Beijing keeps calm and carries on as Trump’s America descends into ‘Cultural Revolution’
The chaos in Washington has transfixed China, as commentators compare Trump with Mao, Musk with Madame Mao and the DOGE employees with the Red Guards as they purge government bodies. Strategists in Beijing see historic opportunities.
It was during Donald Trump’s first term as America’s President that Xi Jinping started speaking of “great changes unseen in a century”.
Two months after Mr Trump returned to the White House, Mr Xi and his leadership group have updated their assessment: they believe those historic changes are speeding up.
“Changes unseen in a century are unfolding across the world at a faster pace,” Mr Xi’s top adviser, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, declared this month in his “work report”, a guiding document for China’s policymakers.
The chaos in Mr Trump’s Washington has transfixed China. Some Chinese political commentators argue America has descended into its version of Mao’s nightmarish Cultural Revolution, the most traumatic episode in the history of the People’s Republic and usually a taboo topic.
A charismatic strongman leader aided by fanatical lieutenants are up-ending the country, argue essays circulating on the Chinese internet. They depict Elon Musk playing something like the role of Mao’s fourth wife Jiang Qing. His young software engineers, who to these commentators recall the baby faced ideologues who once tormented China’s elite, add to the conceit as they purge an America’s bureaucracy they don’t understand.
“They are clearly the American version of the Red Guards,” one popular Chinese commentator observed.
Many in China have long supported Mr Trump ironically, dubbing him “Comrade Jianguo” – Comrade Build-Country. They say “Comrade Trump”’s first four years helped to “Make China great again”, arguing his erratic leadership hastened America’s decline and brought closer the day their country is once again the most powerful in the world.
Mr Trump’s first two months back in office have gone beyond their wildest dreams. Ukraine’s war time leader humiliated in the White House in front of the world’s media. The greatest rupture in the NATO alliance since it was founded after WWII. Threats to annex Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, Gaza.
The decision to shut the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, an intelligence agency focused on preparing for the future of war (including a potential conflict with China), apparently because of its association with what Mr Trump calls the “Russia hoax”.
China’s leaders know that a currently distracted Mr Trump’s focus will turn to them. For now they are controlling what they can and preparing options to retaliate when he next attacks the Chinese economy.
But Chinese strategists see bigger structural shifts taking place. The world, in their assessment, is being recast increasingly in their favour.
“The right way to think about this is not what Mr Trump’s going to do next, which we can never know,” says Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy.
Amid the chaos, enduring changes are already becoming clear. “I am sure by the end of his second term, America’s global image will just go down further,” Mr Zhou tells The Australian.
Chinese propagandists rejoice!
Mr Trump’s win in November was celebrated by many of China’s pro-democracy crowd, a group often called Chinese “liberals”.
Those Chinese Trump fans spoke of the Republican in sweeping historical terms — a president whose legacy could rival that of Lincoln or Reagan.
“Every dictator, big or small, has a fear of Mr Trump. They fear his unpredictability,” one told The Australian in the weeks before the election.
Their voices have been notably muted these last eight weeks. Most were silent as the Chinese internet erupted with stories, opinion pieces, comments and memes after Volodymyr Zelensky’s public humiliation by Mr Trump and his 40-year-old Vice President JD Vance.
A few exceptions declared themselves supporters of Mr Trump’s domestic policies, but said his treatment of Ukraine had crossed a line. “This is no longer betrayal. It is simply being an accomplice,” one posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.
More common were long-time Putin admirers coming to Zelenskyy’s defence, as Manya Koetse, the Dutch Sinologist and editor-in-chief of What’s on Weibo, has documented.
“When Zelensky is firm towards the US, of course I’ll support him. His performance was so perfect that I’d like to call him Saint Zelensky!” said one nationalist blogger, with more than 300,000 followers.
“Of course, I’m keeping it balanced here. I support Russia too,” he added.
China’s propagandists, who since the founding of the PRC in 1949 have depicted America as a hegemonic, bullying power, have never had it so good.
The gifts keep coming. Beijing was delighted when Mr Trump and Mr Musk last week gutted the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which presides over Voice of America and other internationally-focused American broadcasters. That decision came weeks after Mr Trump and Mr Musk butchered America’s aid budget.
“We have apparently decided to perform a frontal lobotomy on many of the tools of U.S. global influence,” observed Evan Feigenbaum, who served as an Asian-focused Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush administration. “Anyone see China gutting its project finance and foreign assistance instruments? Anyone see Russia gutting RT and Sputnik?”
As former American officials lamented, China’s state-controlled mastheads gloated at the demise of Chinese language outlets they have long fumed about.
