China : Jiang Xueqin: The courage of America's democracy

In the lead-up to US Election Day, China was quiet, believing the opinion polls that showed Joe Biden would win.

When initial results suggested that President Donald Trump might prevail, Chinese social media users became elated, revealing that many favored Trump.

Some posted that while they had come online to watch America vote, they stayed to watch it burn. "I don't actually care who becomes President," one said. "I'm just waiting for the violent chaos to start."

It's easy to think China's schadenfreude has revealed its anti-American streak. But millions of Chinese have studied or are studying in the US, and millions more have emigrated there.

Globalization has benefited China greatly, but it's also led to widespread inequality and populist resentment here. Yes, Biden's focus on soft power and international alliances is expected to lead to predictability and stability in the US-China relationship, which many believe will be good for China's economy.

But China's economy is increasingly benefiting only a minority, and many Chinese cheered on Trump because his confrontational policies make their elite squirm.

Mexico : Alice Driver: In Mexico, high hopes for Biden

Mexicans have borne the brunt of four years of President Donald Trump's racist insults and policies that eroded human rights.

Many worried that if Trump had won reelection, his anti-democratic tendencies would set an example for regional leaders like Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) -- who said Saturday that he needed to wait until legal challenges to the vote-counting concluded before recognizing Joe Biden as the president-elect -- to follow an authoritarian path.

Mexican media and social media users were quick to celebrate President-elect Joe Biden's win, with the hashtag #MéxicoFelicitaABiden (Mexico congratulates Biden) trending on Twitter on Sunday. The hashtag did double duty as an implied criticism of AMLO for holding off on congratulating Biden.

For Mexico, a Biden presidency, with his commitment to science and human rights, represents an opportunity to work on pressing binational issues like climate change and immigration.

This month, I interviewed women at the US-Mexico border seeking asylum. Some have wondered if their uterus would be removed without their consent if they risked crossing into the US. For them and many others in the region, a Biden presidency signals a definitive end to policies like immigrant family separation.

Mexicans haven't forgotten that Biden was a part of the Obama administration, which deported more people than any other administration in US history.

But Biden has promised to value and recognize the US as a nation of immigrants, providing hope for a legal path to citizenship for "dreamers" from Mexico, Central America and other countries. For that reason, they're hopeful about a Biden administration.

Iran : Maysam Behravesh: For Iran, the ball is now in Biden's court

As polling stations prepared to open across the United States on Nov. 3, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a significant public speech reaffirming his defiant position toward the US.

"Our [US] policy is calculated and clear, and this policy does not change with the departure and arrival of individual [presidents,]" he said.

President Donald Trump's policy of "maximum pressure" on Iran has included ever-tightening sanctions targeting the country's economy, and the assassination of Iran's most influential military commander, Qasem Soleimani. Khameini's address -- noting that he expects hostility from Washington to continue regardless of who is in the White House.

This statement signalled that Tehran will keep defying US pressure and resisting possible demands from President-elect Joe Biden's administration for concessions, such as ending Tehran's support for regional paramilitary groups or halting its missile program.

Other Iranian leaders echoed Khameini's tough talk as it became clear that Biden had won the presidency: "We hope that the experience of these three years has been a lesson to them that will make the next US administration follow the law and return to all its commitments," President Hassan Rouhani said in a speech on Saturday.

Russia : Mikhail Fishman: Russia puts a negative spin on the Biden win

In 2016, the Russian parliament applauded Donald Trump after he was elected president. This time, there's no applause for Joe Biden's victory in the US presidential race.

The majority of Russians have little interest in who occupies the White House and the Kremlin is not expecting the Biden administration to bring them any benefits.

Vladimir Putin made no public comment -- a spokesman said Monday that the Russian leader was waiting for the official results before congratulating the winner -- and prominent Russian officials presented the election as a sham.

A day earlier, Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the committee on foreign affairs in Russia's Senate, posted on Facebook that there had been no official result yet.

"There is no unambiguous, unconditional and convincing winner," he wrote. "Whoever wins won't have the full moral right to say that all America is behind his back."

Others also mocked the ongoing vote count. On state-controlled TV, the anchor of popular Sunday night show "Vesti Nedeli," repeated already-debunked reports about fraudulent ballots and said that the "mayhem" left no hope for an honest vote count.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia's parliament called the US elections a "staged show," saying that Russia's electoral system was "more open, more effective, more legitimate."

In fact, election observers say that Russia's most recent national ballot -- which approved a Constitutional change allowing Putin to run Russia until 2036 -- was the most rigged vote in Russia's history.

India : Pramit Pal Chaudhuri: India celebrates Harris as Modi hopes for help on climate policy

New Delhi has been counting the ways it can work with Joe Biden - and has climate high on its list.

In private webinars, Indian ministers have already talked about getting the United States back into the Paris Accord and how to make it a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project, the International Solar Alliance.

As the Indian government focused on its plans for the new administration, Indians celebrated the fact that a woman of Indian extraction would become the vice president of the United States.

Residents set off fireworks in Kamala Harris' ancestral home and Modi congratulated her in a tweet. President-elect Biden was also embraced as a native son, with Indian newspapers resurrecting Biden's half-serious claim in 2013 on a visit to Mumbai that he supposedly had a "great, great, great, great, great-grandfather" who worked for the British East India Company and settled in India.

While much has been made of the camaraderie between Modi and Donald Trump, leaders at this level are drawn together by common interests.

Modi was quick to congratulate Biden on his "spectacular victory," tweeting Saturday that the former vice president's contribution to strengthening Indo-US relations "was critical and invaluable."

