ChinaTalk Editor Lily brings us a debate roundup from the Chinese internet.
The first US presidential debate went viral on the Chinese internet. China’s censors had to shut down the ensuing conversation about Biden’s age due to the striking parallels with Xi Jinping.
Now that Biden has stepped down, Chinese state media has updated their talking points faster than the GOP! Here’s what official and popular independent outlets have to say about the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
No Winners Here! — State-Sponsored Cope and Russian Collusion
The official narrative on the debate is that both candidates are liars, and America’s democratic process is entertaining, unrepresentative, and unserious.
The central government news platform, CCTV 央视, went with the headline, “90 Minutes Chock Full of Lies, Complaints, and Abuse — The Debate Between Trump and Harris Had No Winner.” Xinhua news reported the same angle, with a montage of Harris and Trump accusing each other of lying.
The most diligent reporting of this narrative comes from Zhou Deyu 周德宇, who has a PhD in political science from the University of Pittsburg. Writing for nationalist-adjacent news outlet Guancha 观察者网:
Both sides performed as expected, and nothing surprising happened.
After this debate, there may be some fluctuations in the polls, but these fluctuations will most likely be chewed up and forgotten by the time the election happens.
Most of the time, the US election debates are just a formality, providing voters with some tasty soundbites [literally: “electronic pickled veggies” 电子榨菜1], which will not have much impact on the election results. It doesn’t matter what the two sides say, anyway — both will talk big game 满嘴跑火车, both will spin tales promising bread they can’t deliver 画下实现不了的大饼, both will accuse the other side of lying and incompetence…
Due to the unique electoral system in the United States, the results of the entire election are actually determined by a few swing states rather than the entire country, so specific local conditions can override the national trend. …
Therefore, what ultimately decides the election is still how many people the candidates can mobilize in the swing states to actually cast a vote on the election day. Everything before that, whether it is polls or news, is just a reference and not a conclusion; all advantages before that are only theoretical, and will not be a decisive victory. Small fluctuations such as changes in voter turnout caused by bad weather in a swing state on election day may become the factor that tips the scale.
Really? Nothing surprising happened?
Guancha also called in reinforcements from Russia, amplifyingquotes from Maria Zakharova, the mouthpiece of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“This may as well have been a debate on the Titanic … does it really matter who won? It’s T-minus fifteen minutes until the iceberg hits!” ~ Maria Zakharova
But if the winner of the debate is irrelevant, Russia Today certainly didn’t get the memo. RT’s China office has been working overtime to churn out Mandarin translations of pro-Trump Kremlin talking points — for example, that Harris used Bluetoothearrings to cheat, that Harris is aMarxist, and, hilariously, that Tim Walz is a Chinesesleeper agent.
These stories were all torn apart in the comments. Note: “The hairy ones” 毛子 is a derogatory term for Russians.
Trump got thrashed this time around. All I can say is, there’s a rock for every scissor. 这把特朗普被对方控场了，只能说一物降一物
😂 The hairy Russians are really cutting deep. 毛子真是犀利啊
The hairy ones are like, “everything’s fine, nothing to see here!” 毛子：都得完！[doge]
Simultaneously arguing that no one won the debate and that Harris won by cheating epitomizes a classic tactic used in Russian propaganda: for any issue, respond with several overlapping narratives. It’s actually good if the different layers contradict, because that helps cultivate the feeling that truth does not actually exist.
Put simply, throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.2
Such tactics are not standard for Chinese propaganda, though — which perhaps explains why RT has taken matters into its own hands and opened a Mandarin translation office. We’ll see if critical responses to Russia’s propaganda are allowed to stay up.
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Those Who Love to Laugh Won’t Have Bad Luck 爱笑的人运气不会太差
Regular Chinese internet users were largely impressed with Harris’s debate performance and endeared by her facial reactions to Trump’s lunacy. Here’s the top comment from the top video on Bilibili about the debate:
Big Sister Ha-Ha-Harris 哈哈姐 came well-prepared this time. She gave strong statements on core Democratic issues like healthcare, abortion, Israel-Palestine, small businesses, and tax cuts for low-income groups. She even had a rebuttal for Trump’s question about why the border-security policy wasn’t passed. On the other hand, Trump didn’t have much new to say regarding NATO allies, and when it came to healthcare, he slipped up and admitted he didn’t have a plan.
The Chinese internet loves to bestow nicknames. The debate performance has earned Harris some titles like Big Sister Ha-ha, Ha-Ha-Harris 哈哈哈哈里斯, and Laughin’ Lady 笑婆 (which comes from a Chinese parable about staying positive and looking at the bright side of life).
Nicknames aside, the way of writing Harris’s actual name in Chinese has become an easy way to spot nationalist affiliation.
In Chinese, the names of American politicians are usually written phonetically with nonsense characters — Obama becomes 奥巴马 Àobāmǎ, which sounds close enough but uses characters that mean something like “obscure clinging horse.”
But Kamala Harris has an authentic Chinese name, 贺锦丽, pronounced Hè Jǐnlì in Mandarin or Ho Gam-lai in Cantonese. The literal meaning of the characters is something like “celebrated intricate embroidery,” and there’s a phonetic similarity to “Kamala” in Cantonese as well.
Who bestowed this name on Kamala Harris? When Harris was campaigning for district attorney, ballots in San Francisco were available in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Harris’s longtime friend Julie D. Soo 蘇榮麗 thought that an authentic Chinese name would give Harris a competitive edge at the ballot box, and asked her father to give Harris a suitable name. Harris even reportedly learned how to introduce herself in Cantonese.
Harris fans hold signs with her Chinese name. Source: 中国日报.