Mr Trump, describing himself a “student of history”, explained his geopolitical approach this week in an interview with Fox News. “The first thing you learn is you don’t want Russia and China to get together,” he said.
China’s leaders, who are also students of history, think Mr Trump’s attempt to pull off a “reverse Nixon” completely overlooks the drivers of the normalisation of Beijing and Washington’s relationship in the 1970s, which took place after an epic breakdown in Chinese-Russia relations.
Mr Xi’s top foreign affairs adviser Wang Yi made the point at this month’s tone-setting “Two Sessions” political meeting in Beijing. “I want to emphasise that no matter how the international landscape evolves, the historical logic of China-Russia friendship will not change and its internal driving force will not diminish,” he said.
Mr Zhou, who was part of the Chinese delegation at last month’s Munich Security Conference, puts it more bluntly. “This is a pipedream,” he tells The Australian.
He was in the room as Europe’s political elite was scolded by Mr Vance. In his view, the geopolitical realignment being overseen by the Trump administration is not the formation of a new Russia-US relationship that will wedge China, but a historic rupture in trans-Atlantic relations.
“I think Europe has already made up its mind to become strategically autonomous. This used to be a French slogan. But this time it’s really serious. I think in ten years time, we will see a Europe that is totally different in terms of its rearmament,” he says.
China, which has long championed a multipolar order, sees a huge opportunity. Asks Mr Zhou: “At this time, who looks more like a strategic competitor or systemic rival for Europe: the United States or China?”
The looming showdown
When Mr Trump was sworn in on January 20, the American economy was the envy of the world.
Eight weeks later, America’s main share indexes have tumbled. Over the same period, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index, the main way international investors get exposure to China, is up almost 25 per cent as Chinese tech stocks. They surged after the breakthrough by China’s AI champion Deepseek, whose market shaking model was released — pointedly — on the day Mr Trump was inaugurated.
This week, China’s electric vehicle champion BYD announced a breakthrough that allows its cars to recharge in 5 mins. Tens of billions of dollars were wiped off the market capitalisation of Mr Musk’s EV rival Tesla.
Days earlier, the OECD downgraded its 2025 economic growth forecast for America, citing Mr Trump’s tariffs. The OECD’s project for China’s growth was revised upwards from its December estimate, as Chinese government incentives have helped to increase private consumption and export growth has been stronger than expected.
It has been a further boon to China’s propagandists. “This year will be another ‘year of confidence’ in being bullish on China,” the Global Times editorialised this week.
The coming weeks will test that. Mr Trump has said he will announce his worldwide reciprocal tariff regime on April 2, less than a fortnight’s time. He has ordered a report on the US-China trade relationship to be delivered to him the day before. It is expected to give him plenty of justification to launch more economic restrictions on China.
Since coming to office, Mr Trump’s administration has already raised tariffs on all Chinese imports by a further 20 per cent. On the campaign trail, he spoke of these rising to 60 per cent or even higher.
Chinese suppliers are complaining about American multinationals, including Walmart and Costco, pressuring them to cut their prices in response to the current tariffs.
Mr Trump’s return has seen still more Chinese exporters setting up operations outside of China in an effort to get around American tariffs.
“U.S. tariffs have severely impacted our business, making operations increasingly difficult,” a Ningbo-based kitchenware exporter, now planning to set up an assembly workshop in Southeast Asia, told Chinese business publication Caixin.
It is a trend that has been underway since the first Trump administration. However, many businesses simply finish goods that were mostly made in China to get around American tariffs.
While bilateral trade with America has fallen, China’s trade to the world has ballooned to historic levels. China last year had a trade surplus with the rest of the world of more than $1.5 trillion, “dominating global manufacturing on a scale not experienced by any country since the United States after World War II,” as the New York Times observed.
Much is of almost finished goods going to third countries before being sent to America, still the world’s biggest economy. While it gives the Trump administration a huge target to go after, China’s manufacturing dominance also gives it myriad ways to retaliate.
Mr Xi is trying to project confidence ahead of Mr Trump’s next move. He is scheduled to meet visiting international CEOs in Beijing next week at which he is expected to continue to pitch China as a source of “certainty [in] this uncertain world” and try to turn around a historic decline in foreign investment flows into the country.
Strategists in Beijing do not pretend China’s economy is without its difficulties. But they argue that the American president’s favourite weapon, unpredictability, or at least an attempt at it, does not daunt China after its experience with his first administration.
“To play with unpredictability with a peer competitor, it will work less well than with a medium or small power,” says Zhou, a retired senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force. “China has dealt with him before. So China knows, more or less, what he’s going to do.”
As Mr Trump might say, WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT!
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