It remains to be seen whether Democratic voters will embrace Mike
Bloomberg now that he is officially a 2020 candidate. But his late entry
should be welcome news to Chinese leaders. To get more
china finance news, you can visit shine news official website.
The billionaire and former New York City mayor is likely the field’s
most Beijing-friendly candidate. He's argued against the U.S.-China
trade war, maintained investments in China, hosted a conference there
and frequently speaks up on behalf of its regime. His approach has drawn
criticism from conservatives — but it also represents a vulnerability
in a Democratic race that has embraced a more confrontational posture
toward the Chinese government.
It’s an issue Bloomberg is wrestling with in real time. Just last
week, as he prepared to jump into the race, he canceled a planned
appearance in Beijing at the New Economy Forum, a conference hosted by
his company, Bloomberg LP, and attended by top Chinese officials.
He tapped former treasury secretary Hank Paulson to open the event
in his stead. “My good friend Michael Bloomberg asked Henry Kissinger
and me to represent him here today, because, as you all know, he's made a
decision to serve his country,” Paulson said, name-checking the former
Secretary of State who has long worked to promote ties between the
United States and China.
Bloomberg’s view of China’s authoritarian government has elicited
closer scrutiny since he began signaling an interest in a bid he’d sworn
off earlier this year. In particular, he faced blowback for defending
Chinese President Xi Jinping in a September interview with PBS’s “Firing
Line.” “The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China, and they
listen to the public,” Bloomberg said on the show. “Xi Jinping is not a
dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to
survive.”
Pressed by host Margaret Hoover on whether he really believes Xi is
not a dictator, Bloomberg emphasized his point. “No, he has a
constituency to answer to,” Bloomberg said. “No government survives
without the will of the majority of its people, okay? The Chinese
Communist Party looks at Russia and they look for where the Communist
Party is and they don’t find it anymore. And they don’t want that to
happen. So, they really are responsive.” This is a stark contrast to the
situation on the ground, where over a million Muslim Uighurs have been
forced into detention camps and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong face
live rounds and tear gas.
The claim flies in the face of a spate of Chinese crackdowns,
including the forcing of over a million Musliim Uighurs into detention
camps and the use of live rounds and tear gas on pro-democracy
protesters in Hong Kong.
The exchange prompted Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin to write
that Bloomberg’s “record on China shows he is the wrong person to guide
our country in confronting this historic challenge.”
The Wall