Alexander Mercouris — ‘Respect China’s political system’: China warns Trump on eve of his Asia visit

On the eve of Donald Trump’s first trip to Asia as US President the government owned Chinese English language newspaper Global Times – which is often used by the Chinese government to express views the Chinese government does not wish to state officially – has published an editorial warning Trump to respect China and its political system and to discard ‘Cold War thinking’.…

However the comments by President Trump which have probably incensed the Chinese leadership most were certain comments he made over the course of his recent speech to the United Nations General Assembly, in which he criticised socialism in the most trenchant terms….

The idea that China has de facto abandoned socialism and has embraced capitalism and that the Chinese economy operates on purely capitalist lines is one which is very popular in the West. I myself shared it. Having now seen how the Chinese economy actually works from inside China I now however think this view is profoundly wrong.

More to the point the Chinese Communist Party could not fail to be incensed by comments by the US President which refer to socialism – the Communist Party’s ideology – as a “discredited ideology” which has brought “anguish and devastation and failure” wherever it has been adopted”.

Following a Party Congress in which the Chinese Communist Party has gone out of its way to reaffirm its commitment to socialism – this was.a central theme of President Xi Jinping’s speech to the Congress – the Chinese via Global Times are now making clear on the eve of Trump’s Asia trip – which is expected to include a stop-over in China – that they will not tolerate lectures on the nature of the political system from anyone, be that Donald Trump or anyone else....

The Duran
‘Respect China’s political system’: China warns Trump on eve of his Asia visit

Alexander Mercouris