The Rise of the East. “Trump's transactionalism is something Beijing understands and can work with”
For decades, many Chinese have viewed the United States with a mixture of admiration, envy and resentment. America symbolized prosperity, technological supremacy and confidence in its own institutions. Even Washington's staunchest critics often assumed that the American system was working.
President Donald Trump in Beijing/PHOTO: EPA/EFE
But the tumultuous return of President Donald Trump to the White House has shaken this image, writes The New York Times.
When Trump visited China in late 2017, Xi Jinping greeted him with a grand display of Chinese history and culture: a four-hour private tour of the Forbidden City, ending with a performance of the Beijing Opera.
Eight years later — after a pandemic and two trade wars — Trump returns to a China that is talking less about its imperial past and more about its future dominance. The domestic and international press is now dominated by images of dancing robots, swarms of drones and electric cars running in near silence.
China is beginning to see itself not as a civilization in recovery from the West, but as a superpower poised to overtake it. Chinese nationalists and commentators close to the state say Donald Trump deserves some of the credit. In their view, America under his leadership confirms Xi Jinping's vision of “the rise of the East and the decline of the West.”
In January, a Beijing-based nationalist think tank affiliated with Renmin University published a triumphalist report on Trump's first year back in power. The authors argued that trade tariffs, attacks against allies, anti-immigration policies, and confrontation with the American political establishment indirectly strengthened China and weakened the United States.
The headline of the report was simple: “Thanks, Trump.”
The document described the US leader as an “accelerator of American political decay”, arguing that the US is sliding towards polarization, institutional dysfunction and even “Latin American-style instability”. Trump's hostility toward China, the authors argued, had the opposite effect: it united Chinese society and accelerated the country's strategic autonomy.
“At this turning point in history,” they wrote, “we hear the heavy and oppressive sound of the evening bell of an empire.”
Such language, once reserved for ultra-nationalist corners of the Chinese internet, has gradually permeated mainstream political discourse.
According to a study by two Brookings Institution researchers, the use of terms associated with “America's decline” in official Chinese sources will almost double in 2025.
The narrative of the weakening of the United States did not start with Trump, however. For years, Chinese state media and nationalist commentators have cited armed attacks, homelessness, political polarization and economic inequality as evidence of the failure of Western democracy.
More recently, the mainstream press has even adopted the viral phrase “kill line,” borrowed from video game culture, to describe what it sees as the irreversible spiral of social decay among working-class Americans.
Trump has provided ammunition to Chinese propaganda
Still, Trump's return and his administration's often unpredictable decisions in both domestic and foreign policy have given the Chinese propaganda machine plenty of new material. Images of anti-immigrant raids, gun violence and bitter political conflict circulate heavily on Chinese social media, accompanied by triumphalist commentary about America's dysfunctionality.
What once seemed like exaggerated propaganda to many educated Chinese is now beginning to seem, to some, simple fact.
A 31-year-old education consultant in northern China who advises families interested in studying abroad says parents who once dreamed of Ivy League degrees for their children now find America “too chaotic.”
A decade ago, more than 80 percent of its students were considering the United States for college. Today, he estimates, that percentage has dropped to about 45 percent.
The man, identified only by his surname Wang for fear of government reprisals, says images of the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol reminded him of the Red Guards sent by Mao Zedong to destroy China's institutions during the Cultural Revolution.
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“The America that symbolized wealth, freedom and institutional trust seems to belong to another era”says Wang.
Among Chinese foreign policy analysts, the discussion has shifted increasingly to the advantages that Beijing can gain from a bilateral relationship that has become, under Trump, much more transactional than during the Biden administration.
“Only China Can Save Trump”
“Only China Can Save Trump”said Huang Jing, a professor at Shanghai International Studies University, in an event broadcast online in late 2025.
In his view, the approach of the midterm elections forces Trump to achieve visible victories — such as Chinese purchases of US soybeans, corn and natural gas — that could count electorally in key states.
“Since the arrival of Trump”, states Huang, “The United States has become increasingly willing to compromise.”
A similar assessment came from Fudan University-affiliated Wu Xinbo, one of China's leading experts on American studies. If Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives this fall, he argues, Trump will focus more on his foreign policy legacy, paving the way for a broader compromise with Beijing.
“China,” says Wu, “should seize this opportunity.”
The war in Iran is reducing Washington's influence over China
The conflict in Iran has further strengthened the perception that Beijing holds the strategic advantage in the relationship with Trump. At a conference in late April, Wu argued that the war reduces Washington's influence over China and simultaneously increases Beijing's room for maneuver by consuming US diplomatic and military attention in the Middle East.
This logic also explains why China's official tone toward Trump has often been less hostile than that used toward Joe Biden.
According to a project by Tracking People's Daily, which used artificial intelligence to analyze nearly 7,000 Chinese official statements from 2021-2025, the Biden administration was portrayed as a more serious systemic threat. Xi Jinping even accused Washington of “encirclement and suppression” — unusually confrontational language for a Chinese leader.
Beijing feigned its own sanctions to allow Marco Rubio to attend the Trump-Xi summit
Instead, the study concludes, “Trump's transactionalism is something Beijing understands and can work with.”
However, the belief that the United States is in decline has not translated into an aggressive Chinese foreign policy of the kind adopted by Russia before the invasion of Ukraine.
China has arguably become more assertive: putting pressure on America's allies, ramping up military activity around Taiwan and limiting exports of rare metals in response to Trump's tariffs.
But even as it promotes the idea of weakening American power, Beijing appears wary of a direct confrontation with what many Chinese analysts continue to see as a dangerous superpower.
Two reasons explain this caution. First, many Chinese strategists believe Beijing has more to gain by letting the Trump administration handle its own difficulties. Second, an unstable and distracted America may become even more unpredictable.
China's export-dependent economy needs a stable international order to function. An erratic America threatens this stability in a way that a self-assured and predictable America never did.
“Xi Jinping Gets America He Always Wanted”says Zongyuan economist Zoe Liu of the Council on Foreign Relations, “and at the same time the America he feared most.”
