28/10/2016

WhatChinesepeoplethinkaboutHillaryClinton|BrookingsInstitution

OrderfromChaos

WhatChinesepeoplethinkaboutHillaryClinton
DavidDollarandWeiWangFriday,July29,2016

nlikeRepublican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who only became

well-known in China quite recently, Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton is no stranger to the Chinese. She has been on their radar

since her time as rst lady in the 1990s. In 1995, she delivereda groundbreaking
speechat the U.N.s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, declaring:
womens rights are human rights. The Chinese government censored the speech soon
after, as it resented being embarrassed on the world stage.
Today, Chinese of cials tend not to be very fond of Clinton (as evidenced by opinion
pieces in state media). The broader Chinese public, however, appears to have more
mixed views.

In 2013, when Clinton nished her term as secretary of state, the Global Times (a
tabloid af liated with of cial Peoples Daily newspaper) issued a special report marking
her departure. It described her as the most hated American political politician among
Chinese internet users and blamed her for severely sabotaging Chinas bilateral
relations with its neighboring countries ina short period of time.
In April 2015, on the same day Clinton announced that she was entering the 2016
presidential race, an article about her appeared on the public WeChat account (a mobile
social messaging app) of the Peoples Daily Overseas Edition.The piece
summarizedClintons historically tough dealings with China and portrayed her as an
anti-China politician. It cited:
Clintons bashing of Chinas human rights record in 2008, supposedly to help win
support during the 2008 presidential primary;
Her critiques of Chinas internet freedom in 2010, when Google publicly accused
China of hacking into the email accounts of human rights activists and dissidents;
Herinterview with The Atlanticin 2011, in which she called the Chinese
governments attempt to crack down on dissent a fools errand;
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Her assertion in 2012 that Chinas fast-growing investment in Africa was a form of
new colonialism;
Her claim in 2013 that the disputed Diaoyu Islands (known as the Senkaku Islands
in Japanese) are under Japans administration; and
Her suggestions that she supports fostering a color revolution in China.
Other government-af liated opinion writers in China have claimed, for instance, that
she was the evil initiator of the South China Sea disputes, since she declared the
issue a U.S. and regional security concern at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi in
2010.

Rhetoric from the Chinese public on social media often echoes of cial rhetoric on
Clinton. In a society where a woman has never had a seat on the Chinese Communist
Partys Politburo Standing Committee (Chinas inner circle of power), a standard putdown of a strong woman is usually to call her harsh, or worse, and to connect success
in her career to failure in family life. On Chinese social media, comments on Clinton
can be both sexist and ageist. Users on Chinese social media platform Weibo often
quoteTrumps now famous commentrecalling her husbands in delity (If Hillary
Clinton cant satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?).
A reader commenton a Peng Pai News report on the investigation into Clintons use of
private email server reads, perhaps characteristically: She is so old. Why cant she go
home and help raise children? It is widely believed in China that women over 55 (the
legal retirement age for women there) should stay home and help babysit their
grandkids. So for Clinton to now run for president of the free world is off-putting to
many Chinese.
But there is another, more favorable view of Clinton in some Chinese circles. She has
won an increasing number of admirersmostly women, feminists, liberal intellectuals,
and social libertariansfor her achievements as a woman. On the of cial Weibo
account of the Sanlian Life Weekly magazinewhich tends to have a more liberal
readershipan article describingClintons impressive political career generated a lot of
positive attention. Commenters expressed fondness and respect for her as someone
who shows extraordinary courage and perseverance. One comment reads: I admire
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her courage to pursue her dreams at this age; another reads: She is my role model as
a woman. [We should all] struggle for a noble ideal regardless of our gender, nationality,
and personal dif culties.
When ve young feminists were detained by Chinese authorities in 2015 on charges of
picking quarrels and provoking trouble after planning a multi-city protest aimed at
bringing an end to sexual harassment on public transport, Clinton called Chinese
President Xi Jinping shameless on Twitter. That boosted her popularity among young
Chinese feminists. Inan interview with CNN, Li Tingting, one of the ve detainees,
said: [Although] I do not agree with all of Clintons politics, what matters the most is
what a Clinton presidency would symbolize for womeneven in China.

Upcoming

By Mireya Sols
2019

Upcoming

By Carlo Cottarelli
2017
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Upcoming

By Jong-Seok Lee; Translated by Woong Koo See

2017
Overall, therefore, while the state media tends to espouse dislike for Hillary Clinton,
the general public is more mixed in its views. Whether or not U.S.-China relations are
likely to be better under a Clinton presidency or a Trump one is a different question,
one that we will take up in a future post.

davidrdollar
W

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