'America's halo fading': Chinese state media mocks US over anti-Trump 'No Kings' rallies; army parade

Chinese state media and online commentators have declared Donald Trump’s “America first” policy a "failure" in light of the mass demonstrations held to protest his leadership.Thousands of protesters rallied across America on Saturday under the banner of “No Kings"; the rallies coincided with a parade by the US army on its 250th anniversary.

As commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, Trump attended and addressed the parade on a day he turned 79.“The parade reflects (Trump’s) urgency to proclaim that ‘America is great again’ … Yet, no matter how it’s staged, it only reinforces the sense that the halo of the United States is fading, and its deep-rooted institutional problems remain unresolved,” the state-run Beijing Daily said in a commentary, according to South China Morning Post (SCMP).Beijing Daily added that the parade instead evoked "deja vu of ‘the setting sun’s afterglow’ and ‘a past that cannot be reclaimed'."Chinanews.com noted that the day's events symbolised how "democracy is struggling in the mud."“On this day, there are celebrations and protests … In 2025, the United States is moving towards an uncertain tomorrow – amid gunfire and slogans,” the website, another state-run outlet, said.

On the other hand, people on Chinese social media mocked how the US army soldiers marched during the parade.“I burst into laughter watching it. Is this still the US military that claims to be No 1 in the world?" one social media user wrote.Military observers, however, cautioned Beijing against analysing the state of the US armed forces and its soldiers through the event.“There is nothing that we don’t know,” Song Zhongping, a military commentator and former People’s Liberation Army instructor, told SCMP, referring to the weapons displayed.The three-hour parade was the first in the United States in decades. Such events are held regularly in countries such as Russia and China but not so in America.