I wouldn’t be surprised if top party officials at Beijing’s government headquarter Zhongnanhai are toasting each other these days with ridiculously expensive French wine over the fact that Merkel’s phone has been bugged by the NSA. A decent bit of Schadenfreude should be involved: The more international media report on American spies snooping on Western citizens, politicians, well, everybody, the more the US moral image is tarnished, the bigger the political benefit for the Communist party. I hear the powerful Standing Committee members in the Polit cracking jokes and telling people: “Didn’t we tell you before? They are not better than us.”
Scandals like this – same goes for the never ending Italian reality TV show Bunga Bunga Berlusconi – will put the slowly blossoming democratic movement in China at risk. In the past years Western democracies have done everything to discredit themselves. They were not able to find an answer to the financial crisis. They were tolerating whatever the US administration secretly did on their territories. And the greatest democracy of all itself couldn’t even get their finances under control. “Why should we become democratic”, a lot of Chinese people ask themselves. And what they would tell Western people nowadays is: “Honestly, your democracies suck.”
Since the new SPIEGEL with the story of Merkel’s bugged phone on the cover came out yesterday I was expecting to read some derisive op-ed’s on this issue in today’s Monday editions of the party’s mouthpieces. But neither does Global Times run a piece, nor does Xinhua News or China Daily. They are probably still brainstorming about the right words at the propaganda ministry. I am very curious whether tomorrow’s papers will come up with something.
In the meantime I’ll make do with what Chinese netizens say on Weibo:
Fang_Han says: “When the German movie The Life of Others won the Oscar for Best Foreign Movie in 2006, I wonder how the spies at the NSA reacted. I guess they were laughing about how inferior the Stasi technology was back in the days.”
leoleohu says: “The Germans’ own spy technology is bad, that’s why they get spied on by others. But if your technology is better than anyone else’s, can you guarantee you won’t spy on other countries?”
天造鸟 says: “Before Obama visited Berlin in June this year, the NSA must still have run their spying program on Germany. No wonder Obama didn’t leave the US much lately. If you are able to listen in on everything, why making the effort and travel?”
红树-冷月 says：“The Human Rights Comittee of the UN should sue America.”
今日每年有 says：“The reason why the US are spying on European countries is obvious: The days of the Dollar being the leading currency are over soon. The Euro has become the Dollars’ most important rival. Therefore the US government is desperate to know what America’s competitors are concocting.”