind the US election process by characterizing the process as a Ponzi scheme, lampooning Facebook’s attempts to stifle the spread of fake news, arguing that the Democratic efforts are futile against Trump, alleging the US media’s efforts to promote rampant Russophobia in their coverage of the elections, and pushing conspiracies behind Biden’s sudden surge in the Super Tuesday primaries.
• Election coverage of state-owned Sputnik News has so far included articles that attempt to undermine claims of Russian interference in the 2020 election process and encourage conspiracy theories behind Biden’s sudden surge in the Democratic primary.
• In an op-ed for the independent, Dutch-based Moscow Times, Gennady Rudkevich, assistant professor of international relations at Georgia College, offered an analysis of the Russian interference already underway in the US elections following reports that Russia is attempting to support both Sanders and Trump in its meddling: “What all of the movements receiving Russian social media assistance have in common is not their pro-Russian positions — though most of them do have that — but their opposition to the establishment.”

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