Expert Explains: How the prospect of Trump 2.0 has created two warring factions within China

In the run-up to the US election, Chinese leaders and the authorities media had maintained a neutral stance, saying they don’t spot a quality betwixt the candidates.

Now, 2 wide moods look to beryllium prevailing — the fatalistic pessimism of those who deliberation trying to combat the Trump presidency is pointless; and the tactical optimism of those who judge immoderate bully tin beryllium brought astir from Trump 2.0. The differences betwixt the 2 groups are getting progressively acrimonious. Here’s why.

Trump’s ‘dream squad of China hawks’

In elemental words, the sociological operation ‘fatalistic pessimism’ tin beryllium described arsenic the content that things volition crook retired severely and thing tin beryllium done to alteration the outcome. In the China versus Trump 2.0 scenario, some pessimism and fatalism are shaping a section’s outlook. They are convinced Trump volition usage his word for a bitter commercialized and tariff warfare against China.

As the names of Trump’s furniture picks travel out, a ample fig of op-ed articles, editorials, and commentaries person been appearing successful some Chinese official/semi-official people media and connected the integer and societal media.

The fashionable integer quality level guancha.cn precocious reminded its readers successful an nonfiction that Rubio has been sanctioned by China. Trump sees “China arsenic the archetypal dam blocking the US ‘MAGA’ flood,” the nonfiction said.

Da Wei, the prestigious Tsinghua University IR prof considered among the top-ranking Chinese experts connected Sino-US relations, told a packed seminar successful Hong Kong past week: “China indispensable not autumn into the ‘trap’ acceptable by Trump and should not instrumentality tit-for-tat tariff measures, truthful arsenic not to autumn into the vicious rhythm of aggregate rounds of communal tariffs again.”

Echoing akin sentiments, Chen Feng, known for his regular columns successful the Chinese media and presently prof astatine the Alberta University successful Canada, said: “We don’t request to person unrealistic fantasies…Trump volition decidedly onslaught hard astatine China.”

‘Pessimists are cosying up to the US’

Tactical optimism is fundamentally a cautious anticipation of, and efforts towards, success.

Thus, immoderate influential Leftist scholars, similar Zhang Zhikun, are advocating a positive, applicable cognition successful their strategy to woody with Trump 2.0. In a file successful 1 of China’s starring Leftist integer platforms, Zhang welcomed Trump’s victory, saying it could effect successful “three bully things.” Zhang’s “good things” are successful the discourse of “exposing” oregon ridiculing scholars whom the Leftists word “elites successful favour of wide Western values.”

These 3 things are: unmasking those Chinese successful the concern satellite and academia and who are frightened of condemning the “US hegemony”; exposing those Chinese who propagate that China and US are mutually babelike and cannot bash without each; and bursting fantasies of the “public intellectuals” who “seriously endure from the governmental delusion that the US and the Western hegemony person nary volition to destruct the communist China.”

Ever since the deterioration successful US-China relations pursuing Trump’s “tariff war” against China successful 2018, this governmental and ideological “war of words” has been intensifying successful China — immoderate accidental adjacent wrong the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). “Pro-America” and “anti-US hegemony” are present among the apical trends connected Chinese societal media platforms, specified arsenic Weibo, WeChat, sina.com, and xiaohongshu.com (littleredbook.com) etc.

Despite the interior wrangling, regarding the absorption US-China ties could take, Yun Sun, manager of the China Programme astatine Washington’s prestigious Stimson Centre, summed up the mood: “There is nary best-case scenario. There’s lone the atrocious script and the worse scenario.”