Why China Wants a Jeb Vs. Hillary Race

Perhaps no one in the world would relish a general election campaign between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush—apart from the two candidates themselves—more than the mandarins in Beijing. Already, official Chinese news coverage of the 2016 primary season is highlighting the back-and-forth baton exchange between the Clinton and Bush families. Other U.S. presidential candidates are often brushed off as long shots; many Chinese writers seem to have bypassed the primaries, already nominating the front-runners in order to fit the narrative. Chinese journalists, often eager to take the party line, are framing the U.S. election—sometimes smugly, sometimes incredulously—as a battle between hereditary family clans. A litany of articles from China's government-run print news outlets illustrates this trend. When Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported on Jeb’s presidential announcement, the article focused entirely on the sorry state of familial politics in America.