'Shameless Naysayers'

China Lashes Out at the West for Questioning Xi’s Infinite Rule

Accused the West of being “back-seat drivers.”

A day after the Chinese parliament rubber-stamped the scrapping of its presidential term-time limits, opening up the door to Xi Jinping remaining president for life, the country’s state-run media has issued a number of salty editorials against Western critics of the move. Beijing’s state-run press laid into “malicious” Western “naysayers” who have questioned the change and accused the West of not understanding China. “They revel in their ignorance of China’s reality, and hold fast to their mean, even malicious predisposition toward China’s political system out of their irrational, subjective, and unprofessional ideological bias... They have no compunction about making false claims and consider it excusable to speak so shamelessly,” read a strongly worded editorial in the China Daily. State-run tabloid The Global Times accused the West of being “back-seat drivers”, adding: “We are increasingly confident that the key to China’s path lies in upholding strong party leadership and firmly following... the party central committee with comrade Xi Jinping at the core.”