The Chinese regime-run Global Times newspaper lamented the expected wave of democratic elections around the world in 2024 as a source of “uncertainty” on Monday, warning that “the rise of far-right politics” could damage the advancement of “globalism.”
The Global Times is China’s top English-language government publication, a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party. If often publishes editorials condemning free societies and the use of elections to determine government leaders as causing “chaos,” as opposed to the “harmony” of totalitarian communism. Elections “cannot truly reflect the essence of democracy,” a senior Communist Party leader wrote in the Global Times in 2019. In contrast, the Global Times ended 2021 praising “Confucian social management” and “grassroots” regime repression for bringing “harmony” to Chinese people.
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In its analysis on Monday, the Global Times observed that multiple democratic nations are scheduled to hold elections in 2024, from the American presidential election to India’s general parliamentary elections, considered the largest in the world. The Times suggested that the trend of populist right-wing and conservative wins in Europe in the past two years – and the victory of libertarian outsider Javier Milei in Argentina’s presidential election in November – could augur major gains for small-government, populist movements globally.
“Chinese experts said that in 2024 challenges and crises will remain, including the risk of spillovers from current regional wars, great power confrontations, protectionism concerns,” the Times listed, “the rise of populist and right-wing politicians, and the great uncertainty to policies that will come from the different results of upcoming elections.”
One such regime-friendly “expert,” identified as academic Jin Canrong, told the government propaganda outlet that elections generally “will bring more uncertainty to the global landscape,” but recalled a trend the Chinese publication deemed unfortunate in recent votes.
Argentina’s new president Javier Milei waves next to his vice president Victoria Villarruel after being sworn in during his inauguration ceremony at the Congress in Buenos Aires on December 10, 2023. (Luis ROBAYO / AFP)
“In 2023, far-right parties in countries such as the Netherlands, Italy, Finland, Sweden and Argentina all embraced their electoral success, as populists and nationalists rising globally,” the Global Times reported.
“The rise of far-right politics is likely to lead to a further tightening of trade, foreign investment and immigration policies, and a further damage to globalization,” another “expert,” professor Li Haidong, reportedly said. “Economic protectionism is likely to intensify in 2024.”
“Economic protectionism” – by which the Global Times meant the securing of national supply chains by becoming less dependent on China – could potentially significantly damage the manufacturing-dependent Chinese economy. The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic prompted many political voices around the world to reconsider global economic dependence on China, as the novel virus spread rapidly from the central Chinese city of Wuhan around the world in 2019 thanks to the 5 million travelers who left the city before dictator Xi Jinping locked it down. Regions of the world, such as northern Italy, with a disproportionately high number of migrants from Wuhan documented some of the most severe outbreaks of the disease in the early months of the pandemic. Many have reconsidered their ties to China; Italy recently abandoned China’s predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), infrastructure debt-trap program.
Italy’s election of current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a right-wing populist, is among the recent political developments alarming China. The Global Times also noted the dramatic rise of the populist Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, led by longtime right-wing leader Geert Wilders, as a cause of concern, as well as the election of Milei, an economics professor, in Argentina.
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party, reacts at the party’s general election night event in Rome, Italy, on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. (Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Argentina abandoned 20 years of socialist, pro-China government in November to elect Milei, a television commentator who promised he would “not do deals with communists” and described himself as having a preference for “civilized” nations as partners over China. Milei’s predecessor, socialist former President Alberto Fernández, joined the BRI and obsequiously venerated the corpse of Mao Zedong during a visit to Beijing in 2022. Fernández secured a spot for Argentina in the China-led, anti-American BRICS coalition in August – which Milei promptly rejected on December 29. Argentina’s departure left China – and fellow BRICS members India, Russia, Brazil, and South America – with only five new members, including economically destitute Egypt and Ethiopia, Islamist powers Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the most moderate and successful of the countries invited.
China Daily, another regime-owned outlet, declared on Tuesday that Milei’s rejection of BRICS was “not a rejection of BRICS.”
“The door of membership to BRICS will always remain open to Argentina. It is welcome to join when it feels the time is right,” it surmised hopefully.
U.S. President Joe Biden escorts Chinese President Xi Jinping to his car to bid farewell after their talks in the Filoli Estate in the U.S. state of California, Nov. 15, 2023. (Li Xueren/Xinhua via Getty Images)
In the United States, the administration of leftist President Joe Biden has repeatedly, and enthusiastically, rejected decoupling the American economy from communist China’s, but the votes of confidence have not deterred private American companies from directing much of their investments elsewhere. Nor are they alone internationally; China documented its first-ever quarterly drop in foreign direct investment in November 2023, tallying $11.8 billion less in foreign money in the quarter ending in September than in the one prior.
“There is always a risk in 2024 that if economic globalization suffers a major setback, the tightly connected world will be disrupted, with corresponding political and military consequences,” the Global Times quoted Li Haidong as saying.
Should Biden lose reelection in 2024, his top rival according to the latest polls is former President Donald Trump, a right-wing populist who made treating China’s regime as the rogue communist threat that it is a priority of his administration. A plurality of recent national polls show Trump ahead of Biden should the election be held now, making the presidential election of paramount significance for China.
“Increasingly intense geopolitical games … not only have a profound impact on the world pattern, but also disturb the global industrial chains, and bring a serious impact to the world economy,” the Global Times concluded ominously.
