Experts slam Bannon for likening China to Nazi Germany

Steve Bannon (Xinhua file photo)

The comparison of China to Nazi Germany made by Steven Bannon in an explosive book about the Trump presidency was met with a hail of criticism from Chinese experts who said his comments showcased anxiety among the US elite toward a rising China.

US President Donald Trump's former chief political strategist was quoted as saying that China is on the verge of becoming a new Nazi Germany in the controversial book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White Houseby journalist Michael Wolff.

"China is where Nazi Germany was in 1929 to 1930," Bannon was quoted as saying. "The Chinese, like the Germans, are the most rational people in the world, until they're not. And they're gonna flip like Germany in the '30s. You're going to have a hyper nationalist state, and once that happens you can't put the genie back in the bottle."

Bannon also referred to China as the real enemy of the US and the first front in a new Cold War. "We don't get China right, we don't get anything right," he said.

"Bannon's extremist expression shows that the elite in the US regard China as a big threat to the US-led global order. They treat China as a potential destroyer of world prosperity and stability and distort China's diplomatic policies," Diao Daming, an associate professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing, told the Global Times.

It reflected anxiety among the elite over the US recession and the rise of China in the past few years, Diao asserted.

Bannon has long been critical of China and spreads the China threat theory, said Li Haidong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University's Institute of International Relations.

As a radical in the political arena, he is dedicated to shaping strong anti-China rhetoric and calling on the US to take a tougher strategy toward China, he noted.

Since China and the US have established diplomatic ties in 1979, the US has been providing investment, technologies and markets to China in the hope of integrating the country into the Western international order. However, as China ascends to a major global power, the elite in the US policy community have gradually lost their confidence in their own power and call on the US government to define China as a strategic competitor, Li said. Bannon was calling for a shift in strategy while criticizing Trump's attitude toward China as "not tough enough," he said.

According to Breitbart News, a far-right American website managed by Bannon himself as executive chairman, he compared China to Nazi Germany and referred to the US as "a de facto 'tributary state' to China" in a speech during his visit in Japan in early December. He also reportedly called for the US and East Asian allies to unify and constrain China's "frightening," "audacious" and "global" ambitions.