China-based writer Jacob Dreyer says there was a time when Americans believed China would become more like America. Now, Trump’s America is “taking cues" from China.
That’s not supposed to be “who we are,” argues Dreyer, a NOEMA Magazine journalist writing for the New York Times.
Dreyer says “China’s Communist Party political domination and heavy state involvement” in everything has been spectacularly successful, particularly when it comes to “democratic erosion, the fixation on strong borders, the curbing of free speech and numerous other examples.”
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These things are also the hallmarks of President Donald Trump’s second administration. “The MAGA movement and its leaders may demonize the Chinese Communist Party,” says Dreyer, but they share remarkable similarities.
“Both push muscular patriotism, are obsessed with manufacturing and hostile to immigrants. Both want a country where ethnic minorities are expected to bow to the dominant group and traditionalgenderroles are enforced,” Dreyer argues. “And all of this is presided over by a domineering ruling party led by an autocrat who flatters himself with military parades. Imitation is indeed the highest form of flattery.”
China weaponizes its economy to punishtrading partners over disputes or mere slights just as Trump squeezes U.S. allies with arbitrary tariffs and retaliation over fentanyl and politics. And both nations bully their neighbors as easily as Trump threatens to absorb Canada and Greenland.
China has its good points, says Dreyer, who urges the U.S. to similarly transition to renewables, support science and education and revitalize its industries rather than slashing funding for these initiatives, But the U.S. must remain “true to our founding principles. Otherwise … we will have found that the student has become the master.”
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Read the full New York Times report behind this paywall link.