Tributes are placed beneath the covered seal of the USAID at their headquarters in Washington, DC, on February 7, 2025. Photo: VCG

As Trump administration moved to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), some US media outlets and political figures began pointing fingers at China, warning that China is quickly taking action to fill the gap. The claim showed a problematic mentality, as many in the US are so accustomed to shifting the responsibility and blaming China instead of addressing issues within their own country, said a Chinese expert.

US media outlet Politico, citing an example about Nepal, claimed that "if USAID is packing up and moving out, China seems all too happy to move in." 

Politico said in Nepal, Chinese officials have reportedly signaled to the Nepalese government that Beijing is willing to step in to replace USAID's void with development funding of its own. 

Those reports about China's actions in Nepal are unfounded, and many of the statements made by US politicians today are not trustworthy, Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

"China's foreign aid emphasizes consultation, joint construction and shared benefits, rarely using aid as leverage to influence the political stance of other countries. A significant portion of China's foreign assistance is based on cooperation," Lü said. 

"China's policy of consultation, joint construction and sharing has far more long-term vitality," Lü said.

Charles W. Dent, a former GOP congressman, wrote in an article published on the Hill on Monday that shutting USAID down "would not only weaken our position but also hand a major victory to China, our greatest strategic competitor."

"Attacks on China are now easily resonating across different political parties and even social levels within the US," Li Haidong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

The actions of these US politicians reveal, through the dismantling of USAID, the alarming fraud and abuse of power within the US government's bureaucratic system and its self-governance, and these people approach problems the same way both domestically and internationally, Li noted. 

"While they have numerous issues within their own system, they attempt to shift responsibility by politicizing and blaming China," Li said. 

The claim made by some Western media and certain figures in the US political scene that Trump's dismantling of USAID will cause Washington to lose its "soft power influence" and only allow China to step in and fill the influence vacuum is, in essence, a false cognitive structure built on Western biases. It is the result of misguided perceptions brought about by false information, Li said.