Chinese critics of Harris, on the other hand, usually choose not to use her Chinese name, arguing that it’s a cheap tactic to pull votes from Asian Americans. Instead, they use a meaningless phonetic transcription of her name, 哈里斯 Hālǐsī.
But to be fair, the phonetic transcription lends itself to nicknames more easily.
Kamala Harris, Pro China? 贺锦丽亲华？
Harris did well in the debate. Why are the wolf warriors disappointed?
Before Biden stepped down, Chinese media didn’t often report on Harris. What little academic commentary there was portrayed VP Harris as being in lockstep with President Biden. For example, in a 2021 article on Biden’s China policy, Song Jing 宋静, associate professor at Shanxi University of Finance, and Lora Saalman wrote:
Vice President Kamala D. Harris (Chinese name “He Jinli”) is of Indian descent and represents the interests of Indian technology giants in Silicon Valley. She once supported the passage of the “S.386 Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act” with obvious anti-Chinese tendencies.
With the improvement of India’s national strength and strategic position, Indian scholars have gained more voice in the US strategic community.
But again, there was very little coverage of Kamala Harris before Biden stepped down. The day after Harris began her campaign, typing her Chinese name into Baidu auto-filled “Kamala Harris Pro-China,” followed by “Kamala Harris Modi.”
Evidently, people were eager to know whether having a Chinese name meant Harris would deviate from Biden’s tough-on-China foreign policy positions.
July 23, 2024
But it seems the debate has dashed those hopes. It’s no wonder they called in the Russians.
Quick Notes from Jordan on the Debate
Right at the top of the debate we had a really interesting exchange that touched on tariffs, industrial policy, and export controls.
DAVID MUIR: … Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs?
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They aren’t gonna have higher prices — what’s gonna have and who’s gonna have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years. I charge, I was the only president ever — China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars, and so were other countries, and you know, if she doesn’t like ‘em, they should have gone out and they should have immediately cut the tariffs — but those tariffs are there three and a half years now under their administration … [goes on inflation riff].
DAVID MUIR: Vice President Harris, I do want to ask for your response, and you heard what the president said there — because the Biden administration did keep a number of the Trump tariffs in place, so how do you respond?
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, let’s be clear that the Trump administration resulted in a trade deficit, one of the highest we’ve ever seen in the history of America. He invited trade wars — you wanna talk about his deal with China. what he ended up doing is, under Donald Trump’s presidency he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military, basically sold us out when a policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century. Which means focusing on the details of what that requires, focusing on relationships with our allies, focusing on investing in American based technology so that we win the race on AI and quantum computing, focusing on what we need to do to support America’s workforce, so that we don’t end up having the on the short end of the stick in terms of workers’ rights. But what Donald Trump did — let’s talk about this with COVID, is he actually thanked President Xi for what he did during COVID. Look at his tweet. “Thank you, President Xi,” exclamation point — when we know that XI was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of COVID.
same energy as my favorite tweet, the ZTE one!
an all-time classic
DAVID MUIR: President Trump, I’ll let you respond.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: First of all, they bought their chips from Taiwan. We hardly make chips anymore because of philosophies like they have and policies like they have. I don’t say her because she has no policy. Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window. She’s going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat. She’s gone to my philosophy. But if she ever got elected, she’d change it. And it will be the end of our country. She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well …[goes on immigration riff].
A few quick thoughts:
I did not have semiconductor export controls as a Kamala attack line on my bingo card.
Trump has a point that a lot of the Biden China policy is a continuation of what he began from a tariff, export control, and even industrial policy standpoint (the CHIPS Act can trace its origins back to the late Trump administration). It’s an odd attack line to begin with as you’re basically praising your opponent’s policy, then saying trying to double back and say “by the way she’s actually a Marxist even though she’s just doing what I would’ve done anyway” doesn’t land at all.
Though it may have been a smart thing tactically to keep Trump’s blood up by not giving him credit for anything, the more intellectually honest Kamala answer would’ve started by acknowledging that a broken clock is right twice a day and then saying, “even though his instincts weren’t totally off on this one he was blinded by flattery.”
Overall, Kamala’s China vision about how technology is central to what may turn into a century-long competition sounds a whole lot like what we preach about here every week.
In the midst of Trump’s dogs-and cats-riff, he detoured for a sentence into how a Harris Administration would kick off WWIII:
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: First let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So, she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That’s because people want to take their country back. Our country is being lost. We’re a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what’s going on here — you’re going to end up in World War III, just to go into another subject. What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs…
Trump then came back to the theme during his Ukraine answer:
And in fact, when I saw Putin after I left — unfortunately left because our country has gone to hell — but after I left when I saw him building up soldiers, he did it after I left, I said oh, he must be negotiating. It must be a good strong point of negotiation. Well, it wasn’t, because Biden had no idea how to talk to him. He had no idea how to stop it. And now you have millions of people dead. and it’s only getting worse and it could lead to World War III. Don’t kid yourself, David. We’re playing with World War III.
Peter Harrell and I have written an op-ed on which candidates’ policies are more likely to lead to great power war, and we’re looking for somewhere to run it. If you edit an op-ed page, just respond to this email to see a draft.
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The term “electronic pickled veggies” 电子榨菜 refers to cheap pleasures meant to keep the masses entertained and satisfied. It’s a bit like “bread and circuses.”
Also in classic Russian propaganda fashion, RT’s political content is punctuated by feel-good stories about pandas in love and Kate Middleton’s fight against cancer to make sure your brain is buttered up with dopamine by the time you scroll to their dedicated propaganda stories.
The part on Kamala’s Chinese name is really fascinating and an important point to note.