Countries around the world are showing a tendency of favouring leaders who have the will to take on China, whereas pro-China leaders tend to get edged out. Take for example the latest Sabah state elections in Malaysia, which was being touted as a referendum on Malaysia’s new Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. Muhyiddin Yassin’s coalition (Sabah People’s Movement) went to polls on the back of Yassin’s anti-China policies and came out in flying colours.
As such the Sabah state elections show that leaders with an anti-China frame of mind are bound to get rewarded. And therefore Malaysia’s state elections result provides a sneak-peek into how the US Presidential polls could look like. After all, the incumbent US President Trump’s anti-China rhetoric remains unmatched within the United States and even the entire Western world. He has also made an electoral issue out of his policy to decouple from China.
Therefore, once the US goes to polls, Trump will have an upper hand over the Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden who has a soft corner for Beijing.
In fact, the latest Sabah state election results themselves are in line with Malaysia’s long history of shunting pro-China leaders, and rewarding those who stand up to the paper dragon. Take for example, Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Najib Razak who had courted Chinese investments and promoted a peaceful solution to the South China Sea disputes with Beijing. Razak’s pro-China attitude had become a major political issue within the Southeast Asian country and he was even accused of “selling of” Malaysia to Beijing.
Najib Razak thus got ousted in 2018, as Razak’s successor, Mahathir bin Mohamad- the previous Prime Minister of Malaysia, had then stormed to power by raking up the China issue. However, the nonagenarian himself took the Chinese bait after coming to power on issues like Huawei and Chinese belligerence in the South China Sea.
But such is the influence of anti-China sentiment in Malaysia that Mahathir himself got unseated around seven months ago and the incumbent Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin came to power. Yassin has been moving Malaysia away from China. As soon as he took office, the Malaysian Prime Minister started cutting down on Chinese investments in Malaysia. In June, Yassin gave a major shock to Beijing by revoking the license of two companies linked to Huawei.
The Sabah state elections result only corroborate how people have shown faith in Yassin’s anti-China policy. The small state of Sabah facing the South China Sea was ruled by an Opposition-led coalition and it was the ruling coalition which called for an early poll. The Opposition-led coalition was thus confident of retaining power, but Yassin’s growing popularity changed the election outcome.
But then Malaysia is not the only country that has shown tendency to favour anti-China rhetoric. Even in the Maldives, an island nation located in the Indian Ocean Region, a pro-China and anti-India President Abdulla Yameen was thrown out of power in 2018, and an anti-China leader, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih elected in his place.
Similarly, Sri Lanka had shown a tendency to throw out leaders warming up to China in 2015. At that time, the then Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was ousted from power. Rajapaksa isn’t exactly a pro-China leader, however, Sri Lanka was then getting isolated over allegations of serious human rights violations, and therefore Colombo had no choice but to attract Chinese investments. Nevertheless, the poll results have proved that Sri Lankans won’t tolerate predatory Chinese investments in their country.
Now, all these poll results and the general trend of electorates rewarding anti-China rhetoric, while sidelining pro-China leaders is going to have immense significance in the United States Presidential polls.
And anti-China rhetoric in the US is going to be more important than ever before, given the increasing hostility against China. Recently, a Pew Research Centre revealed that 73% of the US adults hold negative views of Communist China and 78% place blame of global spread of COVID-19 on China. In such circumstances, Trump’s blistering action against China is bound to resonate with the American electorate at large.
As the US President, Trump has consistently maintained his anti-China rhetoric. He has also taken a range of actions against the paper dragon including a blanket ban on the Chinese Communist Party affecting 92 million members, attacks on China for gifting the COVID-19 crisis to the whole world, taking on Chinese tech giants like Huawei, ByteDance (TikTok) and Tencent, and also confronting Beijing in the South China Sea.
Trump is literally trying to rally the whole world against China, and therefore Americans do understand that Trump is the only leader who can help the US punish China. This is only going to make Trump’s victory margin bigger than his first mandate.
Therefore, as the Malaysian Prime Minister gets rewarded in state elections, there are quite obvious signals as to which way the US Presidential polls will go. And it seems that Trump is going to come back in all likelihood with his anti-China rhetoric.