Chi Wang

Opinion | Neither Donald Trump nor Xi Jinping can escape blame for their national crises. The difference is Americans can vote out Trump

Trump has stirred up the toxic pot of partisanship politics even as Xi’s leadership style exacerbated the coronavirus crisis. But there is strength in America’s political system: it gives voters the right to criticise and select their leaders

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Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in Beijing in 2017. Photo: Bloomberg

Chi Wang

Published: 2:00am, 21 Feb 2020Updated: 3:10am, 21 Feb 2020

I made the decision to leave China to study in the United States early in 1949. It was a turbulent time for China. Mao Zedong’s army had reached Beijing and I was not optimistic about the Kuomintang’s prospects. Months later, Mao proved victorious, and my stay in the US became extended indefinitely.

Now, 70 years later, both my adopted country and my homeland face significant domestic hurdles, laid bare by recent events. In the US, the impeachment and acquittal of President Donald Trump and his behaviour since, show the country’s hopelessly divisive partisanship.

In China, the coronavirus outbreak has sparked criticism of President Xi Jinping’s power centralisation and top-down leadership, at the expense of public interest. The crises facing both nations are being blamed on their respective leaders, though the responsibility is not theirs alone to shoulder.

The US problem of partisan division is not new. George Washington warned about the dangers of political parties in his farewell address in 1797. The nation has largely ignored his warning.

Much ado was made over Senator Mitt Romney’s decision to vote to remove Trump as president – the sole Republican Party member to do so. It was a brave decision in today’s political climate, and also only the first time in history that a senator had voted to remove a president from his party.

During the impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999, senators voted entirely along partisan lines. The Trump presidency is a mere manifestation of the sickness plaguing the American system; it is not the cause.