The US election is a popular subject of discussion on Chinese social media. For some, it is mainly an entertaining spectacle, but many Chinese take it quite seriously given the centrality of the relationship between the two world’s two largest economies for China’s domestic politics and geopolitical position. Despite the mounting antagonism of the US government and the American public toward the People’s Republic, the majority of the Chinese middle class still views the American model as something to aspire to. This is because they have benefited from the country’s market reforms and opening to trade, and continue to aspire to greater social and personal freedom.
Chinese scholars and intellectuals hold more nuanced views about American democracy, which they tend to view as overly dominated by money. When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, many Chinese intellectuals, like their counterparts in the West, were appalled by the result and believed that American democracy was on the way to decline. The Jan. 6 insurrection only reinforced that belief. Government officials in the Middle Kingdom tend to share this critical perspective on the American model.
It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that most Chinese people—ordinary citizens, middle-class people, intellectuals, and officials—favor Trump over Kamala Harris this time around. Some prefer Trump because they believe he will be easier for China to deal with than Harris. Many Chinese, including government officials, view the Biden administration as a difficult adversary that has taken a systematic approach to containing China. Harris, they believe, will continue Biden’s approach.
“Chinese observers are cautiously leaning toward a second Trump term.”
In contrast, Trump’s actions in office were more haphazard. Crucially, he is seen as less likely to work with American allies to contain China. His first term showed that he was willing to cut deals, and Beijing was happy to come to the table to protect its core interests. However, Trump’s idiosyncratic moves could also pose risks for China. In particular, he might allow the hawks—and surely there will be some of them in his second Cabinet—to take proactive moves against China, which may destabilize its security environment. Weighing between Trump the deal-cutter and Trump the troublemaker, Chinese observers are cautiously leaning toward a second Trump term.
As for the broader public, Trump represents a value system they recognize. Family and social order are the two pillars of the Confucian value system that has prevailed for more than 2,000 years. Family is the most fundamental. A good person starts by perfecting himself and maintaining a flourishing family, and then moves to contribute to the country and society; in Mandarin, the term for “state” or “nation” is made up of the words for “country” (guo) and “family” (jia).
The emphasis on the family naturally extends to the defense of heterosexuality as its foundation. This doesn’t mean that Chinese culture suppresses homosexuality. On the contrary, there is a growing openly homosexual community in China, and transgender people are also becoming more common. A significant example is Jin Xing, a former male dancer who is now a TV entertainer. The general view in China, including the view of the government, is that homosexuality is to be tolerated but not encouraged. This is consistent with Confucianism’s considerable acceptance of personal liberty.
Confucius believed that people are born differently—some witty, some slow—but proposed that everyone can be taught. Those who keep perfecting themselves will become junzi, a perfect person. Later on, Confucianism developed the ideal of social and political meritocracy. Dating to the rule of the emperor Wudi, meritocracy has been one of the core values held by Chinese people for two millennia. For the average Chinese, meritocracy is boiled down to Aristotle’s proportionality principle: If you are smarter than others, or if you work harder than others, you should get more than others.
The result is that Chinese reject the idea of universal equality and believe that equality is always relational—related to one’s intelligence, effort, virtue, or ability. Thus, there should be no free lunch for anyone. Government assistance shouldn’t be taken for granted but taken as a stepping stone for people to rise up and become able to make a living on their own. This largely explains why the Chinese government didn’t offer cash handouts to the public during the pandemic.
It is surprising that China’s Communist revolution hasn’t changed the mindset of Chinese people, including the leaders in the Communist Party itself. One of the central goals of the revolution was to create an equal society. In Mao’s era, the party indeed took drastic measures to level out society and to impose the idea of equality on ordinary Chinese. Confucianism was condemned as backward and despotic. However, traditional values reasserted themselves in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms.
Given this backdrop, many Chinese people see Trump embodying the value system they submit to, and Harris representing a value system they oppose. Although with his multiple divorces, Trump may not be not a traditional family man, that can be overlooked, because he has combined having a family with professional success—more so than Harris, who married late in life and prioritized her career over having a family. Moreover, Trump and the Republican Party aim their appeal at those willing to work hard for success, while the Democrats are seen as more interested in giving people handouts they haven’t earned.
These attitudes are common among Chinese Americans in the United States, as well. Many of my fellow Chinese students who were able to stay in the country in the early 1990s benefited from a 1992 bill, sponsored by Nancy Pelosi, that granted green cards to Chinese students who arrived before June 1989. Thirty years later, many of them have become Trump supporters. One major reason is that they now earn high incomes and don’t like Democrats’ high-tax policies, which they view as taking their hard-earned income and redistributing it to the less deserving. They don’t like progressive policies on crime and education—especially those who live in Harris’s political base of California. Many of them post these views on Chinese social media, influencing attitudes in their home country.
It may sound strange to Americans that the average Chinese, living in a nominally communist country, favors Trump because he sees him as sharing the same values. The Democrats represent the more cosmopolitan, more international, and more progressive part of the world. Whether the rest of the world is going to move in their direction is uncertain. Many in the West imagined China would liberalize culturally as well as economically, but if anything, the country has reverted to more conservative values after the end of Mao’s rule. While America still embodies something many Chinese aspire to, that isn’t true of the America they see represented in Kamala Harris.