President Obama’s reelection was welcomed by China, where some commentators mused on the political freedoms of the US. The Monitor's Beijing Correspondent Peter Ford reported:
"The US elections attracted widespread attention in China: The topic was the top trending search term on Twitter-like platforms such as Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo, which saw 3.4 million tweets on the subject on election day.
Microblog commentators had some comparisons to make between the freewheeling US presidential election that unfolded just as Chinese leaders were preparing to open the 18th Communist Party Congress on Thursday, the culmination of a secretive leadership transition in which the Chinese public plays no part.
'Americans across the nation are voting,' tweeted Wu Shuilan. 'But what about us? We all know the result before the voting starts; we are faster than them.' "
Meanwhile, China's official Xinhua news agency, the mouthpiece for the Communist Party, ran an editorial urging US-China cooperation after making a dig at how US politicians speak about China:
China-U.S. relations are responsive to complications stemming from domestic political issues. Judging from how U.S. presidential candidates spoke about China in the lead up to Election Day and, in fact, how other politicians have spoken about China in a number of other campaigns, it appears that China has become an easy target and a scapegoat for those looking to avoid taking responsibility for domestic issues in the U.S.
... China has many urgent domestic problems that need tended to, such as improving people's livelihood and carrying out reforms in many sectors. It can not bear the costs of full confrontation with the outside world.
The U.S. needs China, as well, not just in terms of economic development but also in other sectors. The global financial crisis revealed how globalization has made countries so interdependent that no single country can survive in a bubble.
China and the U.S. have to work together for the sake of future world stability.