Canada : Michael Bociurkiw: Canada has one request for Joe Biden

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quickly discovered that diplomacy and respect for allies had no place in President Donald Trump's world, particularly after the US President accused Trudeau of being "very dishonest and weak" following the G7 summit in 2018.

Trump was keenly aware of Trudeau's disdain for him, and it didn't help Canada:

The White House oversaw surprise duty applications on multiple trade commodities, from steel to aluminum, and squeezed Ottawa hard in a renegotiated free trade negotiation. It also presided over the partial untangling of highly integrated supply chains between the two countries in key industrial sectors.

The bilateral relationship was professional -- but laden with grimaces.

Canadians prefer President-elect Joe Biden to Trump, and look at this momentous election as an opportunity to restore a sense of civility not only to our bilateral relationship, but to the world stage.

It would be a turn back of the clock to a time when the most powerful nation on earth stood up for multilateral institutions, led on Canadian-backed accords ranging from climate change to nuclear control, and tried to prevent petty despots becoming regional or global-impact tyrants. A relationship where disagreements were settled by talk and not by punitive tariffs.

Turkey : Çağla Öztek Kalafat: In Turkey, we've seen this movie before

In the 1980s, Turkish politicians liked to promise that our country would become a "Little America." The term mainly referred to the more liberal economy that Turkey has now largely achieved, but it may explain why the Turkish people (and some media outlets) have framed their views of the US election around three questions:

• What does the result mean to the value of gold and the dollar? (As if the decline of the Turkish lira is directly and solely related to who's in the White House.)

• Will Joe Biden be as good a friend to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as President Donald Trump has been? (Turkey's mainstream media are concerned that Biden has called Erdogan an autocrat and fear that the President-elect is opposed to Turkey's foreign policy.)

• Is America becoming a "Big Turkey" rather than the other way around?

Turkey has experienced a coup -- or an attempt at one -- nearly every decade since 1960, along with more than its share of social turmoil.. That's why we used to use "Ah I've seen this movie before," as a political catchphrase.

Israel : Seth J. Frantzman: What Israel wants from Biden

While Americans were voting on November 3, Israel was experiencing its first heavy winter rains. The inclement weather paired well with the stormy progress of the US vote count.

Israel's leftists and centrists have welcomed Joe Biden's win, but President Donald Trump's defeat is unlikely to be welcome news for his close ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the many Israelis who thought Trump was good for Israel.

Israelis have applauded Trump for measures like moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli control of the Golan Heights and making it clear that America is Israel's closest ally.

However, for all the adoration, Trump never spent much time in Israel and his zig-zags on foreign policy, such as his order to withdraw US troops from part of Syria in October 2019, left some wondering whether he could turn on Israel if he felt it wasn't skipping to his beat.

While Israelis broadly like Trump, they are less familiar with Joe Biden and have many more concerns closer to home.

Britain : Kate Maltby: Britain will benefit from not having to work with a loose cannon

It's no secret that President Donald Trump has a special relationship with Britain's own populist right.

He backed Prime Minister Boris Johnson for Britain's premiership while Johnson's predecessor and rival, Theresa May, was still Prime Minister.

Trump cheerleads for Brexit. He's been followed adoringly around the campaign trail by Nigel Farage, the nationalist pro-Brexit campaigner whose latest political party -- there have been several -- was launched to oppose coronavirus lockdowns.

British followers of Johnson or Farage may tell you that Trump was Britain's best bet, primarily because they hoped his affinity with the Brexit movement would lead to a favorable US-UK trade deal -- a necessity now that Britain is transitioning out of the European Union and needs to trade independently.

But don't be fooled. More than anything, Britain needs a US president who respects the norms of international law and diplomacy. Political staff at 10 Downing Street no doubt are breathing a sigh of relief that they no longer have to place a British cabinet minister on 'Fox and Friends' to get Trump's attention.

France : David A. Andelman: Church bells ring as France says, 'Welcome back, America'

Bells rang across Paris at 5:45 pm on Saturday to mark the moment major US media organizations declared that Joe Biden had won enough electoral votes to become the next president of the United States

France's enthusiasm for American democracy has continued largely unabated since the Declaration of Independence inspired the French Revolution.

But this year, there was none of the dancing on the Champs-Élysées that I watched in 2008, as giddy Parisians hung from lamp posts and waved American flags when Barack Obama won the White House.

Part of this was the strict curfew enforced by French police amid a second wave of the coronavirus.

But part of it was that it was that France felt differently after almost four years of President Donald Trump. "There was enthusiasm for Obama and relief for Biden," Patrice de Beer, a longtime Washington correspondent for Le Monde, told me.

Australia : Scott Morrison congratulates Joe Biden on US election win and flags Australian visit in 2021

Scott Morrison has signalled he would invite Joe Biden to visit Australia for the 70th anniversary of the Anzus treaty in 2021 as he congratulated the Democrat for winning the US presidential election.

Morrison told reporters that Canberra would continue to deal with the Trump administration during the transition period but looked forward to working with Biden from January.

The Australian prime minister described the former vice-president in the Obama administration as possessing a “deep understanding” of national security issues, including the importance of the post-war alliance to ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific. 

“This is a profound time, not just for the United States, but for our partnership and the world more broadly and I look forward to forging a great partnership in the spirit of the relationships that has always existed between prime ministers of Australia and presidents of the United States.”

Biden’s election will increase diplomatic pressure on Australia to step up its commitments on climate change.

* Schadenfreude: Pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.